Into the Fall

Chapter 10

A feeling like dripping water plunked Izzy’s shoulder. Drip, drip, drip. She traveled reluctantly toward the sensation. Her mind lingered in the void between awareness and sleep. Eyes still closed, she sluggishly reminded herself of where she was, how she got here, and why—in this moment—water should make her uneasy.

“Auntie Izzy.” A whisper drifted to her ear. “Auntie Izzy.” It was a finger, not water, nudging her shoulder. Izzy opened her eyes, let her vision adjust to the light peeking through neglected brown curtains. Who picks dirt-brown curtains? Sarah, still asleep beside her, snorted. Bella stood in front of her. “I had an accident,” the child said.

Puzzle pieces juddered in Izzy’s mind. Accident? What accident? What kind of accident does an eight-year-old have? Was Bella hurt? Izzy sat up quickly. Pieces tumbled into place: a dark stain ran down the front of Bella’s pajamas.

“Oh, I get it,” Izzy said, careful to keep the relief out of her voice. “It’s okay, kiddo. We got this.” She rolled off the bed and moved gingerly around the room, trying not to wake Sarah or Charlie. The empty bottle of wine and remnants of last night’s pizza still sat on the table, leaving a familiar smell of far too many mornings after. She stretched out the stiffness from yesterday’s long drive and hunted around for clothes. “Go grab some clean clothes and we’ll sneak out for a little adventure,” she said and winked at Bella, who responded with a sliver of a smile.

After getting Sarah’s call two nights ago, Izzy had thrown some things into a suitcase and flown out the door. She had been almost to her car before she’d thought better of heading into the dead of night to some wilderness town in the middle of nowhere. Best to leave in the morning when daylight would make more sense of the world.

Izzy lived on the edge of Cabbagetown in Toronto. Hers was the middle house in a block-long stretch of gentrified Victorian row homes with sculpted gardens and lots of entitlement. The area was home to the city’s professionals and artists. It was tailor made for the director of a small yet prominent art gallery. Vibrant, trendy, and awash in city clatter, just like Izzy.

After groping around in her hastily packed suitcase, Izzy pulled on a pair of yoga pants and an oversize sweatshirt before slipping into the bathroom with Bella. Her niece—usually all brashness and bravado—stood in the middle of the overly white bathroom looking small and alone. Izzy slipped down to her knees to help her change and then wrapped her arms around her small body, feeling it shiver in her embrace. Tears moistened the nape of Izzy’s neck as the child released fear and shame that had nothing to do with wetting the bed.

“I hear ya, sweetheart,” Izzy said. “It’s going to be okay.” What could you say that wasn’t false comfort or rote platitudes? Bella’s hero had vanished. The world would never be the same, no matter what the outcome.

The morning was brisk with a hint of woodsmoke perfuming the air as Izzy, hand in hand with Bella, stepped out the front door of the hotel. Clear light crisped the edges of the surrounding hills and trees. Izzy was not a country girl. Even the suburbs gave her vertigo, so the blast of small-town Canada was disorientating.

Most of Patricia Bay, including the hotel, squeezed around a two-lane highway that cut through the town like a rock seam through granite. A handful of local businesses stretched out from the highway’s intersection with Main Street, giving way quickly to brick homes and clapboard bungalows. The street in front of the hotel was quiet this early, peopled only by a man ambling by with a small terrier in tow, the dog stopping every few paces to sniff. Izzy remembered seeing a coffee shop up the road and hoped it opened early. She took Bella’s warm hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze.

“Right then. Breakfast!” Izzy said. Bella nodded and returned the squeeze.

As soon as they started walking, Izzy cursed her fashion-over-form yoga pants for failing to keep out the chill. She picked up her pace, making sure her steps were in time to Bella’s, and distracted herself with thoughts of Sarah. At thirty-seven, Izzy had already been married—and divorced—twice, with kids not even a passing thought. And while she hadn’t enjoyed the divorces, she couldn’t say she missed being married, nor did she feel lonely. But she also knew exactly where both of her ex-husbands were, even if she wasn’t interested in seeing them again.

Sarah was different. Once she had decided to marry, she was committed. She’d been seeing Matthew for only a few months when Sarah called to announce their engagement. Izzy was suspicious but recognized a familiar pattern: Sarah loved being in love and was happy to convince herself it was so. Her chameleon sister absorbed or shed tastes with each new relationship: Tom and the ridiculously sterile apartment they shared, Kato and tae kwon do retreats, Marcel and veganism. Each new man stripped away another little piece of her sister.

Izzy was intuitive enough to recognize Sarah’s behavior with men may be a legacy of the loss of their parents. The accident had been brutal: a head-on collision on a rainy highway. Their mother was killed instantly, but Dad lingered for a few days. The doctor said it could be helpful for patients to hear their loved ones’ voices, so the sisters took turns reading from Moby-Dick , each secretly believing the words would pull him back.

Dad opened his eyes once—just once—and it still pained Izzy that she hadn’t been there. She stepped out to make some phone calls while Sarah read. Just as Ishmael saw the white whale for the first time, Dad had opened his eyes. Only for a moment, and only for Sarah.

Sarah swore there was no awareness there, no light in his eyes. But for Izzy, it was another loss. He had died before they reached the end of Melville’s tome, and the girls had wordlessly agreed to bury the book with their father. All of which led Izzy to show up for her sister’s wedding feeling untethered and alone and desperate to maintain her relationship with Sarah.

Izzy came back to the here and now with a slap of wind curling in from the surrounding woods. The coffee shop was farther than she’d thought. Izzy’s legs tingled by the time they spotted the converted clapboard house with a red-letter sign across the front that read T HE B AYKERY . They stepped into a waft of freshly brewed coffee and sweet dough and an overload of country charm, complete with a rocking chair in the corner. Bella, unusually quiet beside her, shivered.

“What’ll it be?” an older woman behind a carved-wood counter asked. Her gray-rooted hair sported a bottle auburn. She smiled as Izzy reached the counter. Well-earned lines creased the outer corners of her eyes and quotation marks wrapped her pale lips.

“Coffee, please. And a hot chocolate for my friend here,” Izzy said, lifting Bella onto a counter stool. Bella ogled a pile of multicolored doughnuts under a bell jar.

“You want one?” Izzy whispered in her niece’s ear. Bella nodded.

“Two of those, as well,” Izzy said, pointing to vanilla creams dripping with rainbow sprinkles.

Local coffee shops were part of Izzy’s daily routine, wherever she was. She told herself it was a way to keep grounded as she traveled through bourgeois art communities, but it was the familiarity she liked about them. She was grateful now for the comfort to be found in vinyl stools and the smell of yesterday’s grease.

“Another coffee and hot chocolate, too, please. And a half dozen of those doughnuts. All to go.”

“Sure thing, hon. Looks like you could use a little warm-me-up.”

The waitress slid the doughnuts and wax paper cups filled to the brim onto the counter. “Auntie Izzy, I need to pee,” Bella said.

“Little girls’ room is through that door back there,” the waitress said.

Izzy stood as well, but Bella said she could go alone and headed off before Izzy could respond.

“You up here for a little getaway?” the woman asked over her shoulder as she filled the takeaway box.

“Not exactly,” Izzy said. “More of a family thing. My niece and I woke up early, so we decided to bring back breakfast.”

“Ah, lovely.” Izzy thought she detected a twinge of an Ottawa Valley accent with its elongated a ’s. “Best steer clear of Nagadon Lake, though. OPP are up there making a mess of things. Looking for some camper who’s gone missing.”

“Oh?” There was only a hint of a question in Izzy’s voice, but it was enough.

“Ya, happens every now and again around here. I’ll get you something for those cups.” The woman nested the drinks into a foldout tray; her knuckles were swollen with arthritis, but her hands moved deftly from muscle memory. “Usually it’s a weekend-adventurer type who bites off more than they can chew. OPP find them in a day or two. If they don’t, it’s usually bad news for the poor bugger. This time of year, with the storm that went through, he’s either dead or gone. His wife and kids are staying at the place up the road too. Poor things. I can’t imagine. We’re organizing a community drive for them, if you care to donate?”

“Thanks,” Izzy said. She grabbed the coffee tray and box of doughnuts and turned to the door. Bella stood in the middle of the small restaurant, her face crumpled, arms locked straight into fisted hands.

“My daddy’s coming home!” she screamed. “You don’t know anything. You’re stupid. I hate you, I hate you, I hate ...”

“Oh, honey. I’m so—” the woman tried, but the damage was done. Izzy shoved the box of doughnuts under her arm and chased Bella out the door into the waiting cold.

Walking back, Izzy had no idea what to say to Bella. She muttered cold comforts—“It’ll be okay; that woman doesn’t know anything”—but Izzy knew they were meaningless. When Bella took her hand, Izzy let silence speak. Her thoughts drifted to the one event that had led to this horrible moment: Sarah’s wedding. Everything from that day to this was a direct path to catastrophe. Izzy was just the only one to see it.

Even Izzy had to admit, Sarah had looked radiant and happy in their mother’s old wedding dress. The intricate beadwork and inlaid stitching, old fashioned on the hanger, sculpted Sarah like the seams of a Grecian statue. The sisters had spent the night before the wedding at a hotel—a final night together before Sarah stepped into her own family. They woke to a gushing hairdresser armed with hairspray and curlers. Sarah’s light-brown hair was done up in a half-layered twist and a waterfall of unbound tresses. Her sister was a bride, and Izzy swallowed everything that entailed.

“Oh, Sarah,” Izzy said when Sarah stood from the hairdressing chair. “Mom and Dad would be so proud.”

“Stop, stop, stop.” Sarah waved her hands in front of her face. “You’re going to make me cry and ruin my makeup, and I can’t sit in that chair anymore.”

Izzy wrapped her arms around her sister, clinging to the last moments of their family.

Sarah broke away. “Now, let’s get me married.”

Izzy nodded, lips pressed together in a schoolmarm frieze to halt the threatening tears. “Wait, a finishing touch first,” she said, and ducked into the suite’s bedroom to retrieve her purse. “You’ve got the something old with Mom’s dress, the something new with those fabulous shoes, the something blue with the forget-me-nots in your bouquet, but you still need something borrowed .”

Izzy pulled a small box from her purse. “I think Mom would have wanted you to wear these today.” She handed Sarah a pair of white jade earrings. Each of the girls had kept something from their mother, and in Izzy’s case, it had been the earrings their great-grandmother had bought on her honeymoon in Italy. The teardrop-shaped stones were edged in silver, with intricate etchings across the cloudy surface of the jade.

“Oh, Izzy. They’re perfect.”

“Here. Let me.” Izzy stepped to her sister’s side and gently pulled on her earlobe. The tender flesh gave way to the earring’s clasp.

“I can’t believe my baby sister is getting married,” Izzy said as she gave the earring a little tug to make sure it would hold through the events to come. She moved to the other side of Sarah, holding the earlobe between her fingers. “It’s not too late, you know.” Her voice was just above a whisper. “This is happening so fast. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“You don’t need to worry about me, sis,” Sarah said, still grinning. “This is what I want. I love Matt and I’m getting married.” The last syllable came out on a childish squeal.

“You hardly know him, Sarah. You’ve been dating, what, seven months? What do you even know about him? He has no family, you’ve never met any of his friends, and what about those times when he just disappeared, no explanation, no call? Bam. Out of your life. It’s weird, Sarah. I mean, you haven’t even lived together yet. How is that even possible in this day and age?”

Sarah held her smile too long. “I know. It’s old fashioned. It’s not that we didn’t want to, it’s just he travels so much for work, it wasn’t practical to find a place. His place was just a hotel with a kitchenette that the company had set him up in. We spend all our time at my place anyway, it would have hardly been worth the trouble finding him a place. And then, it became kind of fun. The idea of learning about each other’s habits as newlyweds.”

Izzy finished with the earring. “Sarah, it’s crazy.” It came out more sharply than Izzy intended. “It’s wonderfully romantic but pretty naive, don’t you think?”

Sarah stiffened, which both sisters knew carried a history and was intended to rebuke.

“Look, I’m sorry to be so blunt. It’s not like I haven’t mentioned it before now. It’s just—” Izzy took a deep breath, calming her words. “This is the last chance. Are you sure, Sarah?” She looked directly into her sister’s hazel eyes, a color she shared with their mother.

“It’s all right, honey.” Sarah clasped Izzy’s hands in both of hers. “I’ll be all right, Izzy. I know what I’m doing. Besides”—she’d winked—“the universe has spoken, and you know I can’t resist that.” All Izzy could do was nod her head and accept.

Sarah and Charlie were awake when Izzy and Bella walked back into the room. A children’s show with manic puppets was turned low on the television, while Sarah was on the phone across the room. Her long silences and wounded expression told Izzy all she needed to know about the conversation.

Izzy settled the kids to their makeshift breakfast, noting to herself that tomorrow she’d start worrying about nutrition and too much sugar. She sat at the small table, holding the still-warm cup of coffee with both hands, drawing what she could from its fading heat. She watched Sarah absorb blow after blow from the speaker on the other end of the phone. It was clear from her body language not much had changed.

Izzy felt a rush of anger like a rogue wave across an empty sea. It rolled dully through her, looking for a shore to smash against. She looked from the kids to Sarah and back. Finally, her ire landed with force on the only available target: Matthew. Matthew and his willful disregard for his family, for failing to do everything he could to save her sister from pain, for selfishly abandoning them in the middle of nowhere.

Another memory from Sarah’s wedding boiled up.

The I do s were over, the wedding cake cut, the older folks had called it a night, and Izzy was waiting for a glass of white wine at the bar in the dimly lit ballroom of the Lord Elgin Hotel. Tables had been pushed to the sides of the room, revealing beech-colored parquet flooring. The strains of Etta James’s “At Last” bled into Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5” as music tumbled against the walls of the room, filling empty space with a bass pulse.

“Another beer, please.” Matt’s voice caught Izzy’s attention. Drink in hand, he propped his elbows on the bar, a goofy smile on his face as he watched Sarah shimmy in her wedding dress. After a few seconds of ungainly steps back and forth, Sarah kicked off her shoes to shouts of encouragement from the dancers around her. In her bare feet, she spun, her dress lifting slightly, while friends flapped around her like leaves caught in a whirlwind.

Matt laughed; the sound scratched at Izzy’s ears. Her own glass of wine arrived, and she grabbed it and crossed the few steps toward him. “Salute! To your health.” She raised her glass and eyed him.

“Izzy! I didn’t see you there.” He turned his head slightly, not taking his eyes off Sarah. “And yours,” he said, raising his drink. He swayed against the bar.

Matt watched his new bride, oblivious to Izzy’s stare. “She’s something, isn’t she?”

“She is. And she’s all I have left in the world.”

He turned to face his new sister-in-law, an attempt at earnestness on his face warped by one drink too many. His head wobbled. Izzy caught the smell of sweat beneath his spicy aftershave and the fainter waft of beer on his breath.

“I know,” he said, “and now you have me too.” A question lifted his eyebrow.

Izzy swayed. “Yup,” she said, emphasizing the p , letting it draw out and send a little spittle flying. Secrets slipped out more easily in shared drunkenness. “But I don’t trust you.” She let the words hover between them.

Matt mocked a shocked expression. “Look, I know you don’t like me, Izzy. God knows you’ve made that clear. But you have nothing to worry about. I love Sarah.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. But, Matt, I don’t know you. Sarah barely knows you. And let’s face it, you haven’t been Mr. Reliable.”

“She told you?”

“Of course she told me. She tells me everything.” Izzy kept her body slack and looked out to the dance floor. Sarah had disappeared behind a rush of bodies and taffeta. “And I gotta tell you, I don’t take kindly to someone running out on my sister. You can give her all the mumbo jumbo you want about old friends and wilderness adventures, but I know bullshit when I hear it.”

“I’ll admit it, I haven’t always been there for Sarah. There were ... complications at the beginning. But I’m all in now.”

“What exactly does complications mean, Matt? This is my sister, not an IT project.”

“It’s all in the past now. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Really?”

Matt raised three fingers beside his shoulder in a mock salute. “Scout’s honor.”

“’Cause you need to know if you ever hurt her,” Izzy continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “I will come for you and you will suffer.” She faced him and poked his chest hard, her words a little slurred but with enough ferocity to emphasize her bravado. “She is my baby sister, Matt. She deserves the best, and I’m not sure you’re it.” The words landed, couched in a history Izzy knew Matt could never understand.

“Matt, come on. It’s my favorite song.” Sarah appeared at Matt’s shoulder, floating on a grin. The strains of “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden filled the room. “Don’t let my sister scare you, honey! She’s only mean when she’s drunk,” Sarah said as she wrapped an arm around both her sister and her husband.

Izzy let her gaze linger on Matt before she turned to Sarah. “I can’t believe my baby sister got married,” she shouted, hugging Sarah fiercely. “Go dance, you crazy newlyweds.” She teetered slightly on her heels. Sarah blew Izzy a kiss and dragged Matt away, pulling him onto the crowded dance floor.

“Hey, Matt!” Izzy asked, just before he was swallowed by the crowd. “Were you ever a Boy Scout?”

“Hell no!” he’d said over his shoulder.