Chapter 6
Sarah opened her eyes to a blade of light jabbing between the hotel room curtains. Bella lay diagonally across the bed, with her knees tucked into the small of Sarah’s back. For a moment, Sarah forgot where she was. She covered her eyes against the nudge of daylight, seconds dripping away before memory took hold.
She had fallen into a facsimile of sleep just before dawn, when hungry sparrows started nattering out the window. The kids’ steady breathing was an agonizing reminder that she was going to have to steer them through another day. Bella may have been old enough to understand, but her preteen anxiety came through as sarcastic backhand swipes, which Sarah found alternatingly hurtful and infuriating. Sarah worried she would crack into irreparable pieces, like glass shattered on concrete. Charlie, on the other hand, was a different nut. Empathetic and warm, he absorbed others’ feelings into his pores. She sometimes wondered if he’d disappear under the weight of it.
The accusing orange numbers on the clock read three minutes after seven. Officer Boychuk had said the search would resume at first light. Sarah needed to get moving, but she lay pinioned to the lumpy mattress doing battle with memories from the days before: Matthew in the firelight, the murderous sky over Nagadon Lake, the wendigo. Each landed like heavy stones on her chest.
“What time is it?” Bella asked, her sleepy voice still unwieldy.
“A little after seven. Still early. You can sleep a little more if you want.”
“Can’t sleep.”
“Try, a little bit. I won’t let you miss anything.”
Sarah looked from Bella to Charlie, splayed diagonally across the other bed with Norbert, the stuffed dragon, tucked under his chin, his sandy hair plastered against the white pillow, and tendrils of crusted drool on the side of his mouth.
They needed Matthew. And they trusted her to find him. But she couldn’t.
Sarah pulled herself to the bathroom. She ran the shower for several minutes, coaxing the outdated plumbing to life until the water was on the right side of scalding. She pulled the flimsy shower curtain behind her. The ring of water held her, the idea of leaving its embrace unthinkable. For that moment, the world did not exist outside the streams that tumbled across her body. To step out of the water was to plunge back into the reality of the last day and expose raw nerves to confusion and dread.
Sarah replayed the last conversation she’d had with Matthew—could replay it only from within the thrum of the water—and watched the scene as if from a distance, a spectator to the coming storm.
The small fire had kept back a rolling night that waited patiently at the edges. Sarah saw Matthew, his face faintly illuminated by the orange glow, twisted as if reflected in a fun-house mirror.
“Kids down?” he asked as she joined him.
Sarah settled beside him on the log. Her hand ran along the well-worn heartwood, still radiating captured warmth from the day’s sun. “I think so, but Bella will probably wake up a million more times to find that spider. I don’t have the heart to tell her there are probably a dozen more in there with her.”
He chuckled, the way he always did when it was about the kids, resonating with affection and pride. Sarah looked up to the sky. The stars had come. There was a crispness to them, as if the cooler fall air had cut their edges. How not to feel insignificant in the face of a star-filled sky? For a time, small pops from the fire and the soft lapping of the water on the shore were the only sounds. Not even the breeze let out its whisper through the trees.
“It’s quiet.” Her voice was above a murmur. “Uhmm.”
How many times had they sat like this? Comfortably silent, each tending their own thoughts.
“It’s funny,” Matt said, breaking the reverie. “I can’t imagine them all grown up. Can’t think of Bella as anything other than a little girl with skinned knees. And Charlie? Well, that would be like trying to imagine a bowl of ice cream turning into an ostrich. There might be some vaguely similar shapes, but the essential beings are too fundamentally different.”
They both laughed at the image; Sarah’s turned into a yawn. The day had found her. Her head felt heavy, and though she was dressed for the temperature, fatigue chilled her. The only thing keeping her from crawling into the tent was the thought of the final trek to the latrine. A sigh escaped.
“Tired?”
“Ya. I’m getting too old for this canoeing thing.”
“You should get some sleep. I’m going to stay up a little longer.” Matt poked at the hot embers with a thick stick. “I’ll kill the fire and turtle the canoe before I come to bed.”
Matt was energized by time in the woods. He was always more himself here than anywhere, his movements blended with the woods and water.
“Okay, last trek. Good night,” Sarah said as she headed for latrine trail.
She had just stepped beyond the ring of firelight when Matthew called her softly. She turned back. He looked into the darkness, clearly not able to see Sarah’s exact whereabouts, but he knew she was there. His expression contained too much to be readable. She saw Charlie in the furrow of his brow and Bella in the sorrowful smirk.
“What if we don’t get there?” he said.
“Where?”
He said nothing for a full minute. He was so still, Sarah assumed he had lost himself in thought.
“To the end, when the kids are grown and we’re old and alone? What if it turns out to be too much?” he said.
Sarah pretended not to have heard and walked away along the forest trail.