Chapter Seven #2
Between the Co-op and her house was nearly a half-mile of snow-covered sidewalk, the roads messy with de-iced slush.
It would have been a reasonable thing to call out to her, to offer to drive her, and yet he hesitated.
He understood that the moment he said her name, he would set in motion a series of words, of looks, of motions which he could not stop, and did not want to.
That back in the booth at the pub, as she had pressed her foot against his, and then her calf against his, and then her knee, he hadn’t pulled away, at least not swiftly enough to send a message.
That now, if he took her home, she would invite him up, and he would accept her offer, would follow, and give himself up to her enchantment.
Up to her apartment, which he imagined now like the stage set taking form back at the school, thyme bed canopied with woodbine, walls slung with oxlip and violet, a wreath of flowers waiting for her to set upon his head.
As the tempest struck and the roads closed around them.
The female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
In a certain kingdom, in a certain land.
Miles closed his eyes, as a diver closes his eyes before his leap.
Just then his phone rang. This time it was Kate; he let it go to voicemail.
Now Nausica? was standing by the road, inches from a plow that heaved its folds of slush onto the sidewalk.
In a moment, she’d be across, and down the footpath to her apartment.
Miles turned the car back on, and backed up, hoping to catch her before she had to cross.
Again the phone rang. Again he sent it to voicemail. But the third time she called, he answered. Let her tell me now, he thought, with a defiance that surprised himself.
He tried to say her name, but his voice failed, and from across the falling snow, across the valley, his wife was speaking.
“Miles, do you have Olive?”
The plow passed. Nausica? dashed to the far sidewalk, and vanished down the path.
“Olive? No. I left her with Wesley and Harper.”
“Well, Harper says that Olive went outside, and her boots are gone, and her jacket is gone, but I can’t find her anywhere. Miles, I’m probably overreacting, but the snow is really coming down. I can’t even see footprints. I don’t think she should be out.”
—
They had begun by splitting up—Miles took the woods behind the house, and Kate the road, stopping at each neighbor’s house to ask if they had seen her.
From what they could gather from Harper’s increasingly evasive answers, Olive had left not long after Miles went to town.
They had been arguing about the caves that Olive said her dad had found, Harper knew she was lying, Olive told Harper she was stupid, Olive used the F-word, Harper actually had no idea about anything. She wanted to go home.
By then it was five-thirty, and though they had more than an hour before the sun set, the sky was dark, the snow fell in great Bentleyan clumps.
Kate, to her credit, had said nothing of the Humbaba.
Had she done so, perhaps Miles would have asked her where she’d been these afternoons and evenings; perhaps if she weren’t busy screwing Mr. Olympics her daughter wouldn’t have wandered off.
But he also knew that, an hour earlier, he’d idled in the parking lot, thinking of following the run in Nausica?’s stocking to its logical conclusion.
Without a thought that he’d just left his daughter alone with the same friend who only yesterday had driven her to tears.
But both stocking and skier seemed to belong to a different world entirely. Even Miles’s knee belonged to someone else, defied all orthopedic logic. The pain was gone; he forgot that it had ever bothered him as he sprinted up the trail behind the house.
Many times, Miles had been in these woods, alone, or with the dog, or with his children, and many times, he’d let Olive play there.
The hill went up; there was a single trail; it was impossible to lose it.
To get back to the road, one simply followed gravity.
But now, in the snow, the path was barely legible, and he knew that once one reached the rise above them, they were crossing into Claymore, and Conservancy lands, where the watersheds were more deceptive, the forest denser.
There was also the question of what, exactly, Olive was doing.
She wasn’t a fool. She had a temper, but she wasn’t stupid enough to go hunting for some bear den, let alone in the middle of a storm.
But rushing off in anger, and then getting lost—this seemed very possible, he thought, as he reached a branch in the trail.
Now there was not only the choice of where to go, but also when it would no longer be just a matter for him and Kate.
To get cellphone reception, he’d have to go back to the house.
Already, he could hear himself arguing with the imagined police dispatcher: Yes, I know it’s light out.
No, I know an hour isn’t a long time to be missing.
Yes, she knows her way around. But if we wait much longer, soon none of this will be the case.
Do you have children? How long would you wait?
But going back to the house also meant leaving the trail, and the possibility that Olive was near him. He recalled the night that he had lost her, briefly, skiing. He stopped, waiting. Breath steaming. Listening. And then, reluctantly, turned back.
Kate must have been thinking the same, because Miles reached the road just as the patrol car was arriving, an SUV, the snow nearly to its bumper.
Kate ran up to meet it; she looked to Miles, and Miles shook his head.
Two officers got out, and Miles’s heart dropped.
Both men were older, dressed in normal uniforms, nothing to suggest they’d be the ones to head into the woods themselves.
Miles listened as Kate spoke, grateful for what she did not say: My husband told her about a magic cave, and left her.
Left her alone with just another little kid.