The almost widow, p.5
The Almost Widow, page 5
“I love you, you know,” he said. “I love you so very much.”
I held his bearded face with both hands. “I love you so much it hurts.”
He kissed me again, then got up to put on his official self—the pants, body armour and jacket of his uniform. When he turned around, he was now the officer.
“I imagine you’ll be out of cell range,” I said.
“I’ve never had much luck catching bars on the other side of the lake. You?”
“No.” Or even at home. Cell reception was sketchy here. When trying to phone Ben or Jackson, I walked the house waving my cell around, visualizing floating bubbles of reception that, with any luck, I might walk into. Standing out on the deck often seemed to work best.
“I’ll have my radio,” he said. “I’ll call if I’m going to be late.”
“You’ll keep an eye out for that grizzly, right?” The cinnamon bear that had stalked Ben earlier in the fall and had killed that woman.
“She’s in hibernation by now, in her den.” Ben bent to give me a last kiss. “I’ll try to get home before dark, before the snow hits. Give Noah a hug for me when he wakes.” He left the door half-open behind him. I could hear his footsteps through the house as he grabbed his gear from his office in the addition, then carried the bag through the kitchen patio door to the deck and the beach below. He had programmed a flight path into the drone the night before, a search grid of the general area around the Boulders where Jackson said he’d seen the felled old-growth cedar. Once Ben boated across the lake, he intended to launch the drone from the beach on the far shore, then hike into the forest of old-growth giants while the drone surveyed the area from overhead. He could keep an eye on what the drone saw through the screen on his controller.
I threw on jeans and a sweater and went into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee, then carried my mug out onto the deck as I watched Ben load his gear into his aluminum boat moored at the dock. He put on his yellow life jacket and started the engine. As he roared off, he lifted his hand to wave goodbye. A raven clucked from a nearby cedar, the sound like thick wooden dowels struck together, then took off over the water toward the far shore, flying over Ben as if guiding the way. The putter of the boat engine echoed over the lake. His boat entered the bank of fog, and he appeared to fade in colour and then disappear, leaving a V behind him in the still black water.
7
I stood at the patio door in our bedroom, tugging the silver necklace Ben had given me on my birthday, scanning the dark water. Ben had told me he’d be home for supper, before the storm hit. Now it was well after eight and the heavy snowfall had begun. At any other time, I would have stepped outside to watch the snowflakes drift down, magically, through the giant cedars, or lifted my face to the sky to feel them melt on my tongue. But tonight, the first snowfall of the season seemed dreary, foreboding. The clouds hung low over the lake and the heavy, wet snow, with its large, clumping flakes, fell like a shower of ammunition, puckering the black water as it hit.
Noah appeared at the bedroom door in jeans and a grey sweatshirt, barefoot. “Any sign of Dad?”
“Not yet.” I kept my eyes on the black stretch of lake between us and the far shore, hoping to see the lights on his boat. Shortly before my father died, I dreamed of him standing on a pebbled beach like ours. One of his eyes seemed dead, clouded, but was still seeing somehow, staring across a dark lake at the far shore, at his own death. It wasn’t a premonition. I knew he was dying. He was on life support at the time, following the accident. The dream was really about me. I was the one searching the far shore, coming to terms with the inevitability of my father’s death. I had woken from the dream feeling both terrified and relieved.
“He should be home by now,” Noah said.
I turned to my stepson. “I’m sure he’s on his way back now.” But the anxiety in my voice betrayed me. He came into the bedroom, something he rarely did, and stood beside me to stare out over the lake. Wanting reassurance, I thought. I offered him a smile. “He’s fine,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Noah’s look said, Don’t bullshit me. You’re worried too. “Have you phoned?” he asked.
I nodded. I’d called repeatedly over the last couple of hours. “He must still be out of cell range.”
“I’ll try.” Noah dialled and the call went straight to voice mail, as mine had.
“Why don’t you call Tucker?” I asked. “See if he wants to come over, watch a movie. Tell him I made apple crumble. He likes crumble, right?” I didn’t need to ask. Tucker quickly gulped down anything put in front of him, as if he were afraid someone would snatch it away before he was done.
Noah made a face. “You’re just trying to distract me.”
“Call him,” I said.
As soon as Noah left my bedroom, staring down at his phone, I slipped the second handset of Ben’s two-way radio out of my hoodie pocket and pressed the push-to-talk button, trying to keep my voice low so Noah wouldn’t hear my desperate attempts to reach his father, but the static of the radio crackled loudly. “Ben, can you hear me? Over.”
I released the button and listened, but he still wasn’t calling back. He carried his radio on his vest or, when he wasn’t wearing the body armour, on his belt. “Ben, you there? Please respond. Over.” We were well within range if Ben had searched the area around the Boulders as he’d said he would, and he had promised to call if he was going to be late. “Ben, please. Are you there? Over.”
At the sound of Noah’s feet padding down the hall, I tucked the handset back in my hoodie pocket. But of course, Noah had heard me.
“Did you reach him?” he asked, entering the bedroom again.
“Trees or rocks can interfere with the signal.” I gave Noah another thin smile. “He must have found something interesting in the Boulders.”
Noah grunted as he tried phoning his dad again.
“He’s been this late before,” I added.
“Yeah, I know.” He clicked out of the call as it once again went to voice mail. “This time feels . . .”
Different. I’d been carrying around that same heavy feeling—that something was wrong, very wrong—for most of the day.
“Is Tucker coming over?” I asked, trying to redirect the conversation, to keep Noah from fretting.
“He’s not picking up.”
“Well, keep trying. I felt bad that we had to send him home last night.”
“Why couldn’t he stay? Dad said we had plans, but then we didn’t do anything. Were you just trying to ditch Tucker?”
“No, no. He’s always welcome here.” I scratched my temple with one finger. “Listen, Noah, please don’t let Tucker know your dad went across the lake today.”
“Why not?”
“Just—please keep it to yourself, okay?”
“Dad thinks Owen has been cutting down the big trees, doesn’t he?”
“How did you—”
“Everyone’s talking about how Owen went after you in the diner yesterday.”
Of course they were. “It was nothing,” I said. “A misunderstanding.”
Noah lifted his eyebrows as if to say, Yeah, right. “Anyway, Tucker already knows Dad was checking out the tree poaching across the lake today.” Noah held up his phone to indicate he and Tucker had been texting. “He told me he overheard you and Dad talking outside the diner yesterday and pieced it together.”
Which meant Owen likely knew. “Dammit.” I turned back to the lake. Owen could have gone over to the far shore overnight and got rid of whatever evidence he might have left behind.
Noah pressed his phone to his ear.
“Trying Tucker again?”
“Dad.” He clicked out of the call. “He’s still not picking up.” His expression was beyond worried; now he was scared. “We should phone Jackson.”
Under normal circumstances, if a person was missing, their family or friends would phone 911 and the RCMP would initiate the search with a service request to the search and rescue manager, in this case Jackson, but we were well over an hour from the nearest police detachment, and Jackson was a friend, and the locals of Moston were in the habit of taking care of their own. If Ben really was missing, I knew Jackson would have the entire SAR crew muster at our place in no time.
But that was a significant undertaking and a waste of everyone’s energy if Ben was, in fact, simply late and I was only calling the team out here because of my own anxiety. Which I had done once in the past, when Ben was three hours late coming back from patrol. I had phoned Jackson, asking him to find Ben after he had been called to check out smoke high in the mountain range, a campfire someone left burning deep in the bush. I couldn’t reach him because he had been out of radio range, and busy handling the situation before it grew into a wildfire. Jackson and members of his SAR crew tracked him down as he hiked back to his truck, and Ben came home pissed about it. “What if some tourist had flipped his boat and needed rescue?” he asked me. “Or a hiker had fallen and gotten injured out there? Someone could have died because you sent Jackson after me and they weren’t here to respond. I can handle myself, Piper.” His face had been red as he chewed me out. I had, I realized, shamed him in front of Jackson.
“Just give Ben another hour or so,” I told Noah now.
“I had this feeling the day Mom died,” he said. He thumped his belly with his fist. But then, his mother had been dying for some time, of stomach cancer, before she finally passed. I wrapped an arm around him, and we stood there together until he headed for the door, dialling Ben’s number again. “I’m going to keep trying.”
Once he left the room, I pulled out the two-way radio and, over the next hour, repeatedly tried calling Ben myself as I sat on the bed, watching for his boat lights through the large patio windows. The dark water, the grey clouds hanging low over the mountain ridge across the lake—all of it was barely discernible now in the black, as the snow continued to fall heavily. Temperatures would have fallen quickly after sundown.
“Ben, you there? Over.” I released the push-to-talk button as I listened, then tried again. And again. “Ben, you there? Over.”
And then, suddenly, Ben was there. Dressed in his uniform, reflected in the patio window as if he were in the room with me.
I stood. “Ben?”
But as soon as I spoke his name, his image in the window was gone. Just gone. I heard his voice whisper my name, Piper, but right into my ear, as if he were standing directly behind me. I swung around, but there was no one there. “Ben?” I cried. Then, louder, “Ben!”
Noah thundered out of his room and into mine. “Is Dad here? Did you see him?”
I shook my head a little, uncertain, not understanding what had just happened. “I thought I saw . . .”
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
I had just seen Ben’s ghost.
8
I slid open the patio door and cupped my hands to my face to call out into the snowy night. “Ben? Ben!” But my voice was dampened by the heavily falling snow. When Ben first brought me to the house, he called my name to demonstrate the echo that reverberated across the lake like a skipping stone, bouncing back from the stony cliff on the far shore. On a still, quiet day, when the lake reflected the trees on the steep slopes, I could hear him, he said, if I were to stand on that beach on the other side of the lake. I didn’t believe him, until one day I was hiking alone at the Boulders, finding inspiration for a piece for the town’s website, and heard Ben’s voice calling my name all the way across the lake from our deck. Piper. Piper. Piper. I love you. I love you. I love you. Marry me? Marry me? Marry me? I shouted back, Yes! And my voice, my answer, bounced back to him from the far shore.
Noah cupped his hands to call alongside me now. “Dad!” But the sound was muted by the snow and low cloud that hid the far shore from us.
I tried calling Ben on the radio again. “Ben, are you there? Over?” We waited, listened, as the snowflakes accumulated in our hair and slid down our necks. “Ben. Ben, do you hear me? Over.” When there was still no reply, I went back into the house, hastily slipped on my jacket and boots, and rushed out to jog down the stairs of the deck.
“What are you doing?” Noah called after me.
“I’m going to find him.” I pulled my kayak out from under the deck and dragged it down the shore over the snow.
“In a kayak? In this snow? In the dark? That’s dangerous.” When I slid the kayak into the water, he thundered down the stairs to stop me. “Piper? Piper!”
I turned to him.
“If something has happened to Dad, you can’t help him by yourself.” He paused as his face twisted in panic. “And what if something happens to you out there?”
He feared he might lose me too, as he had his mother. I thought, then, of what Ben had said that morning before he left. If something happened to me out there, you would take care of Noah, right?
I pulled the kayak back onshore. “I’m sorry, Noah,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Trying to head out on the lake alone in this snowstorm to search for Ben was dangerous. Panic had taken hold of me, made me stupid. I was too easily triggered. I thought of what Ben always said, as he hugged me—Breathe deep to calm yourself—and I did just that. Then I pulled out my phone and held it up in the snowy air until I found a signal, and clicked on Jackson’s number. He picked up right away.
“Jackson—” My voice caught, and I covered my mouth.
“Piper? What’s going on?”
I gulped back the tears. “Jackson, we need your help.”
“Anything.”
I took Noah’s hand and gripped tightly. His slim fingers were cold in mine. “Jackson, I think something has happened to Ben.”
* * *
Noah and I stood on the dock as Jackson backed the trailer holding the SAR Zodiac, a rigid-hull inflatable, down the ramp and into the water. It was a good-sized rescue boat, with seats for four and enough room on the solid deck for an injured person on a litter.
As we waited the few minutes for Jackson to arrive, we had continued to call Ben over and over by radio and cell. He was either out of range or . . . I didn’t want to think about it. The image of Ben’s doppelgänger that I had seen in the patio window intruded on my thoughts. His ghostly whisper in my ear. Piper. But even though I had seen his ghost, I couldn’t believe he was dead. I wouldn’t.
I had made a Thermos of hot chocolate, not for us but for Ben when we found him. No matter what, he would be cold in this heavy, wet snowfall. I also had a blanket ready in a plastic bag, though I was sure Jackson had a full emergency kit packed.
Once the boat was floating, Jackson pulled the trailer back up from the water, parked and got out to coil the dock line as he drew the boat toward us with the rope. Like us, he was geared up in his winter parka and insulated pants. He was in his early fifties, with longish salt-and-pepper hair, and sported a walrus moustache that made him look somewhat like Sam Elliott; the kind of man who would have seemed at home in a cowboy hat and boots. But he would have found that insulting, to be thought of as a cowboy. He was something of an artist, a photographer, carrying an expensive digital camera with him when he took clients on ecotours, kayaking, bouldering or skiing. I’d used many of his images of the region alongside my stories. Like me, he had come to the interior, to Moston, from Vancouver, though many years earlier, attracted by the cheap housing, the stunning landscape, the outdoor lifestyle and the chance of forging a new life here, after losing his wife to breast cancer. He had never remarried. It was a loss that continued to haunt him, one that had cemented his friendship with my husband. Jackson and Ben had known each other for years but had become close after Ben lost Shannon to cancer, as the two of them shared this common grief. Now I got the sense Jackson and Ben would do nearly anything for each other. There were times when I had felt a little jealous of their bromance.
Jackson handed us each a life jacket. “We’re not waiting for the rest of the search and rescue team?” I asked him as I put mine on.
“They’re on standby,” he said, clicking his in place. “I’ll call them if we need them.”
He held the boat steady to the dock as Noah and I got in, carrying our supplies. I sat on the seat behind Noah. “Am I overreacting?” I asked Jackson. As I had the one time before when I’d called Jackson and his crew out to find Ben in the bush.
Jackson tossed the coiled dock line to the bow and got in. “No, you were right to call. Too many people have died because their loved ones hesitated to phone for help. But Ben is only a couple of hours late, right?”
“Going on four hours now,” Noah said, peering down at his phone.
Jackson started the boat engine. “He’s been this late before while out on patrol.”
But not in winter, or in a storm. “He isn’t answering his radio,” I said.
“The snow is likely interfering with the signal.” Jackson offered me a smile. “And things come up. It takes longer to get back home than we think, especially in weather like this.”
“I know, I know.” I had told Noah as much. I hoped to god I was overreacting. Ben was okay, I told myself. He had found something interesting out there or had to drag a piece of equipment out of the bush. Proof of Owen’s tree poaching. At worst, maybe he’d fallen, dropping his radio, and sprained an ankle. He knew we’d come looking for him. My vision of Ben standing at the patio window was only my own anxious mind playing tricks on me. I was forever imagining the worst, and then believing it to be true. But still. “He said he was only going to check out that tree. He hadn’t planned to go past the Boulders. He shouldn’t have taken this long.”
Jackson manoeuvred the boat away from the dock, raising his voice over the rumble of the engine. “Ben is well trained, he knows this forest and what to do if he gets into a situation. If he’s hurt, he’ll build a shelter and stay warm until we find him. But I’m sure we’ll meet him on the lake.”
“And if we don’t?” Noah asked.
