The Shelter Cycle (2 page)

“Are you a neighbor?” said a woman with a microphone.

He walked away without saying anything, without looking back, then turned at his driveway, went up the steps and through the side door. Kicking off his hiking boots, he took a beer from the refrigerator, leaned back against the counter, closed his eyes. He should have taken sunglasses—another day out in the brightness, squinting at everything, a headache coming on.

He opened his eyes slowly, a fraction at a time. The framed photograph of Francine's parents faced him. From long ago, back in Montana: her father wore a straw cowboy hat, a dark mustache hiding his mouth, a wrench in his hand that showed on the other side of Francine's mother, his arm around her back. She was smiling, her dark hair blown sideways in the wind, wearing a purple dress that the wind pulled at, too. They stood in front of a yellow bulldozer. Francine had pointed out to him that through the cockpit you could see the top of her head, just a girl's; her older sister Maya's arm was visible on the other side. Wells had never had the chance to meet Francine's parents. She sometimes said they would have liked him, but she never spoke much about them—she had been young, not even a teenager, when they died.

The phone rang; it took a moment for him to find it beneath the newspaper on the table.

“Is Francine there?” a man said.

“Not right now.”

“I'm calling from the hospital—I'm the scheduler. We haven't heard from her.”

“She's just been so involved with the search,” Wells said.

“Pardon me?”

“For the missing girl,” he said. “She's our neighbor. I'll have Francine call.”

Out the window, Kilo still sniffed around the edges of the yard, along the fence line. Two fences over, the round black trampoline sat, surrounded by yellow tape, the scene of a crime. Wells washed his hands, splashed cold water on his face.

 

•

 

He was sitting at the kitchen table, halfway through his second beer, when Francine returned. She wore a blue hat with a floppy brim, a tan parka, and Kilo came in the door behind her, his black tail slapping the cabinets. He licked Wells's hand, collapsed under the table, then got up and rushed off again to check something in the living room.

“You all right?” Wells said.

“I believe so.” Francine's dark blond hair fell loose as she took off the hat; the light caught the pale freckles across her nose. “It feels good to be doing something, I guess.”

“Someone from the hospital called,” he said. “They wanted to know if you're coming back to work tomorrow.”

Francine faced away from him, standing at the sink. She turned the faucet on and off, on again, letting it run for a moment. From the back she hardly looked pregnant at all—she said this was due to her height, the length of her torso. He'd always liked her broad shoulders, how strong she looked just standing in the kitchen or on the sidewalk with her neck and spine straight, those shoulders, her excellent posture.

“You've been out there all day,” he said. “You shouldn't be on your feet like that.”

“It's just,” she said. “It's just that I keep thinking of myself when I was her age, how I felt, what I'd have done. And then I start thinking about our baby, how they can just disappear like this, no matter what you do.”

“Francine.”

“Look at her,” she said.

“Who?”

“I heard she was out searching today.”

He realized that Francine was looking through the window; over her shoulder, he could see the upstairs window of the girl's house. In that room, two houses away, the girl's little sister was jumping on a bed, up and down, her black hair loose and her hands reaching toward the ceiling.

“Do you know her name?” he said.

“Which one?”

“The little sister.”

“Della?” she said. “I think that's right.”

They stayed like that, watching the girl jump; they didn't say a thing until she tired herself out and climbed down. She walked away, disappearing from their view.

O
N THE RADIO
, an expert was explaining the statistics of child abduction. How many of the lost children were found, how many were taken by someone they knew, how few were still alive after four days. Wells stacked the dinner dishes and carried them to the sink. Out the window he could see the vans being packed up—men coiling cables and putting cameras into cases, headlights switching on, engines starting up.

“I guess they won't be out there much longer,” he said. “Now that it's over.”

“It's not over,” Francine said. She sat drinking tea, her papers from work spread out in front of her. Kilo lay under the table, at her feet.

“I meant the search being called off,” Wells said. “That's all. That the news people won't be out on the street.”

“Unless it really is over,” she said. “If it's over for the girl, like the radio says it probably is, after four days.”

Wells turned on the water in the sink, turned it off before it got hot. “I was thinking,” he said, “it might be nice to get away from this for a little while. Just a weekend up in the Sawtooths or something.”

“I don't know.”

“I mean, if you feel up to it.”

“It's the time,” she said. “Work. If I take time now, I won't have it later—”

There was a knock at the front door. Two raps, a pause, then three more. Kilo leapt up, shuffled through the doorway; he didn't bark but stood, tail wagging, in the middle of the living room.

“Doorbell's still broken?” Francine said.

Wells stepped out of the kitchen, around Kilo. He opened the front door just wide enough to see out. A man stood on the porch—short and slight, wearing a light jacket and a golf cap that he took off as the door opened. His pale, reddish hair was thin on top, and messy, his unblinking blue eyes set close together. He held a parcel wrapped in brown paper under one arm.

“Good evening,” he said. “Hello.”

“I'm sorry. We don't—”

“I'm a friend.” The man put his hand on the door, lightly, as if to keep it from being closed. “A friend of Francine?” He stepped past Wells, gently forcing his way inside. “Hello, I'm dreaming.”

Francine stood in the doorway to the kitchen. It seemed she could come no closer; she looked at the man as he gazed back in silence. He smiled, let his expression settle to neutral, then smiled again. There was a gap, where he was missing a tooth. The whiskers on his throat grew much more thickly than those on his face.

“Francine?” Wells said.

“We're friends,” the man said.

“We knew each other a long time ago,” Francine said. “When we were children. This is Colville. Colville Young. And this is my husband, Wells.”

Colville didn't seem to see the hand Wells held out. Instead, he set his parcel on the floor, reached down to scratch Kilo's back.

“Some kind of Labrador?”

“Some kind,” Francine said. “Mixed with something smaller.”

Wells wondered if he should close the door, how long the man planned to stay. The living room felt crowded. From the kitchen, a commercial for Caldwell Subaru and Mazda blared; he was about to go turn the radio off just as Colville spoke again.

“You're taller than I am, Francine.”

“I was always taller,” she said.

“You're expecting a child.”

“Yes,” she said. “Soon. I guess you can see that.”

“Here.” He picked up the parcel, stepped closer, handed it to her, then stepped back again. “I brought this for you. Books, is all. They might be helpful.” Watching her, he took off his hat with a twisting motion, jammed it in his jacket pocket. “Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes, Francine, I think of that day when you fell out of the tree. You remember that?”

“When was this?” Wells said.

“You fell from the top.” Colville looked to the ceiling, slowly brought his gaze to the floor. “Forty, fifty feet, and you weren't hurt at all. You were being looked after, that day—”

“I remember,” Francine said. “I was lucky.”

“I've been thinking of you.” Colville glanced through the doorway, into the kitchen. “I forgot it was dinnertime. I just wanted to come when you might be home—I know I could've called, but phones, phones aren't the same. It's just that I've been thinking of you, Francine. But now it's dinnertime.”

“We've eaten,” she said. “Here, would you like to sit down? Something to drink?”

“Orange juice,” he said. “Or water would be fine.”

Wells watched Francine go into the kitchen, still carrying the wrapped parcel, Kilo following. “So,” he said, “what brings you to Boise?”

“I was up in Spokane, so it wasn't really too far.” Colville took off his jacket, set it on the back of the chair. Sitting down, he faced Wells without really looking at him. He wore a purple T-shirt and beige dress pants, pointed black boots that zipped up the inside. The instep of the left one was patched with duct tape.

The sound of the radio in the kitchen was suddenly gone, switched off.

“I noticed the trucks outside,” he said. “In front of your house.”

“A girl disappeared,” Wells said. “She lived down the street. She was sleeping in her back yard.”

“Did you see all the blue ribbons in the trees?” Francine said, returning from the kitchen. She handed Colville a glass of orange juice, set her tea on the coffee table. “Blue was her favorite color. We've been searching.”

Turning in his chair, Colville reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a folded piece of newspaper. When he'd unfolded it, he held it out to them. It was a picture of the lost girl's face, an article about her disappearance.

“I'm searching, too,” he said. “I have a feeling that I'm going to find her, that I'm the one.” His voice was soft; his statements sounded more like questions. His head and upper body seemed calm, relaxed, but his feet kept twitching. He crossed his legs, uncrossed them, crossed them the other way.

“No luck yet, I guess,” Wells said, but Colville didn't seem to hear him. He was staring at Francine, speaking to her.

“Has it been fifteen years?” he said. “Almost twenty, since we've been together? I've been thinking of that, how strange it is. It never seemed possible we'd be apart so long.”

“You look older,” she said. “That's good, I think. It makes sense, I mean. Are you growing a beard?”

“Or gotten lazy.” Colville rubbed his cheeks. “Comes in better on this one side than the other.”

“Fifteen years,” Wells said; he felt as if he were interrupting. “That's a long time.”

“And how long have the two of you been married?”

“Just over a year.”

“I imagine Francine's probably mentioned me, then.” Colville smiled, his tongue pressing against the gap in his teeth. “People in the Activity joked about how we were going to get married, the way we were always together.”

“Were you going out?” Wells said.

“Pardon me?”

“Were you boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“We were too young,” Francine said. “It was much different than that.”

“People used to think we were brother and sister,” Colville said. “On account of our hair and everything, how we lived together.”

“Our families shared a trailer,” Francine said, “for a little while.”

“Until the Messenger called my family down to Corwin Springs.” Colville now turned toward Wells. “My father was an electrician, so they needed him to work on the big shelter there. And then the Messenger wanted my mom near the Heart, while she was pregnant with my brother, closer to the energy, there.”

“The Heart?” Wells said.

“It was a place,” Francine said.

“It is a place,” Colville said.

“Are you hungry?” she said. “Did I ask you that?”

“No,” Colville said. “Yes, I mean. I've eaten, but you didn't ask me. Thank you for asking.”

Francine began talking about college in Utah, how she'd met Wells there—she didn't mention that she'd graduated and he had not—and how they'd come here to Boise a year ago. She told about her job as a physician's assistant, how Wells worked at Home Depot. All the while, Colville stared at Francine with his eyes unfocused, gently shaking his head as if amazed to be in the same room with her. He looked away only when Kilo appeared from the hallway, claws tapping the wood floor, tail slapping the air. The dog turned two circles, leaned against Colville's legs, and looked up, whining to have his ears scratched.

“Likes you,” Wells said. “That's unusual, with strangers.”

“I got this real thing with animals lately. Almost like my brother, the way he did.”

“Moses?” Francine said.

“All the dogs and cats used to gather outside our trailer when he was sleeping,” Colville said. “And then he'd go outside and he'd be this little boy with all these pets behind him, following everywhere. Even birds would be flying tree to tree, trying to keep up. Squirrels, too.”

“Who's this?” Wells said.

“Colville's little brother,” Francine said. “Their mom was pregnant when my folks passed away, when Maya and I went to live with our grandparents.”

“I forget sometimes that you never met him,” Colville said.

“Where is he now?”

“You haven't heard, then.” Colville scratched Kilo's head, looking at the dog as he spoke. “There's no way you would've heard, I guess. He was over in Iraq, with the Marines, then back to Afghanistan, just this past spring. It was a roadside bomb, they said.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Animals sure liked him,” Colville said. “Everyone remembers that.”

In the silence, Wells wondered if he should stand up, turn on another lamp. The room was dim, which made it difficult to read expressions; sitting next to Francine, he could only see the side of her face. He could not catch her eye, guess what she was thinking. He shifted a little, but she was looking down at her feet, her mouth set in a smile he couldn't understand.