Chapter 4
The questions had been going on for over an hour, thrown at Sarah like scalding water balloons: Do you know what type of shoes he had on? Was he wearing sandals, hiking boots, running shoes? What color was his clothing? When exactly did you notice he was missing? Each question felt like another body blow, leaving her exhausted and clueless.
Sarah and the kids stewed in the camper van—sheltered from the storm but locked in with their own sour smell. A small electric heater buzzed near the ceiling, further thickening the air with sound as rain pelted against fogged-up windows. The kids sat quietly beside Sarah, drawing on printer paper, while a battle raged in Sarah’s mind: grab them and drive away as fast as the back roads would allow or stay put and face the barrage.
“What does it matter?” Sarah snapped at the young officer who had been assigned to gather more information. His smooth face betrayed youth and inexperience, though he held his back straight to hide it. She hadn’t even heard his last question.
The officer held her gaze, his expression devoid of any reaction. The kids looked up; Bella oozed silent recrimination beside her, though neither child uttered a sound. Sarah had a flash of herself shaking the disapproving look off Bella’s face. She pulled in a breath, willing air to squeeze into every crevice of her body and smother the scream on the edge of her lips.
“Sorry,” Sarah said on her exhale. “It’s just—I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anything.” Bella turned back to the paper in front of her.
“I know it’s a lot, ma’am,” the officer said, “but every detail matters.”
“So I keep hearing.”
“It’s amazing how small things can mean so much when we’re looking for someone in the wilderness. Shoe size, what they ate for breakfast, whether they were in a good mood or bad. It all becomes important. I worked a scene once where the color of someone’s bathrobe meant the difference between life or death.”
“Is Daddy dead?” Charlie looked up from his drawing.
“Daddy’s never in a good mood,” Bella said at the same time.
“No, honey. Of course Daddy’s not dead.” Sarah rested a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
She looked to the officer to confirm.
“What do you mean, Bella?” The officer turned to the girl, oblivious to the entreaty in Sarah’s gaze.
“Nothing,” she said, as she crossed her arms in front of her and sat back.
The officer spoke to Bella but looked at Sarah. “It’s okay to tell me anything, Bella. No one’s going to get in any trouble. All we want to do is find your dad.”
Sarah turned to Bella, keeping her face blank, though inside, pity and irritation tussled when she looked at her daughter. She offered Bella a reassuring smile, but the girl kept her eyes on the table. When the silence stretched, Sarah stepped into it.
“Nothing that unusual. Matthew’s been busy with work and life, that’s all. We both have. He works in IT, and I’m the cofounder and manager of a small theater company.” Sarah moved a tentative hand to Bella’s knee beneath the table and felt the small leg flinch. “You know how it is. Deadlines, the after-school rush—it all piles up, doesn’t it? Patience is sometimes hard to find. It’s been a little stressful lately. Matthew’s had a couple of big projects, and the theater’s been gearing up for the new season, but nothing out of the ordinary. He always has a few projects running.” Sarah hoped to reassure Bella but met only her daughter’s frown.
Sarah studied the young officer. What was he? Twenty-five? How would he understand how it is?
“Has he been stressed lately? Any unusual behavior? Mood changes? Suicidal thoughts?”
“What?” Sarah said. “God no. Nothing like that.”
The young man in front of her would have no idea yet. How kids take every ounce of affection and patience you once had to spare; how juggling the demands of home and work is a balancing act, resulting in more of a strategic blunder than a coup de grace. She wouldn’t tell him about her suspicions or the secrets that a family keeps. He wouldn’t understand how the pressure built into periods of discontent.
“He’s been fine,” Sarah said. “He was taking care of himself, limiting his hours at work. This trip was his idea. He was excited about it. Wasn’t he, guys? He’s been like a kid in a candy shop. Talking a mile a minute about the glories of the Mirabelle. In fact, he’s been more back to his usual self than I’d seen him in months.” Now that she’d said it out loud, Sarah recognized a truth in her words she hadn’t previously acknowledged. The last few weeks, a shadow seemed to have lifted off Matthew: he’d laughed more, kidded with her and the kids, and sparked a charm into the heart of their family she’d not seen in years.
If Sarah were being honest with herself, the last few weeks had been a return of the Matthew she’d married before kids and responsibilities had weighed him down. Matthew had been impulsive and sometimes reckless, like an overgrown kid. She was drawn to his playful side. She remembered a long-ago weekend getaway to wine country in southern Ontario, staying at a romantic bed-and-breakfast, sipping chardonnays and Rieslings and roaming the beachfronts and main streets in small towns along Lake Ontario. After a sun-drenched afternoon, they’d come across a train bridge that crossed a little river in Prince Edward County. They could have followed the road, but Matthew insisted trains no longer passed this way. They ambled across, posing for photos and laughing at their daring. The next day, Sarah was mortified to see a freight train rumble across the very same bridge. Had it been the day before, they would have had to jump into the river to avoid a collision. “So wicked!” Matthew exclaimed with a massive grin. In that moment, Sarah had felt that she and Matthew were destined; no harm would come to them as long as they were together.
The officer kept his gaze on Sarah, as if expecting her to say more.
“Are you going to find Daddy?” Charlie asked, head still bowed over the paper, though his hand was still.
“We’re going to do everything we can to find him, buddy.” The officer’s lip jerked up in a makeshift smile. “It’s only been a few hours. Most people who get lost in the wild are found in a day. Usually a little frightened, but just fine.”
“What if you don’t find him in a day?” Bella asked. “Then what?”
“Well, then we look harder. We’ll call in more people to help us. Search and Rescue soldiers from Trenton. Might even get some search dogs to help. But we’re still a long ways away from that right now. And there are some great people coming to help look for your daddy. They’ve found lots of lost campers before.”
“But what if they can’t find him?” Bella said.
A gust of noise swallowed her question. The RV door flew open, followed by rain and cold air that blew the kids’ drawings to the ground. A figure stood in the gloom beyond the door frame.
“Preliminary search has found something.” The world seemed to spin around Sarah, as if an invisible hand were twirling the trailer itself.
Sarah stepped out of the camper van to join Dubé, Boychuk, and Novak among the volunteers. Though only 4:00 p.m., it felt like dusk. The storm had unleashed. Raindrops smashed against the ground. A circle of people stood beneath the meager protection of a large elm and neon-orange tarp. Icy rivulets ran beneath Sarah’s rain jacket.
The search leaders, faces shadowed by hoods, huddled while information was being relayed. “There’s a red canoe at the trailhead to the rapids,” one of them said. “Team lead says it’s a Langford. It looks like someone hauled it up on shore, but no sign of anyone nearby.” Sarah couldn’t tell which one of them was speaking.
The cloaked faces turned toward Sarah. Seeing them against the dark woods, Sarah imagined the Dark Riders from Lord of the Rings .
“Your canoe’s red, isn’t it, Sarah?” Dubé asked. Sarah nodded. “Do you know if it’s a Langford?” Beneath the words, Sarah heard the ungodly screech of the wraiths in her mind. She nodded again.
“Okay.” Novak burst into the middle of the circle. “We have a likely last known position. Let’s get a search grid mapped out. We’re going to assume, for the moment, that the subject is on foot.” He turned to the members of his search team. “There’re natural choke points at the lake and river, so let’s map out what that looks like for the grid.”
Heads nodded. “Jaro, any tracks out there?” Novak asked one of the hooded figures.
“We’re still looking,” a searcher said, “but the rain is making it hard to find anything. The trail’s a small stream right now. No obvious signs so far, but we’ve only done a hasty search. Grid might find more.”
“Let’s get going then,” Novak said. He and the others strode toward a line of waiting vehicles.
“Sarah.” Boychuk was at Sarah’s side. “Why don’t you head back to the camper? Wait with the kids. No sense catching a cold on top of all this.”
“No. I can’t wait around anymore. I need to help find Matthew. He does this all the time. Goes off in his own little world.” Sarah’s voice was hoarse and unrecognizable to her.
“I know it’s hard, Sarah. But we do find it best for family members to be nearby and reachable.”
“I’m not wasting any more time just sitting in there. I can’t let all these people go out in this”—she pointed her forehead to the sky—“while I do nothing myself.” The fifteen or so bodies gathered around were donning their gear and doing their best to ignore the brewing situation.
“I understand how hard it is, believe me,” Boychuk said as he took a step closer to her. “But I can’t let you go. We need you to be here, telling us everything you can about Matthew’s habits, his mindset. Any detail could be relevant.”
“I’ve already told you everything I know. I don’t know where he went.”
“Sarah—”
“You already know everything I do. I’m going. Please.” She turned to walk away.
Officer Dubé, who had been lurking behind Sarah, blocked her path.
“You may not know what direction he headed off in, but you know your husband better than anyone here. We need you to—” Boychuk continued.
Sarah shuffled sideways to step around Dubé.
A hand touched Sarah’s arm. At least two inches taller than Sarah, Dubé said with a clear, though controlled, edge, “If you head out there, there is a real risk that you could get lost yourself, and then we’re looking for two people. That is not happening. We need all our resources focused on the search for Matthew. Do you understand me, Sarah?”
Sarah’s heart battered at her chest, a separate creature testing the cage that contained it. She moved again to step around Dubé, but the woman held her ground.
“You need to listen to Officer Boychuk. There is no universe in which I am going to let you walk into the woods right now, Sarah.”
Dubé held Sarah’s stare, the officer’s eyes betraying a practiced understanding of the despair and violence brewing. The creature in Sarah’s chest rattled the bars of its cage, the reverberations tightening muscles in Sarah’s shoulders, her arms, her fists.
Dubé glanced down at Sarah’s hands. “I wouldn’t, Sarah. It won’t end well,” she said softly.
Sarah snatched her arm away and retreated to the camper.
It was almost evening before Sarah heard anything else. Over the course of the afternoon, a shortwave radio in the camper squawked, giving cryptic and useless updates. Twilight had tried to linger, but dense cloud cover quickly devoured it.
The young officer sat in the camper’s passenger seat while Sarah and the kids crowded at the little table. Bella and Charlie watched a Harry Potter movie on Sarah’s phone, the tinny theme music adding to the dankness.
Three times a searcher had appeared at the door to ask Sarah a question, the relevance of which she could never decipher.
“Did your husband have a limp?” No.
“Do you know anyone who lives in the Patricia Bay area?” No.
“Was your husband a competent swimmer?” Yes.
Finally, just as the gloom outside shifted to full dark, Boychuk reappeared. Charlie had fallen asleep against Bella, who had not said a single word since the exchange with the young officer earlier in the afternoon.
Boychuk climbed into the RV and gently closed the door behind him. He pulled the cap off his head, revealing matted salt-and-pepper hair punctuated by a persistent cowlick that made him appear younger than the lines on his face would allow. He held the cap in front and bowed his head. His hands, tanned a deeper shade than his face, were crisscrossed with lines; wrinkles and scars blended into a map of his experiences.
“Sarah, we haven’t found anything yet,” he said. The movie stopped playing. “I don’t want you to get discouraged, though. This whole process is a bit like juggling sand. It’s tricky, so we have to adapt to what’s in front of us, and right now, the weather is making it particularly difficult. Visibility is bad. Rain and low clouds haven’t let us get a bird in the air. And it’s going to be full dark soon.” Boychuk let the information sink in.
“Do you know if Matthew’s taken any wilderness survival training?” The question was innocent and relevant, but numbness spread through Sarah’s limbs; her toes felt like chipped ice. She shook her head.
“We’ll keep searching for another hour or so, but we’re going to have to hit pause overnight. We’re getting into some tricky areas, low swampland, rocky shorelines, and in this weather, it’s just not safe to continue searching after dark. If we get anything else tonight, we’ll let you know, but otherwise, we’ll pick it up again at first light.”
“That’ll be a day.” Charlie’s small voice, not so asleep after all.
“Sorry, son. What did you say?” Boychuk turned to the boy.
“If you don’t find Daddy tonight, tomorrow will be a day. And he said”—Charlie pointed to the young officer who had joined the group—“people are found in a day. If you stop looking, how can you find Daddy in a day?”
Boychuk shot an annoyed look at the officer, who had the decency to blush. He knelt beside Charlie. “Son, I know we don’t look like much, but my friends and I are good at our jobs. We’ve had a lot of experience and a lot of training to find people who’ve lost their way in the woods. And from what your mom tells me, your dad is a great camper. He knows the outdoors.” Boychuk looked up at Sarah, who nodded. “I know it seems scary now, but I promise you, we are doing everything we can to get your daddy home safe and sound.”
Boychuk told Sarah arrangements had been made at a hotel in Patricia Bay for her and the kids. The town was thirty miles up the highway, at the head of the Mirabelle River, and was the main point of service for the valley. The town’s population of a little over ten thousand exploded in the summer months when cottage owners and guests at the seasonal hotels swarmed the area. Like preying insects, they took over the town, greedily consuming everything from water toys at the local gear store to the last morsel of rocky road at the Dairy Freez.
At this time of year, though, the town was quiet and the hotels were cheap. Sarah had protested at first, insisting she should stay, help look, but Boychuk persuaded her that what she needed was sleep.
“Best to get some rest. Tomorrow’s another day.” He gave her arm a little squeeze and nodded at Dubé, who had offered to retrieve Sarah and Matthew’s minivan, though Sarah could tell it was not an optional suggestion. The vehicle would be combed over by the police for any clues as to Matthew’s whereabouts and deposited at the hotel. Sarah handed over Matthew’s keys to Dubé, who disappeared with one of the volunteers.
“Let’s get you guys to the hotel,” Boychuk said, gathering Sarah’s lone bag.
“Okay,” Sarah said. She followed him as if her actions were no longer her own but those of the woman she was supposed to be. “Can you watch the kids for a couple minutes? I just need to use the washroom.”
The dock was shared by a small campground, and a restroom lay beyond a copse of trees. Sarah made her way to the low cinder-block structure housing the toilets and showers. As she walked around to the women’s side of the building, she stopped dead.
A white-and-red motorboat with River Runner etched along the side of the bow sat on a trailer under pale streetlight at the front of the building. There was no doubt it was the boat from earlier that morning: the one belonging to the group of twentysomethings who had left Sarah stranded with the kids.
Unbidden, fury flooded Sarah’s nerve endings, laying waste to the rational connection between impulses and restraint. She rewatched herself, as if the events that had unfolded were a movie and she controlled the speed of the playback: a lone woman with two small children on the shore while the boat pulled away. She heard the red-haired woman’s casual laughter drifting over the water, smelled the wet pine around her, felt the wind-whipped hair at her face.
Sarah doubled over as if a fist had just slammed into her gut. One hand rested on her knee, the other pressed against the cold cinder-block wall beside her. A cauterizing breath caught in her lungs. She watched herself march across the gravel parking lot. A hand retrieved her keys, still in her pocket, and held the largest key between her ring and index finger, the way she’d been taught at a self-defense class years ago. She felt the hard edges of the metal dig into her flesh, watched herself drag the largest key across the side of the boat, gouging the red paint. She heard the scrape of metal on fiberglass, saw the raised coating bunch and peel under the pressure. Her arm repeated the action in the opposite direction, deepening the gouge, until the original color of the hull bled into the crisp red of the stripe.
Stepping back to look at the slash, a pinprick of satisfaction blossomed in Sarah’s core. It spread like a vine, stitching and soothing her anger.
The car slid onto the highway, an asphalt ribbon that disappeared beyond the reach of the headlights. The only sound was the hum of tires on wet pavement and the slap of windshield wipers. Sarah sat in the back seat, Bella and Charlie on either side of her.
Speckled lights appeared in the blackness out the window as the car passed homes set back along the highway. Spools of lives spilled into a void. Not for the first time, Sarah was curious about the people who lived on those islands of light. How did they survive out here? What were their days like?
Charlie’s head fell gently against Sarah’s arm. She glanced down at him—her peanut—his face relaxed in sleep. Bella was harder to read. Always. Even in sleep, where she curled into a tight ball beneath the covers, shielded from the world as if beneath a carapace. Her face was turned to the side window, and Sarah stroked her honey-brown hair, just barely resting her fingers on her scalp. Bella didn’t turn around, but neither did she move away. Sarah was astonished by her ability to love someone who resented her so much.
She hadn’t told the police the whole truth. There was no point mentioning Matthew’s absences of late, the tiny frustrations that crept into the day-to-day of a marriage, the temptations that might lurk in the arms of someone else, someone new. Sarah knew there were cracks, but cracks could be mended. Better she hold her tongue, keep everything simple. The search was what mattered now.