Missing (7 page)

The sawdust makes Van sneeze, and we keep walking, all the way to cabin ten. This is where the road gets narrow and overgrown with grass until it disappears into the trees. It's as far as I've been.

“Tully said something about another old cabin at the end,” I say. “It's kind of abandoned.”

“I've seen it from the lake,” says Van. “Let's see if we can find it.”

No one's been past here in a car for years, I guess. Small bushes grow right in the middle of the road. In places the road seems to disappear altogether and we have to search in the grass for old tire ruts. We walk for a few minutes, brushing away mosquitoes, and then we spot the cabin, on the shore of a shallow marshy bay.

It's small, probably just one room. Like the other cabins, it's built out of logs, but it looks much older. It sags into the weeds as if it is tired. Lime green moss covers the logs in patches. Ragged holes gape between the shingles on the roof, and two of the windows are missing their glass.

The door is hanging by only one hinge. Van props it open and we go inside. The cabin is empty, except for a wooden table with a broken leg, and two chairs. There's an old wood-burning cookstove in one corner, with an enormous spiderweb suspended between the rusty stovepipe and the wall. Dried leaves are scattered across the floorboards, and the few windows that still have glass are thick with dust.

“A good project for your dad,” says Van with a grin. He goes back outside, but I hang around for a few minutes. I try to picture someone living here, sitting at that table, eating a meal cooked on the stove.

Something catches my eye: marks gouged into the wood on the frame of the doorway. I trace them with my fingers. They look like letters but the wood has swollen around them and it's hard to make out what they are. There are four marks. A letter
S,
I think, maybe a
T
. Someone's name, scraped into the wood to prove they were here?

I go outside. At first I can't figure out what Van is doing. He's thrown his runners on the ground and rolled up his jeans. He's calf-deep in water. Then I realize he's standing on the remains of a dock submerged in the lake. He tips the halfrotten boards back and forth, waving his arms for balance.

“There's an old boat in the bushes over there,” he says. “It's got some holes in it but I might be able to fix it up.”

Bob has been for a swim and he gives a great shake, spraying my legs. I can hear Max somewhere close by, barking. I call him and a moment later he bursts out of the bushes, his tongue lolling.

Van rocks the dock again, bracing with his knees, and I say, “I'd laugh if you fell in.”

“Not a chance.” Van jumps to the shore. “The mosquitoes are horrible,” he says. “Let's get out of here.”

It's dark when Van leaves. Dad's worried that he won't be able to see, but Van shows him the light on his boat. Besides, he says, he's grown up on this lake. He knows where all the hazards are.

Dad goes inside our cabin after Van leaves, but I stay on the dock. I hear the thrum of the boat's motor long after Van disappears into the darkness. When I finally go inside to get ready for bed, I walk over to the dresser in my tiny bedroom and look at a photograph of me perched in front of Dad on his horse Skipper. I look about four years old. I'm wearing a helmet and Dad is wearing a cowboy hat that shades his face. His arms are wrapped right around me, and I'm grinning. I tell myself I can remember those rides with Dad, but I can't really. For the first time I wonder who took the photograph.

S
even

A small blue car is parked outside cabin two. I spot it just before supper the next day, on my way back to our cabin from the barn. The guest that Tully was expecting must have arrived while I was with Renegade.

I brush bits of hay off my jeans before I go inside. Then I change my T-shirt, wash the horse smell off my hands and head to the lodge.

Tully wants everything to be perfect for his first official guest. At the end of the long table, he has laid four places, with woven place mats and bluehandled cutlery I haven't seen before. Wild lupins and brilliant Indian paintbrush fill a tall white vase. He's lifting a pie with a brown-sugar-sprinkled crust out of the oven when I come in. I inhale a delicious breath of apples and cinnamon.

A woman is standing in front of the wall beside the fireplace, her back to me, looking at some of Tully's photographs.

“There you are, Thea,” says Tully, setting the pie on a rack. “I'd like you to meet Mrs. Wilson.”

“Oh, please, call me Marion,” says the woman, turning around. She has a crisp English accent and is small and kind of birdlike, with short gray hair. She looks like she's in her sixties. I was expecting someone younger. She's dressed neatly in pressed blue jeans, a pink sweatshirt and white running shoes.

Marion walks across the room to shake hands with me. “Tully's been telling me about you,” she says. Her eyes are bright blue, and up close I can see fine wrinkles in her skin. “It's lovely to meet you.”

“It's great to meet you too,” I say. Marion Wilson seems nice, and I can't think of a single reason why she would have lied about her friends staying here ten years ago. I decide that Tully must have got it wrong, or maybe the ranch
was
operating then and there just aren't any guest books from those years.

Dad arrives and Tully makes the introductions again.

Dad and Marion talk about the flight from England and the drive up from Vancouver. I gravitate to Tully's Africa photographs. Every time I look at them, I notice something new. This time it's the soft downy manes on the backs of the baby cheetahs.

At dinner, most of the conversation is about Italy. Marion has traveled there a lot, and she and Tully have been to some of the same places. Dad says that Italy is somewhere he has always wanted to go. For a moment I look at Dad with new eyes. This is something I never knew about him. The talk drifts to Italian wines and it turns out that Dad knows something about those too.

After a while, Marion changes the subject. “I'll join you for dinner and I'll take you up on that offer of a bag lunch, but I'll pass on breakfast. And I certainly don't need maid service in my cabin or anything like that.” Her voice is brisk.

Tully looks disappointed. He's so excited about being a host. “How about clean towels every few days?”

“That would be fine. And I would like the use of a boat while I'm here,” says Marion.

“No problem,” says Tully. “We've got canoes and a couple of small boats with electric motors. Thea can show you.”

Marion smiles at me. “That would be lovely.”

“I'm sorry we can't offer you riding,” says Tully. “You'll have to come back next year.”

“Oh, I'm afraid my riding days are over,” says Marion quickly.

“You used to ride?” I say, for the first time really focusing on the conversation.

“A lot. I had a bad fall about ten years ago. The doctor warned me that if I fell again, I'd do some serious damage to my back. But until then I rode almost every day.”

“What kind of horses?” I ask.

“Thoroughbreds,” says Marion. “Steeplechasers.” There's a slight pause and then she adds, “It was my aunt and uncle's business, and when they died I took it over.”

I'm totally impressed. “Did you race?”

Marion smiles. “We had jockeys to do the racing. But I started lots of young colts. And I rode them on training rides.”

“I'm planning on getting into breeding,” says Tully proudly. “Quality quarter horses. I'm researching bloodlines. It's always been a dream of mine.”

“That's exciting,” says Marion, “but a big undertaking.”

“And all new to me,” confesses Tully. “Ah well, I like a challenge.”

There's a scraping sound as Dad abruptly pushes back his chair. He mutters something about banging in a few more nails.

“What about apple pie?” says Tully.

“Later,” says Dad, and then he's gone. For what seems like a long time, no one speaks. My cheeks flush. Dad sounded so rude. I wonder what Marion is thinking.

“Homemade apple pie,” she says, breaking the silence. “You're spoiling me.”

I dig into my pie, which is still warm. Tully says he'll bring the coffee out to the porch, and I gather up the dirty dishes and take them to the dishwasher. For a second, I almost tell Marion Wilson about Renegade. Then I change my mind. I'm not sure I want to share him yet.

The light on my watch tells me it's 2:00
AM
. Sweat soaks my back and my heart is racing. I take a few deep breaths, relief flooding me as I realize that I was dreaming. That's all it is. A bad dream.

It felt so real, but already the details are fading. I try to piece the dream back together in my mind, grasping blurred images. I remember we were looking for Livia Willard, the little girl who went missing. It's all mixed up because she disappeared nearly sixty years ago, but we were all there—Tully, Dad, Van, me and a shadowy person who I think might have been Marion Wilson.

In the part of the dream that I remember clearly, we were standing in a marshy spot beside the lake— not anywhere that I recognized, but I think it must have been Gumboot Lake—and someone was shouting that they'd found something. It was a pink running shoe with a bunny on it. Then somehow I was swimming underwater and there were weeds everywhere, pulling at my legs and arms. And then the weeds turned into hair, blond curls swirling in the water, and I saw a pale face.

I waded onto shore, the weeds still dragging at me like skinny arms. I could hear someone sobbing. It sounded like a young child, but I couldn't see anyone. And then the dream got weirder and somehow I was in a forest and a person was standing beside a tree. It was the girl in the photograph, the older sister. I frowned, trying to remember her name. Esta. Her face was expressionless and her eyes were blank, but I knew she was watching me.

“Where's Livia?” I said.

“Livia is dead,” she replied.

That's when I woke up.

I push back the damp sheets and climb out of bed. I pour myself a glass of water at the kitchen sink, quietly so I don't wake Dad. The window over the sink is open, letting in cool air, and moths beat at the screen with their silvery wings. It's harder and harder to hold on to the dream, though one question nags at me: Did Livia drown? That must have been one of the first things the police thought of. They would have searched all along the lakeshore. Is that where they found her?

Something catches my eye outside. It's a light, shining through the trees. For a second I can't figure it out, but then I realize it must be coming from Marion Wilson's cabin. I watch for a few minutes, wondering what she's doing. When I turn to go back to bed, shivering with goose bumps, the light is still on.

E
ight

Van has asked me to his house for dinner. It's not a date. How could it be when his whole family is going to be there? His mom, his dad, his three sisters and both his grandparents. But it's the first time a boy has ever asked me to do anything, and I take a pathetically long time to get ready. I've discarded four tops when I hear Van talking to Dad outside on the dock. In a panic I pull on a black halter top (the one I started with in the first place) and head outside.