My mind felt loose as I drove, untethered, unreal, like I was watching myself. The landscape ahead smudged and blurred, and I wiped the tears away with my thumb. This would be over soon, I told myself. Nathan and his beagle would find Olive, and everything would be okay. Maybe I didn’t even have to tell Aaron about it. I was sure Olive wouldn’t want me to. But then I chided myself for the thought. Of course Aaron needed to know.
I checked in the rearview mirror to see if Evie was still asleep, and then rounded the corner that took us into the village. It was a sleepy little beachside town, quiet even at the height of tourist season. But now it was filled with locals from other parts of the island, summer people and tourists here for the Canada Day outdoor concert and fireworks later in the evening. I passed a stream of foot traffic progressing along the sidewalk. A few of the kids waved Canadian flags like they were on parade. An older couple wore matching red and white top hats emblazoned with the maple leaf. Flags of various sizes flapped in front yards along the road.
I pulled up in front of Nathan’s house, a little white bungalow, but he wasn’t out on his deck as he often was this time in the evening, nursing a beer with Buddy lying on his bare feet, and the lights were off inside. He’d left the porch light on, which he only did when he was out for the evening. An old baby-blue Ford was parked next to his Dodge Ram. Likely one of the buddies that he worked with in the framing crew. They’d walked to the beach party together. Nathan never missed the Canada Day celebrations, though he and I usually went together. We had since we were teens.
I backed my rental out onto the road and continued down the street, searching the crowd for any sign of him. And then there he was on the sidewalk ahead, walking Buddy on a leash. His ginger hair made him easy to spot. My heart fluttered a little at the sight of him, the feeling in my chest like the kicking of Evie’s tiny feet inside my belly during the final months of my pregnancy. As always, whether at work or not, he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, forest green this time, and strode with the upright stance of a man used to physical work.
There was a thin, deeply suntanned woman next to him. Were they walking together? There were so many people making their way down the sidewalk to the beach it was hard to tell. But then Nathan reached out and took her hand. He took her hand. A sick feeling settled in my stomach. So she was the owner of the baby-blue Ford. The woman wore flip-flops, denim shorts and a halter top that showed off tanned, muscular arms. She was a manual laborer of some kind, then, used to working outside, maybe a landscaper. Her hair was tied up in a haphazard bun. She looked familiar, though I couldn’t place her.
For a moment, I thought of driving on, as if I hadn’t seen them together. But Olive was back in that forest alone, and if she found her way out, she could catch a ride with some stranger or, perhaps worse, with Madison. I had to find her fast. I pulled the truck to the curb just ahead of Nathan and the woman. Buddy lifted his head as if he’d caught a fresh scent.
I got out of the truck and jogged to meet Nathan on the sidewalk. Buddy barked and waved his tail, recognizing me, and, alerted to my presence, Nathan dropped the woman’s hand.
“Kira? What the hell are you doing here?” He looked ahead to the truck, as if wondering where Evie was. “You told me you canceled your trip up.”
“I need you to come with me right now.” I waved at him to follow.
“Why? What’s happened?”
I glanced back at the woman, who now skulked nervously behind him. I didn’t want to explain anything to her. Nathan, perhaps seeing my look of hurt and confusion, introduced us. “This is Ashley,” he said, and then, to her, “This is Kira,” his voice level, like he was telling her to watch what she said. I did know her. Where did I know her from? Recognition flitted across her face too. And something else. Disdain. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that look from a local.
“I hit a deer,” I said, nodding to the truck. I would explain the rest on the way.
Nathan took one look at the front end and said, “Jesus.”
From the impact with the deer, a headlight was busted and the front bumper crumpled. Deer hair and bits of flesh were caught in the crushed metal.
“I’ll take Buddy,” Ashley said, reaching for the dog’s leash.
“No!” I said, a little too loud. “Nathan, we need Buddy.”
“The deer ran off?” Nathan asked.
“Not exactly.”
He tilted his head at me. He knew something else was going on. “Okay. Just give me a minute, all right?”
“Nathan, we really need to go.”
“I said, just a minute.”
I sulked back to the driver’s side and got in while he spoke to Ashley on the sidewalk, his back to me. As I watched in the mirror, Ashley raised a hand angrily in my direction. She didn’t hug him back when he embraced her, her arms dangling at her sides. I looked away, to the elderly house across the street that listed to the side as its foundation slowly sank into the sand.
Nathan opened the back door to let Buddy in next to Evie, who shifted in her sleep. Then he got into the front. I did a shoulder check and, after waiting for a car to pass, pulled a U-turn. When I looked in the side mirror, I saw Ashley still standing there on the sidewalk, watching us drive away.
“I’m sorry about Ashley,” Nathan said quietly. “When you said you weren’t coming up . . . I mean, you and I always go to the fireworks together. I guess I was pissed.”
I raised a hand. “I don’t—I can’t talk about this right now,” I said. “Nathan, Olive ran off on me.”
He shook his head as his mind shifted gears. “Olive? Why did you bring her up here?”
I hesitated. “I’ll explain all that later. But right now I need your help. When I stopped to put down the deer, Olive got spooked and ran off into the bush at the hunt camp.”
“So she’s out there in the woods right now?”
“Yes. Please, Nathan, you’ve got to find her.”
Nathan gestured at his house, just up ahead. “Stop at my place for jackets and flashlights.”
“We don’t have time.” My voice had gone shrill. “We need to get to Olive now.”
“Kira, without jackets, we’ll be eaten alive by mosquitos and blackflies, and the search may take some time. We could be looking for her in the dark. In that forest, I need to see where I’m going.”
“Fine. Fine!” I turned sharply into his driveway, next to Ashley’s old blue Ford.
“I’ll be right back.” He left the truck door open as he jogged into his house.
I drummed the steering wheel as I scanned the passing vehicles, looking for any sign of Madison, or Sarah’s van. There were several minivans just like it here already, parked along the side of the road or near the beach, families here for the fireworks. Madison and Sarah could be in any one of them, maybe even watching us now, but in this crowd of people, it would be hard to spot them. It seemed clear now that Madison had driven up from Toronto with Sarah. Tipped off by Olive, they might have reached the island before us and waited at the bridge for us to arrive, knowing we’d have to stop there, that they could get to Olive there. I just hoped they hadn’t followed me down the back road and seen Olive take off on me, or they might get to her first.
Nathan jumped into the rental, wearing a rain jacket and carrying a second, along with a couple of flashlights. As he buckled in, I backed up and took off down the road, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror to see if anyone was following. There was a car behind us, but it pulled to the side of the road to park near the dunes.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Who?” he replied, though I’m sure he knew exactly who I was talking about.
“Ashley.”
“I work with her,” he said, like I should know. “She’s on my crew.”
I finally remembered where I’d seen her. In the spring, I had dropped in on one of Nathan’s construction jobs, a new beachside cottage, with a surprise lunch, a wicker picnic basket of specialty cheeses and artisan breads that I laid out on a checkered tablecloth, a production that had elicited catcalls from his coworkers on the crew and embarrassed Nathan. Ashley was there that day, working on an outside wall. At the time she wore sunglasses and a red bandana to hold her hair back, a tool belt around her waist. I’d been impressed that she was a carpenter on the crew, but not impressed enough to talk to her. In any case, Nathan hadn’t introduced me. He had gulped down my carefully prepared lunch and unceremoniously shooed me away so he could get back to work. I left, hurt, with an empty picnic basket. There was so much about his life I didn’t know. So much about this village I didn’t know. But then, I hadn’t taken the time to build a community here, other than with Nathan and Teresa. I had kept my distance.
“No, I mean . . .” I left the rest of my sentence hanging there: Who is Ashley to you?
“She’s an old friend,” he said. “We went to school together.”
“A buddy,” I said, sarcastically. At the sound of his name, Buddy sat up on the back seat and snuffled, his tongue lolling. “You were holding her hand.”
Nathan snorted, shaking his head a little. Here I was, giving him shit about seeing a woman on the side? “Seriously?” he said.
“Are you seeing her?” I asked.
“I see her every day,” he said. “We work together.”
“That was noncommittal.”
“What do you want me to say?”
As I gripped the steering wheel, I glanced at the engagement ring Aaron had given me. What did I want him to say? That he would always be on this island, waiting for me, as he had since we were teens, ready to pick up where we left off in our perennial summer romance, even as I lived with another man?
“How long?” I asked. How long have you been screwing Ashley, Nathan?
Nathan hesitated. “A while,” he said.
“How long?” I demanded.
“It’s been off and on. Since high school.”
Since high school. “So, all those times we were together, she was in the picture?”
He shrugged. “Not always. I dated a few others.”
When I gave him a hard look, he said, “You’re the one who always wanted to keep things casual. Did you really expect me to wait around while you had someone else’s baby?”
My heart skipped a beat as I thought of the letter from the lab that almost certainly waited for me at the summer house.
“In any case, what does it matter?” he said. “You came up here to end things with me once and for all, didn’t you?”
I felt a surge of heat in my gut.
“The ring,” he said, nodding at my hand. An emerald-cut diamond. A beauty, my father would have called it, whistling long and low in that way that made my mother furious at him. A beauty.
“I’m so sorry, Nathan. This isn’t how I wanted to tell you.”
“I would have committed to you if I thought I had a chance,” he said, and his voice broke a little. “Do you know how many times I thought of flying down to Toronto and turning up at your house?” From the back of the crew cab, Evie murmured a complaint in her sleep and Buddy whined, both responding to the emotion in his voice. “But I never did. Because even before you got involved with Aaron, I knew the only place you would ever want me is here.”
“Nathan . . .”
He waited, but I had nothing to offer him. He was part of my life here, but I lived a whole other life when I left the island.
Nathan shook his head angrily. “And the crazy thing is, when you call, I still come running.” He held out his hands as if to say, Look at me now.
“I’m sorry I have to involve you in this,” I said. “It’s not fair to you. I just—when Olive ran off, I didn’t know who else to turn to.”
“Again, why did you bring her up here in the first place?”
“It’s complicated. Madison has been hounding us for weeks now, trying to get to Olive.”
“But she’s the kid’s stepmother, right? I mean, she’s been Olive’s mother for a long time. Why wouldn’t you want her to see Olive?”
“Because the woman is absolutely fucking nuts. First she wouldn’t let Olive come home on weekends. Then, when Aaron brought Olive to live with us, Madison started harassing Aaron, trying to ruin his reputation so she could get Olive back. And now she’s stalking me. Nathan, she broke into our house this morning and tried to take Olive.”
“She did what?”
“Aaron is on the road, so I figured the best thing I could do was get away, bring Olive up here. But then Madison followed us, and Olive took off on me at the bridge.”
“At the bridge? She ran off on you twice?”
“She jumped into some woman’s van.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Olive told me the woman in the van was just some stranger, and she ran off because she wanted to go home to see her boyfriend. But I’ve seen that woman in the van before. She must have come up with Madison.”
“And—what? You think Olive is meeting up with Madison and this mysterious other woman at your father’s hunt camp, in the bush? Kira, that sounds crazy. More likely she’s just throwing a teenage tantrum over being away from her boyfriend, like she said.”
I ran a hand over my scalp, feeling a headache coming on. “I don’t know. But when I tried to find Olive at the camp, she ran from me.” At least, I’d thought it was Olive I was chasing through those woods. Now I wasn’t sure of anything. “She may be lost in the bush right now, terrified. If she’s not, I worry she might hitch a ride, like she did at the bridge. What if some stranger picks her up, some guy? Nathan, she’s only thirteen.”
Buddy whined and Nathan reached back to pat his head, to comfort him. But he didn’t take my hand to comfort me, as he would have in the past. “We’ll find her,” he said. “Buddy will find her.”
I was counting on it. Buddy was a smart dog with an educated nose. Nathan had trained him as a gun dog, a blood tracker, to find wounded deer during the fall hunt, but Buddy loved tracking so much that Nathan made a game of it at his parties, offering Buddy the scent on clothing belonging to friends who were hidden around his property or in the small patch of bush behind it. Buddy eagerly found Nathan’s tipsy, beer-swilling friends as they hid within outbuildings or behind logs or even up in trees.
“Have you got something of Olive’s that Buddy can catch her scent from?” he asked.
I nodded. “Her tote bag is in the back.”
He reached into the crew cab and unzipped Olive’s bag. “Something that hasn’t been freshly washed?”
“There’s a hoodie in a ziplock.” She had put it in there after spilling lemonade on it. It was her favorite pink cropped hoodie that she wore day after day, and often slept in.
Nathan dug out the plastic bag and tossed it to the console. “We’ll find her,” he said again.
We will find Olive, I reassured myself. But as I drove past a cemetery, I checked the rearview mirror compulsively to see if that minivan was following, and twisted the steering wheel with both hands as if I was wringing it out.