Fly by Night (29 page)

Bryce shifted into lower gear and powered through. “Gets worse we might have to get out and dig.”

She tried to phone TJ again but there was no service.

As the road curved, Amelia held up her phone and saw two bars. She spoke in double time while they held out. “Hi, TJ, we're getting closer to Bayfield, was hoping to hear from you. Gosh, it's beautiful up here; I had no idea how beautiful. Sorry to keep calling, was hoping to connect. Do you guys have moose, bears—” She continued talking as if to him.

“Or polar bears,” Bryce called into the phone. “Wish we'd brought a dogsled, looks like we might need one.”

She laughed.

“On our way up to the property, was hoping to meet you up there. Jeeze, I feel like a stalker calling so many times, but if you're in town and can make it there, though it looks like a storm is coming, would love to see you. Even if you can't, give me a call and maybe we can make it another time. My, it's breathtaking up here! Roads are sort of rough, so I understand if you don't want to come out, but maybe we could come see you at your place.”

They crawled through each tiny coastal town without witnessing a soul, the dim interior glow of house lights the only evidence it wasn't a ghost town. An eerie stillness marked each town. The uneasiness was thrilling. As the intermittent scent of birch fires filled the car, she imagined her father. So often her father would remark how the aroma of a wood fire was so comforting, though they'd never had a fireplace.

Amelia touched the window with the back of her hand to gauge the outside chill.

Who was this woman her father had married? Why hide such an important part of what proved to be a short life? Had he lived longer would he have come clean? Or else lived to be a hundred without saying a word until that e-mail from TJ?

She glanced into the snowy woods through her father's eyes, searching them: an ocean-loving city boy trying to become a woodsman in the far north. Maybe that's what the Navy and Cold War antics had done to him, made him want to become someone else. Perhaps such identity fraud had caught up with him once he'd realized that swapping one life for another doesn't work.

Amelia remembered him stepping out on Thanksgiving, Christmas, thinking it didn't make sense. He'd claim there was a mechanical breakdown in the presses that required his attention, only he'd leave home and return sooner than it would have taken to drive to the plant, much less make repairs. At eight years old she'd noticed. If Penelope had, she didn't say.

“Where's Daddy going?” she'd ask as her mother wrestled to baste a turkey on Thanksgiving.

“I don't know, Amelia,” she'd snap back. “But stop being a pain in the ass and go set the table.”

“I already did!”

“Then go find something else to do or I'll find something for you.”

Remembering back, there was a melancholy and restlessness about him on holidays.

“I'll be back, Pen,” he'd say to his wife on Christmas Eve. “They called me to do a press-check, on the way home I'll call the Boston crowd,” which was his Boston family that he'd call from pay phones, claiming it was cheaper.

“Can I come?” Amelia asked.

He'd looked at her in an odd way. Not angry, not even annoyed by the question. She'd sense him mulling it over.

“Not this time,” he'd say. “A broken press might take a while to fix,” he'd say.

“I'll bring my book,” she'd said. “I'll be so quiet you won't even know I'm there and this way I can say ‘Hi' to Aunt Athena.”

Then he'd bend down, engulf her in his arms, and squeeze like he'd never see her again or else was counting on her being the anchor that would allow him to drift only so far in the current.

“Dad.” She'd laugh. “I can't breathe.” She'd fake being crushed. He'd let go, laughing. “Please let me come?” she'd ask, always feeling unsettled when he'd go off alone.

“I'll be good,” she'd say, clasping her hands together in that begging way kids do as she'd feel him teetering on the verge of saying yes though he never did.

“You're always good, Amelia, always,” he'd say and kiss the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. “There's nothing bad about you, nothing.” He'd then smooth her hair with his hand as he set her down. “Tell your mom I'll be back before dinner.” And he always was.

It was sadder now as she thought back. Divided and bi-located for most of his adult life, Ted Sr. had inhabited two worlds that bore no connection. Somewhere, he'd become fragmented and maybe even lost. But as a girl, how could she have known?

*   *   *

They passed a stand of old-growth pines that were probably much smaller when her father had lived here in the late 1950s. Just last week was her father's birthday. He would have turned eighty-six. How could he have a son and not tell her? Yet she'd done the same to Chris Ryan. Never told him how thirty-four years ago she'd had a son. Her stomach sank, with indictment, stunned as it hit her.

“Hey Bryce?”

“Hey yeah?” he answered as the GPS flag indicated they were approaching Bayfield.

“Haven't I done the same thing as my father? I mean Alex not knowing his father?”

He glanced at her.

“No.”

“How not so?”

“Because Ryan was a dick who used you. Sounds like your dad loved this woman, I'm guessing, but it all got mixed up. We don't know.”

“Yeah, but I never told Ryan, I never gave him the option of knowing Alex.” Here she'd been feeling angry at her father but how easily she'd done it too.

“Hey—it was your best judgment at the time. He might have messed with Alex's head.”

She'd always wondered since the day she'd parked by Chris Ryan's house, stumbling on the little domestic scene. Fear had made her stay away, fear that he might try and take Alex. Here he was a professor, with a house, a wife, a family and she had the Fish Market.

“And remember, you did tell Alex when he was twelve,” Bryce reminded her. “Told him you'd look up the fucker if he'd wanted to meet him.”

She laughed at how he said it. It was true. She'd said all of that and meant it though Alex had so far never taken her up on it or at least admitted that he had. Yet the sting of similarity ate at her the closer they came to Bayfield.

And while the dead can't answer questions, often the living share even less.

“Ah ha.” Bryce pointed to her phone on the dashboard. “Now we're talking.” There was a full signal.

Amelia phoned again. “Hi TJ, your stalker calling again.” She looked at Bryce and smirked. “I'm almost to the property and wanted to know if I should wait for you there.”

The GPS flag indicated they'd arrived in Bayfield. As they descended a steep ridge the harbor opened up, revealing a city embedded into the surrounding hills. The entire town looked bleached white with snow against the backdrop of gunmetal clouds.

“Looks like Camden, Maine.”

Bryce rubbed his stomach and nodded. “It is a little déjà vu–ish.”

The docks and the lakefront were winterized in that nautical way mariners secure a waterfront.

“There's Madeline Island.” Her finger pointed from the GPS to the land mass across the bay. The only movement was a large boat she presumed to be a ferry steaming toward it. The ferry's hull crashed through what looked like icy chunks of rapidly freezing water, leaving an open trail in its wake.

They passed through a downtown area lined with Victorian-era homes. The GPS directed a right turn up a steep hill. The arrival “flag” was pinned at the top.

“Shit, it figures.” Bryce mumbled a laugh.

As they turned, the Jeep's wheels began to spin.

“Come on, baby.” She pumped her body forward as if to help the uphill climb.

As they reached the summit, both sat back and took a breath.

“This place has got some serious weather.” Bryce braked at the first red metal fire sign that had matching numbers.

“That's it.”

Bryce tried to roll down the window but it was frozen. He banged on it until it loosened and opened. “Honey, we're home,” he called.

“Oh please.”

In the driveway stood a two-foot snow wall created by the snowplow. A metal mailbox twisted like a corkscrew leaned over.

“Park on the street?” she suggested.

“Road's too narrow.”

They looked at each other and shrugged.

“Let's take it like we own it, Am,” Bryce said.

He downshifted, revved the engine, and traversed the frozen barrier.

They pulled partway in and stopped.

“Think I'll leave it ri-i-ght here.” He turned off the engine. “Close enough to rock it out.”

She felt Bryce studying her profile as she watched the gathering clouds.

“You know, Am.” He paused. “If it turns as ugly as they're saying we might have to find a hotel.”

She shot him a look.

“Especially if he doesn't call.”

“He'll call.” Her voice was soft with hope.

The dashboard temperature gage said eleven, Fahrenheit. It was twenty-eight when they'd left Duluth. There was no sign of a house, tire tracks, or any evidence of a structure; it looked like a parcel of vacant land.

“Let's walk it in.” Bryce pushed open the car door. The hinge crunched. He stepped down. Snow reached the tops of his boots. “Shit, it's deeper than I thought.”

Pushing open the door, she hopped down too. Snow tumbled into her boots as a gust of wind blew her ponytail straight up like an exclamation point.

“Damn, it's cold.” She popped up her hood and reached into her pockets for mittens. “Shit.” She'd left them on the kitchen table in the apartment. Pulling up her hands, she balled up her fingers in the sleeves for warmth.

Snow spilled over the tops of her boots, packing her ankles like beer cans in a cooler.

“Oh great,” she said. In moments her feet would be cold. Snow would melt against the warmth of her body, canceling out the insulation value of wool.

Wet feet on the advancing edge of a storm was dangerous. Hypothermia was an odd thing. It came on in unexpected ways. She'd once seen a diver become disoriented and almost die in warm tropical waters.

“So where's this alleged house?” Bryce huffed up the steep incline. “I'll break trail, follow so you don't get as wet.”

Her toes were already throbbing but she didn't want to say and risk having Bryce insist she go back to the Jeep.

A weird nervousness tickled in the bony recesses of her chest.

“Too bad we don't have snowshoes.”

“Next time,” he called back.

“Yeah, next time,” she repeated in a quiet voice, stepping in his tracks. She liked the idea of a next time.

“Maybe over this hill?” she suggested, breathing heavy as they trudged in knee-high snow. She pulled on her bottom lip. “Hope it's the right place.”

“The fire sign matches TJ's address.”

“True.”

She could hear Bryce breathing.

“Hey,” she said. “Remember when we were in the Java Sea just off Jakarta and that captain entered the wrong coordinates and wouldn't admit it?” she asked.

“You mean the known meth and crackhead that the NSF had vetted and authorized as our charter for the dive project?” Bryce said.

“And the guy wouldn't admit we were going out to sea?”

“Yeah, and then the fucker locked himself in the bridge and Jason had to break the window so we could open the door and get in,” Bryce continued the story, pausing to catch his breath.

Amelia paused too. Resting her hands on her thighs she bent over to catch her breath. “God. I'd forgotten about Jason having to do that.”

“And then remember Jen jumping on the guy and pounding the living snot out of him?” he said. It sent them both laughing as they remembered the spectacle. “I'd never seen her so pissed off.”

Bryce continued the ascent. Amelia followed.

“Except at Brad.”

“Yeah well.” Bryce got serious. “Brad deserved it.”

She couldn't see the top of the embankment, it just kept going. Amelia felt uneasy and stopped.

“You know,” she called up to him, resting for a moment. “I can't shake the feeling someone lives there,” Amelia said.

He'd stopped too and looked back at her.

“TJ said no one's lived there for years, right?”

“Yeah.” But something felt off, or wrong. Maybe there were squatters, or a homeless person living rough.

“Think they'll close the mall again tomorrow?” she asked as they resumed the climb.

“Fat chance,” he called over his shoulder.

“Tell me this wasn't a stupid idea?” she said, out of breath.

“I don't do stupid, Am,” he called over his shoulder. But the specter of his camo hat, Sea Life polo shirt collar poking out of his gray wool rag sweater, and flannel pajama bottoms, the whole thing struck her as funny and she started laughing.

Bryce stopped. She guessed he'd reached the summit by how he stood taking in the vista.

“Here.” Bryce took a few steps back, reaching to hoist her up. His cheeks were bright pink from the cold.

“Look,” he said quietly, his arm around her.

There was no sun, no overhead warmth. Charcoal clouds tumbled into Chequamegon Bay advancing like the sandstorms she'd seen in a
National Geographic
special on the Sahara Desert. The view opened to Lake Superior. Heavily treed islands were powdered white with snow.

“And that,” he pointed to a tiny dot downhill, “is your house.”

The land dropped off sharply and then leveled into a slight plateau on which stood a tiny mustard-colored one-story structure that had the same panoramic view of Lake Superior and surrounding islands.

The snowy field sloped down toward the lake, bracketed on either side by tree lines that marked where the forest began: pine and bleached birch, their leafless branches blurred into what looked to be a mishmash bouquet of bird feathers: sparrow, wild turkey, and natural-colored ostrich.