Twenty-Four October 30, 2023
MONDAY MORNING, Bailey thunders down the stairwell and, without knocking, charges through the door, which doesn’t have a lock, into Elsie’s basement suite. “Where the hell were you last night?” she asks. “I was worried.”
Elsie lifts her head from the pillow to squint at her. “What?” Her sister is already dressed for work.
“You didn’t return my calls or texts.”
Because she was on a date. “I was in Victoria.”
She feels her sister’s weight on the bed. “You were with Zander?”
Elsie doesn’t answer. She wipes the sleep-slobber from her mouth.
“Are you together now?”
Elsie feels sick at her own betrayal of him in the future, leaving him alone to bleed out on the floor.
And then this morning, in her present, she left him again, effectively ending things because he would become handicapped in the future.
What kind of monster was she? She doesn’t deserve him.
She pulls the comforter over her head. “Go away.”
Travis calls down from the kitchen. “Babe, you know where my red plaid shirt is?”
“It’s in the dryer,” Bailey calls back. “I threw it in the load last night.”
“Can you bring it up?”
“Get it yourself.”
Bailey stands and slaps Elsie’s leg. “Get a move on,” she says. “You’ll be late for work.”
Work. Elsie groans in protest, but Bailey yanks her blanket back, exposing Elsie to the chill of the basement.
Travis cranes his neck into the suite holding his lumberjack shirt, but not the rest of the dryer load. “Is she okay?” he asks Bailey.
Elsie sits up. “Can I please have a little privacy?”
“You’ve got to be out of here in ten minutes,” Bailey says. “Want me to pack you a lunch?”
“No. I’m good.”
“At this rate, you won’t have time for breakfast.”
Elsie raises her voice. “I said I’m good.”
Bailey holds up both hands. “Fine. Starve.”
“Want a lift?” Travis asks Elsie. “It’s pouring out there.”
“I’ll take my car.” She sits up in bed. “Can you both please just go?”
Travis disappears. She hears his heavy footsteps up the stairs. But Bailey leaves the basement door open as she collects her laundry from the dryer. Elsie gets up to slam the door shut.
And then she sees the rat waddling across the floor of the kitchenette. “Bailey—” she starts, then stops herself. She tiptoes to the broom and, sweeping like a champion curler, chases the vermin back into whatever hellhole it emerged from.
Elsie drops the broom and turns in a slow circle, eyeing the single mattress she sleeps on, which is practically in the kitchenette; the tiny bathroom with its ancient, mildewy, yellow sink and tub; the mold in the corner near the side exit.
This place sucks. Why hasn’t she seen that before?
In the closet-door mirror, she sees the current Elsie, one of the many that are out there, her past and future selves.
When she finished her degree, this is not who she thought she’d be at twenty-eight. This can’t be her life. But it is.
She throws on her usual black work clothes and, dressed, leaves the basement suite and backs her car out of the laneway, nearly hitting Travis’s truck on the way.
But then, not wanting to face work, she orders breakfast at a drive-thru and eats it slowly in her car in the parking lot.
She tosses the wrapper into the back seat and sits holding the wheel, watching the heavy rain stream down the window.
When her phone buzzes, a text from Travis wondering where she is, she circles Ladysmith, summoning the will to go to work.
Then, finally, she scales the nearly vertical climb up Symonds Street.
Staring almost straight up at the sky, she feels like she’s falling backwards.
When she finally gets to work, the fleet of company trucks is gone, so the field crews have already left some time ago.
Travis has opened the front door and their receptionist, Marjorie, is at her desk.
She’s decorated the front office for Halloween with cut-out paper pumpkins and tissue ghosts. “Hello, Elsie,” she says.
Uncertain what her role is now that her dad’s in the hospital, Elsie keeps her head down. “Good morning.”
“So sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thanks.”
“But the surgery was successful, I hear.”
“Yeah.” Elsie’s gaze travels to the ghosts as she can’t think of anything else to say.
“Your sister’s in your dad’s office.”
“Bailey’s here?” Did she come with news about their dad? Elsie rushes to the office and there’s her sister at her father’s desk, peering at his laptop, her hair yanked back into a ballerina’s bun. Travis leans over the desk next to her.
“Did something happen to Dad?” Elsie asks.
Bailey looks up. “What? No. He’s fine.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I took my vacation time early to make sure things run smoothly while Dad’s recovering. One less thing for him to worry about.”
“But I’m here.”
Bailey turns back to her screen. “It took you nearly an hour to get from home to the office.” She doesn’t even sound angry, like she couldn’t be bothered, which stings more than her words.
“I stopped for breakfast.”
“Dad’s given me instructions. Travis and I can take it from here.
” Her expression is blank, the mask she wears at the insurance office.
“Why don’t you get caught up on last week’s missed work.
Kyle tells me you still need to pull together that pine cone study.
Finish it up and we’ll see how you can help out here. ”
How she can help out. So, she’s been sidelined, just as she is when her dad’s here. Over her sister’s head, the clock on the wall, a leftover from the days when this building was an elementary school, has finally stopped working.
Elsie’s back at her cubicle before she realizes she hasn’t hung her coat in the staff room.
She slips it over her cubicle instead, sinks into her chair, stares at the computer’s blank screen.
She doesn’t bother to say hello to Hannah, who is engrossed in her work. She can’t face another disappointment.
“Morning, Elsie,” Kyle says.
“Morning.”
“We missed you last week.” He lowers his voice. “Is your dad coming back?”
“He’s talking retirement.”
“Is your sister taking over his office, then? Or is Travis?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you manage the mapping department?”
Elsie breathes out her annoyance. “Honestly, I haven’t thought about it.”
Kyle eyes her father’s office door. “I know Brian juggled everything, but it was too much. We could use a department head.”
He’s right, they could.
“Big changes around here, eh?” he says, settling back in his chair as a blond guy with acne, wearing jeans and a jack shirt, strides in and tosses a thumb drive onto Hannah’s desk.
Jason, one of the field guys. “You’ve got the wrong GPS track on this map,” he tells Hannah.
“There’s a creek on here that isn’t really there.
It’s just a draw. Even after a torrential downpour it wouldn’t be a creek. ”
It’s a complaint Elsie’s heard over and over from the field crew, along with Hannah’s response: “If that’s the case, then you sent me the wrong data.”
After Jason leaves, Hannah shoots a cross-eyed look at Kyle.
“Well, at least some things will never change around here,” Kyle says.
Elsie bites her stylus. He’s right. Elsie will be in this mapping room, working on the same kinds of projects for forestry clients, making her ugly, utilitarian maps, listening to the same complaints from the mappers and field crew, forever.
Her dad may retire, and Travis may take over management, but nothing is going to change around here for Elsie.
That used to be what she loved about this place, about her life. Now? Not so much.
Elsie carries her phone to the empty staff room, to make her call in private.
There are several texts from Zander, wanting to meet, to talk.
But she doesn’t message back. How can she face him?
How can she make sense of any of this? Instead, she brings up her call history, clicks and waits for the call to go through.
“Hello?”
“Crystal?”
“Yes.”
“This is Elsie Campbell. We talked about me renting the workshop.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
Elsie pauses a moment. Is she walking into that future she saw in the fifth house, one with Marcus? Is she making a choice here?
No. That future is gone. And she doesn’t believe in destiny, in fate. She’s creating her own future, finally stepping out on her own. “If it’s still available,” she says, “I’ll take it.”