Tell Anna She's Safe (33 page)

That was new.

Curtis was giving her a queer look. “Did you hear me?” he asked.

She started as if he had shouted. Met his eyes. And started again. They were filled with kindness and concern.

He leaned forward. “I said, are you
safe?”

The expression in his eyes was suddenly irritating. Condescending.

“Yes,” she snapped. “I'm safer with Tim than I ever would be with you.”

She said it to be contrary. She knew he didn't believe her. But in fact it was true. Tim had no power to hurt her. No power over her at all. Not anymore. Whereas Curtis … if she let him back in to her heart….

In that moment she was overcome by compassion for the man sitting across from her on the wooden platform high in the tree. There was no space. No time. Just compassion and love. For Curtis. For his honesty and integrity. For how hard he'd tried—in his own way—when they'd been together. For how frustrating he must have found it dealing with her needy, demanding ways. She did love him. Not for who he could be for her. Just for who he was. She listened to him talk. She watched the way his eyes sparkled and the way his voice warmed to his topic, and she smiled, unseen, in the deepening twilight.

It was the dusk masking his face that finally brought her around, panicking about the time. It was almost seven o'clock. It would take her the better part of an hour to get home. Shit.

Down below the tree-house, in the darkness, Curtis held her close. Something old and familiar stirred between them, and he abruptly let her go. “We should not sleep together,” he said.

“No.” Under the surface disappointment she felt a small surge of happiness. They were on the same wavelength. At last.

Curtis walked her to her car. He closed the door firmly after she got behind the wheel.

*

“I CALLED A FEW DAYS
later to see how she was doing,” said Curtis. “She would have been pretty late getting home, and I had a bad feeling about Tim.”

The sternum injury
.

“She didn't tell me Tim had physically hurt her, but he had.” His fingers, which had been pressing on a trigger point on my foot, pressed harder. Then he released my foot. And looked at me. “I didn't find out until the police told me. But I can imagine exactly how it happened. I think when she got home he confronted her about where she'd been, and knowing Lucy, she probably told him outright and he lost it.”

I closed my eyes against the image of Tim sending a powerful fist into her sternum. No wonder she had sounded so bad on the phone that day I had called her. She would have been in terrible pain. And then I remembered something from our next phone conversation. I looked at Curtis. “Lucy told me she might be in the Gatineaus the next weekend. That's why I invited her to my ice-breaking-up party. Was she going back to your place?”

Curtis shook his head. “We talked about her coming, but we never firmed anything up. I wasn't expecting her. But I've heard since then that she apparently
was
on her way to my place.”

“But she never arrived.”

Curtis looked up, and there was unbearable pain in his eyes. “She never arrived.”

The house was dark. I had forgotten to leave a light on in my rush to get to Curtis's. At least it was only a few steps from the car to my door. And there was nowhere for anyone to be watching me from; I was so close to the main road. But the thoughts wouldn't go away. Quinn spying on me. Tim hurting Lucy. Lucy lying in pain in bed. Calling the bank. Calling me. Calling how many other people, reaching out for help?

I stuck the key in the door and flicked on the hall light. I was spooked tonight, there was no question. I hadn't told Curtis I was going to the site since I couldn't tell him I was going with Quinn. That was definitely off the record. There was no one I could tell where I was going.

I gave myself a shake. There was no reason to worry. My unease was from hearing more about Tim's violence. Quinn had said Lucy had ended up in the hospital with the sternum injury. The hospital again. A place she dreaded. A place that had brought back memories of her mother.

*

THE EMERGENCY WAITING ROOM WAS
becoming a familiar place. In the middle of the night it was relatively quiet. And then a pregnant woman was ushered in on a stretcher. Lucy heard the words “emergency caesarian.” At the words, the woman, already in distress, became visibly distraught. Lucy tried to block out the woman's cries, her sudden yell as a contraction hit. The woman had become her mother, crying out at the child who would not come out on her own. She was relieved when the stretcher was wheeled away. Relieved and also sorry for the woman.

Would hospitals forever be a place of horror for her? And … had her mother felt the same way?

She was absorbed in this new thought—it felt important—and didn't hear her name called. Tim elbowed her in the arm. “That's us.” He got up to go with her.

But the nurse wouldn't let him into the examining room.

In the car on the way home, he demanded to know what the doctor had asked her. “What did you tell him?”

She let out a long jagged sigh that hurt her chest. “I didn't tell him anything.” She turned her head to the window and looked out into the street-lit night. “Just take me to the drugstore so we can get the prescription filled.”

Back home, Tim headed for the sitting room. She heard the
TV
come on. Sounds of gunfire and screeching tires.

She eased her aching body down the stairs. Crawled into bed.

The pain ebbed with the painkillers. Where were the painkillers for the emotional pain?

She began to cry. Not her usual tantrum tears. Not hiccoughing can't-catch-your-breath tears, but long, slow, despairing sobs. So deep, so drawn out, they were almost a relief. She had heard these sounds before. Had her mother's pain been similar? The cancer, in the end, would have been much more painful. What really had she known of her mother's pain? What had she tried to know?

Her father had been the one to call. Followed by Anna to stress that her father hadn't exaggerated the seriousness of their mother's condition. She was in hospital. It wasn't likely she would come out.

At the word “hospital,” she balked. There should now be an opportunity for poetic justice. Her mother was the one in hospital now, wanting her. She should be able to refuse to go.

But she couldn't. Of course she couldn't.

She was so focused on getting herself to Toronto—huge, noisy, unbreathable Toronto—and into the beast, the hospital itself, that she was unprepared for what she found there. There was a ghost lying in the bed. A ghost who was not her mother.

She choked back the tears. No amount of preparation would have readied her for this sallow, gaunt figure with the laboured breathing, barely taking up any space in the bed. Her mother's features were still there in the ghost face—the high cheekbones, even more prominent now, the naturally pursed lips. This was what her life had come to, at fifty-nine. The alcohol, her own dissatisfaction and unhappiness, had slowly eaten away at her insides.

She looked across the bed to Anna, whose eyes were also brimming. And then, without warning, she was filled with anger—anger she hadn't summoned. She wasn't sure what she'd come here to do or say—what was there to do or say?—but it wasn't to rage. She couldn't rage at a ghost. It would blow her mother to kingdom come. And it was meant for her father, anyway, who wasn't there this evening. Thank God.

But her hands, which should have taken her mother's, were clenched, and she couldn't unclench them. To unclench them would have been to unleash the demon.

She could feel Anna looking at her in hurt and bewilderment, wondering why she wasn't reaching out to their mother.

At that moment, her mother's eyes opened. For an instant—an instant only—they lit up. Was it because she'd thought she'd seen Anna? Her lips parted, as if to speak.

She couldn't bear to hear whatever the ghost mouth was going to say. Words that might haunt her forever: What are you doing here?

She bolted to the lounge.

Anna came after her. She didn't open her eyes, but sensed her sister sitting down beside her. She kept her concentration on her breathing, not on the presence beside her. But she couldn't block it out. It was a warm and gentle presence, completely devoid of reproach or disappointment. She scrunched her eyes tighter. How dare Anna be so forgiving when she was being so impossible?

She couldn't will her sister away by keeping her eyes closed. There was a soft sigh, and then a hand touched hers—a feather touch. At the touch, her eyes fluttered open, and she turned to face Anna. But the seat beside her was empty.

23.

W
EARING BLUE JEANS AND A
white
T
-shirt, Quinn arrived on the stroke
of nine. In the sunlight his eyes were bluer than I had seen them before. Cobalt blue.

It was a Saturday in mid-April masquerading as a warm day in June. I was, I realized, dressed too warmly.

In his car I talked too much, too fast, to make up for the blueness of his eyes and my paranoid thoughts of the night before.

We headed northwest on River Road, past the site where I'd found Lucy's car, a full year ago. In Wakefield we took the road linking the village with Highway 105. Not far up the 105, we turned again at the junction with the highway to Masham. Just before the village we turned right. We drove north for a few more kilometres and turned left onto a dirt road. Irwin. I memorized all the turns. So I could come back on my own, I told myself.

Quinn drove slowly down Irwin. A funereal pace. He was looking for a road on the left. A break in the trees. An even narrower dirt road. He turned the car down the road. We manoeuvred our way around potholes and rocks. We came to a roundabout, encircling an enormous white pine. It reminded me of Curtis's tree-house pine. I wished I had told him where I was going today. I could have trusted him. And I could trust Quinn. I put my paranoid thoughts out of my mind.

Quinn braked. “I'm trying to remember. I was only here once. We brought Bryn back up here a week after Tim led her to the body. To do a video statement. To retrace their route that day. I just saw the video again a few weeks ago. It's pretty powerful. We filmed from the back of a pick-up. You can see that the whole area is just bush and forest. They go down all these roads. They drive and drive. This was only the second time they'd gone searching, and they never get out of the car once. Bryn has no idea where she is. Then they come here, and—that's right….” He was talking more to himself than to me, remembering. “They went down this road.” He pointed to an even smaller track beyond the circle. He nosed the car down the track.

We drove a short distance, until we reached a fence. Quinn stopped the car, turned off the ignition, yanked up on the hand brake.

He turned to me. “This was the first place they got out to search that day. After driving around for two or three hours. And wouldn't you know, within twenty minutes they've found Lucy's remains.”

“It's pretty compelling evidence, isn't it?” I asked. “His leading her right here.”

“Damn right it is. Stupid son of a bitch.”

We got out of the car. Quinn pointed to a pile of wood in a small meadow in the distance. “He led Bryn that way first. Told her Lucy was likely under a pile of brush or wood. Now how would he know that? She said they didn't even search under the wood pile. You can see an incline just beyond it—leads up into some woods. They got that far, then he suddenly wants to turn around. She follows him back. They do a cursory search on the way back—they look under the wood pile. Then he brings her back this way, and they go through here, into the woods along the fence.” He turned and gestured the other way. Then he looked at me. “Shall we?”

I nodded.

He led the way through the dense bush. He held branches for me. He pointed out barbed wire half buried in the brush under my feet. “Careful.”

I concentrated on my footing. Not on my thoughts. Not on Tim leading Bryn in this same way, holding the branches for her, pointing out the barbed wire.

The dense brush gave way to a grove of pines. The forest floor was soft with pine needles. Sunlight barely filtered through the trees. I wasn't sure how Quinn knew where to go. We seemed to be going in circles.

“Sorry,” said Quinn, pausing to look around. “It all looks the same.”

Then I saw it: a red ribbon tied around a thick pine trunk. A memorial. I touched Quinn's arm and pointed.

“Right—there it is.” He looked around again. “Tim and Bryn were about here when she spotted something over there.” He pointed toward the pine tree. “A dark mound, she said, something that looked out of place. She pointed it out, and Tim said, ‘That's Lucy.'”

“He
said
that? How could he tell from this distance?”

“It's great, eh? That's what she asked him. He pointed out a running shoe—it was even farther away—said, ‘That's Lucy's running shoe.'”

I stared at him. “He saw that from here? No way. He's going to hang himself for sure, isn't he?”

“We're going to get the bastard.”

Again that hardness in his voice. I walked away from him, toward the tree.

The ribbon was police tape. It was wrapped several times around the thick trunk. X marks the spot.

At the base of the tree was a pile of brush and pine needles. Nearby was a darker patch of earth, where the pine needles had been cleared away. It was dark still, months after forensic experts had sifted painstakingly through the soil and branches in search of evidence.

I crouched down. I put my hand palm down on the dark earth.

“There wasn't much,” came Quinn's voice above me. “A skull, a few bones, some flesh hanging off them. Some clothing. What got Bryn was the clump of hair on the wood pile.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I was on my feet in an instant. I stared at him in horror. “Her hair?” I whispered.

Quinn was nodding. “Her hair.” Then he saw my face. “Oh God, I'm such an insensitive idiot. I thought you already knew all this.”

“No. I didn't.” I couldn't keep my voice from shaking. “It's okay. Can you—could you leave me here—for a few minutes?”

“Are you sure? You'll be alright?” His eyes looked normal again. Not cobalt blue. Just worried.

“Yes. Please.” Then I looked around. “Wait—I'm not sure how to find my way out.”

Quinn pointed to a gap in the trees. “Through there. You can see the beginnings of a trail. It's a well worn path. You can't go wrong. That will take you straight to the circle where that big white pine is. I brought you in the long way—the way Brennan brought Bryn in. After they spotted Lucy's remains, they decided to take pictures, and went back to the car for the camera. She said he led her out this way. It's a much more direct route. But how would he know that? Unless he'd been here before. Of course, bringing her
in
this way would have been too obvious. But Stupid fucked up, going out and returning by the more direct route. More damning evidence.”

He touched my shoulder and his voice lost its edge. “I'll bring the car to the circle and wait for you there. You're sure you'll be okay?”

I nodded and thanked him. And watched him go.

Then I sat down on the pine-carpeted forest floor, trying to keep the images of Lucy's remains at bay. A life had ended here. A will—a life—had been choked off. An exuberant life. It had come down to a few bits of flesh and bone and hair. I let the horror work its way through me. Gradually, it ebbed. And was replaced by … nothing. I wanted to feel grief, sadness for Lucy. Understanding. But there was nothing. As if this place had nothing to do with her.

I sat with a blank mind and an empty heart. I wanted a flash of understanding. A vision. Anything but this emptiness at the end of my too-long-postponed pilgrimage.

I sat until my legs went numb. Then I stood up. The numbness ebbed, both from my legs and from my brain. I turned slowly and then I could see it—the hair on the wood pile. But the hair wasn't dark. It was blonde. Strawberry blonde. Strawberry blonde hair cascading over a raised bed in a meadow. A raised bed that could have been a wood pile…. The dream from last summer slowly came back: Lucy floating on water, but my finding her on dry land.

But I hadn't found her at all. Anywhere.

Emotion finally crept in: it should have been grief. It was
apprehension,
and
fear
.

I turned again. In slow motion. To the place we had come in. To where we had stood. The colours of the woods had changed. They were the intense colours of a dream.

I am facing Tim. He is speaking. I am replying. But I can't hear the words. I can only feel the terror in both of us.

Hands reach for my throat. Only it's not my throat. I am not me.

My arms, arms that aren't mine, reach out. Not to defend. They pull him in. They hold him. My voice, a voice that isn't mine, speaks. Comforting words that hold no comfort.

The fear releases. But no relief replaces it.

I let him go. I step back. I look in his eyes. I am me, looking in his eyes.

And they are cobalt blue.

The colours of the pine grove returned to their muted sunlight-deprived tones. I stood rooted to the spot. Not daring to move, but turning my head in every direction. Had Quinn come back into the grove? Was he right now hiding behind a tree? Watching?
Why?

Reason answered:
Steve Quinn did not bring you here to kill you.

Saying the words—almost out loud—made me see how ridiculous they were.

I made myself sit down again, my back against Lucy's tree, knowing now that it would forever be Lucy's tree. I made my breathing slow down, and as it slowed my pulse slowed too. I closed my eyes and let rise up what was under the surface tension and confusion. It wasn't anything I was expecting. But there it was: A steely resolution.

Bright sunlight hit my eyes, and I paused at the edge of the woods to let them adjust. Quinn was leaning against the trunk of the car beside the huge white pine in the circle, facing the direction we had hiked in. Looking relaxed. A lit cigarette in his hand. I had never seen him smoke before. There was a lot about him I had never seen before.

At the sound of my boots crunching on the gravel, he turned his head, pushed himself away from the car and tossed the butt. He came toward me, and the relaxed stance shifted to attention. To concern.

“There you are. I was about to come looking for you. I was worried you'd got lost.”

I made myself meet the eyes from my vision. “I'm not lost.”

He looked at me for a long moment and opened his mouth to say something. Then he shook his head. “Come on. I'll take you home.”

In the driveway, Quinn turned off the ignition. “You're pretty quiet.”

I turned to face him. I had my story ready. “I think I just saw what happened to Lucy. You—the police—were right. I had another vision, or whatever you want to call it. Tim's hands reached out to choke me—only it wasn't me. It must have been—”

“Oh God,” said Quinn. “Bryn.”

“
Bryn?”
I stared at him.

“I wasn't going to tell you that part while we were in the woods.”

I waited for him to continue. My heart was pounding again.

Quinn exhaled. “Just after they spotted Lucy, Bryn said Brennan got this odd look on his face, like he suddenly was thinking he'd made a mistake bringing her there. She was suddenly afraid for her life. He actually started to reach for her neck and she made the spontaneous decision to pull him to her in a huge bear hug, pretending to be shocked and sorry for him. It probably saved her life. It snapped him out of it.”

I took in and let out a long, slow breath. Absorbing what he had just said. Absorbing what I had just seen. I had got it. I had got it all. All of it and more.

Quinn looked at me as if he had seen a ghost. “I should never have taken you there.”

“No, it's okay. I'm glad you did. I'm okay.”

“Are you sure? I think I should stay with you for awhile.” The dictatorial tone was gone. He seemed unsure of himself. Hesitant.

“No.” This was not a man I wanted with me. This was not a man I wanted in my life. I made him go home.

The water was completely open, the current steady. It sent tiny ice flows on their way downstream, unperturbed. The breeze was from the south.

I stood on the point, holding my face to the warm wind, taking it deep into my lungs.

Finally, I saw it—the violence hovering around Quinn. He had tried, all along, to hide the truth: saying things he thought I wanted to hear, playing the protector, trying to gain my trust. Needing to be in control.

My vision had given me a glimpse—a glimpse in the strange,
safe
way of my visions—of the lengths he was capable of to ensure that control. In his eyes I had seen his own fear of those capabilities. It was that fear that, day by day, kept them in check.

Finally, I understood all the contradictory feelings and responses in me. I had capabilities too. It was time to stop denying them.

I watched the tiny ice flows bobbing past the point. Before they reached the dam down at Chelsea, they would have melted into the water.

The river was ready for Belle's ashes. There was someone who would want to be part of that ritual. I headed back up to the house to make a phone call.