*“Young people are leaving cities and moving back to towns like ours. They’re choosing lifestyle over paychecks. It’s a good thing,” Leif Karlson said.
Bobbie speared a hunk of avocado from her salad. A rancher from across the border, Leif had been one of her husband’s oldest and closest friends. Back when both their spouses had been alive—her Colin, Leif’s Elizabeth—they’d met as couples for dinner most weekends. After Colin’s death, Bobbie had worried they might drift apart, but they hadn’t. Since then, Elizabeth had passed and Bobbie had retired and now she and Leif had settled into a routine where they met weekly for lunch. Not dinner. Never dinner. Bobbie suspected Leif was being very careful about his intentions, which was fine. Most of the time it was just fine.
“I disagree. People have a tendency to idolize small towns. But when they’re actually living in one, the gloss wears off. That friendly, cheerful neighbor becomes nosey and interfering. The mountains aren’t quite so beautiful when they block cell coverage or impede same-day delivery or become impassable in winter.”
“I never figured you for a pessimist.”
“You sound like Monique,” Bobbie said. “She couldn’t be happier with the influx of new residents. The last three years she’s sold more properties than in the previous ten. In fact,” she hesitated, then plunged ahead, “this morning she showed the Singleton acreage to a prospective buyer.”
Leif set down his fork and gave her his complete attention. “After all these years… Well, I hope it sells. That house has been vacant far too long.”
“Yes.” Over four decades ago Leif’s younger sister Odette had lived in that house before her untimely death. Her controlling, disagreeable husband Neil and their two-year-old daughter had moved away immediately after. Neil sold the farmland, house included, to Bobbie’s father and brother, ranchers like Leif, and the house had remained vacant since. It would be good for a new family to move in and purge the old, painful memories.
Leif finished his beer and, over Bobbie’s token protest, ordered dessert for the both of them. “You really think this little population boom is a bad thing?”
“I can’t help wondering how happy our new residents are going to be once the pandemic truly is over and life is back to normal. Assuming that ever happens, of course.”
Life was mostly back to normal. But covid still lurked among them.
“I get the feeling you’re thinking of someone in specific?”
“Hadley,” she admitted. Earlier she’d told Leif about Denise’s daughter and granddaughter unexpectedly moving back to Tangle Falls. “I’m not sure if she’s aware her cousin Jeff Bombini and his wife and kids moved here, too, that they bought a house right on our street.”
In fact, the Bombinis had bought one of the three original copper baron character homes—Bobbie, and Monique and her husband Henri, owned the other two.
“Again, I ask—isn’t that a good thing?”
“God no. There’s bad blood between those two family branches. Goes back to their great-uncle Frank’s will.”
“Divorce and wills. Nothing is better at destroying extended families than those two things.”
“I don’t understand why Hadley would move back now. Her mother is gone. Her old friends have moved on. What’s left in Tangle Falls for her?”
“A house? I’m assuming her mother bequeathed it to her.”
“Yes of course she did. But houses can be sold. Hadley’s lived on Vancouver Island since her daughter was born. She could sell the house here and buy one there. Doesn’t that make more sense?”
“Maybe she had an argument with a boyfriend or lost her job.” Leif brushed a hand through his silvering hair. “There could be lots of reasons she had to move.”
“Reasons to leave where she was,” Bobbie agreed. “But why come here?” At seventeen Hadley had left town with a musician she’d met at a local concert, and simply never came home. She hadn’t had any problem leaving behind her boyfriend—Bobbie’s nephew, Jesse—her best friend, Fallon, or her mother. In the years that followed, she never returned, not even for a visit.
Yes, Hadley had been around for Denise’s final weeks, but that had been at the hospice in Grand Forks, a thirty-minute drive from here.
“We all grow up sooner or later. Maybe Hadley finally realized that the old hometown wasn’t so bad.”
“I don’t buy that. I wish you could have seen her this morning. She looked like a woman at the end of her reserves.”
“If she does have a problem, maybe she’ll talk to you about it. Once she settles in.”
“I doubt it.” Bobbie finished her tea and pushed aside her half-eaten pie. The Smokehouse pie in Silverton was fine but not up to the standard at Stella’s Diner on Bobbie’s side of the border. “Let me tell you a story to help you understand. When Hadley was a little girl, around five or six, she loved playing soccer. My nephew Jesse played, too—it was coed at that age—and so Denise and I were often watching their games and cheering them on. During one game Hadley was in a scrimmage for the ball, and she won, but as she dribbled down the field, it seemed she was limping. Her coach noticed, too, and called her off the field.”
“Sounds like she was a good little player.”
“She was. She insisted to the coach that she wasn’t hurt and that she still wanted to play. Which she did. Later that night, when her ankle was swollen more than twice its normal size Denise took her to the ER for X-rays. You know what they found? A sprained ankle. That little girl played soccer for more than half an hour with a sprained ankle.”
“So, she was good and tough.”
“Too tough. Hadley never liked to admit when she was hurt or when she needed help.”
“And you think that’s what’s happening now?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She could tell Leif thought she was too invested. But Denise had been more than a neighbor to Bobbie. She’d been a lifelong friend. And she knew Denise would want her to look out for her daughter and grandchild.
“Bobbie, you worry too much.” Leif polished off his last forkful of dessert. “Our towns need people like the Bombinis and your Hadley. Fresh blood brings new energy and ideas. We need their children, too, to fill our half-vacant schools.”
“Yes. But will they stay?” The covid pandemic had made people long for smaller communities, more room, easy access to wild spaces for hiking, biking, and skiing. Who needed to live in a big city when you could have your business meetings virtually and order almost anything you wanted online?
But mountain passes and winter weather presented an unavoidable reality: Her home of Tangle Falls and Leif’s Silverton—like a lot of towns in the interior of British Columbia and Washington State—were isolated communities for much of the year.
Bobbie wasn’t sure that newcomers like Jeff and Carly Bombini were prepared for the reality of snowed-in mountain roads and airports that were closed more often than they were open because of wind and poor visibility.
Something about the isolation of winter always brought out the stress fractures. Bobbie had lived in Tangle Falls all her life. And while she loved the town, and the people who lived there, she was privy to the dark stuff too.
And Tangle Falls—a copper mining town—had been built on a lot of dirt.
Some of it was literal dust, from excavating copper. But the mines and smelter which had caused the town to boom for a few short decades had been permanently closed in the thirties. The town had hobbled on thanks to lumber and ranching. And then World War II happened and the Canadian internment of their own Japanese citizens.
Bobbie’s grandparents, Haruto and Mitsue Taskaka had been stripped of their house and their fishing boats and forced to leave Vancouver in the fall of 1942. Haruto had been sent to work on road camps in the BC Interior while Mitsue and her daughter Riko—who would become Bobbie’s mother—were resettled in an internment camp in Tangle Falls.
Much had been made of the warm welcome the citizens of Tangle Falls and their progressive mayor had given the “Nikkei” as they were called. The Japanese were provided with shelter—hotels and businesses vacant after the collapse of the town’s copper industry had been converted to housing. The people had heating, bathrooms, enough food to eat. Their children received schooling and the adults were allowed to work and to move about the community freely. So many of the interred Japanese sent to work on prairie farms and in road camps had it much, much worse.
But decent treatment did not negate the initial wrongdoing.
After the war ended life returned to normal in Tangle Falls. Some of the Japanese returned to their home country. Others moved farther east in Canada. Bobbie’s family stayed. Her mother, Riko, married local rancher Mac McArthur. Riko did her best to fit into her adopted home and to raise her family as “normal” Canadians. Bobbie grew up feeling like she belonged, and after university, she was happy to build a career for herself in Tangle Falls as a teacher.
Life had been good, yes. But she had not been blind to the injustices that continued to happen. The wrongs done to the Japanese lay far back in the country’s history. But injustice continued on a smaller, individual scale. There were those who cheated and connived for more than their fair share. There were those who were bullied and ostracized because they were different. There were those who suffered due to domestic abuse. And there was worse…even, in some extreme cases, murder.
This is what Bobbie feared people did not understand. Small towns were not idyllic microcosms. All the wrongs that happen in any big city, happen in small towns too. In some ways it was worse, because people in small towns had long memories.
*
“You seem uncharacteristically negative today.” There was indulgence in Leif’s voice, but also a question.
Bobbie shrugged. “The universe is comprised mostly of dark matter and dark energy.”
“The universe maybe—I’m not the science teacher—but not you.”
She gave a slight nod, conceding the point. Looking for a source to her unsettled mood, she circled back to Hadley. Jesse had been obsessed with her when he was younger and devastated when she left. Bobbie couldn’t help worrying what Hadley’s return might mean for her nephew and his marriage to Fallon.
“I blame retirement. I have too much time on my hands to sit and worry.”
“My advice? Get outside in your garden. A little hard work always sets the psyche straight.” Leif set down his empty coffee mug. “So…next week, your town?”
“Yes. Deadwood Junction okay?” She hesitated before adding, “I should mention Monique is organizing a street party on Saturday starting at five. She asked me to extend the invitation to you.”
She waited to see if he would be uncomfortable with this, but he didn’t bat an eye.
“I’m free. Any special reason for the party?”
“Ostensibly to welcome new arrivals to our town—I did mention the record home sales, right? But I suspect primarily to celebrate the removal of covid restrictions.” Her gregarious friend was always happy to have an excuse for a party. Oh, how Monique had detested the covid lockdowns.
“Sounds like fun.” Leif might look the part of the laconic cowboy, gruff and a bit aloof, but at heart he was a people person with a gift for conversing with folks from all walks of life, of all ages.
Which was something they had in common. Bobbie had enjoyed, had thrived, on her interactions at school each day. Both with her students and the faculty. Retirement had abruptly made her world a lot smaller. For the first time since she’d been widowed fifteen years ago, she’d felt what it was to be truly lonely. Her mother, kind and cheerful though she was, could not fill the gap.
Leif stood. “I should get back to the ranch. I’ll walk you to the bridge.”
*
Bobbie paused at the halfway point of the Friendship Bridge. The two-lane, arch bridge, with a wide promenade for pedestrians, had been built to cross the Boundary River gorge back in the nineteen forties. Named in a dual-country ceremony that celebrated the close relationship between the United States and Canada, it had symbolized the tightness of the mining communities that once prospered here.
On this June day, the waters of Boundary River were high and murky with the spring run-off. Ahead Bobbie’s town was a neat grid of streets through which ran the Crowsnest Highway, an engineering marvel that traveled the north border of the forty-ninth parallel, from Medicine Hat, Alberta to Hope, British Columbia. Protecting the town, but also isolating the town, were the expansive Monashee Mountains, thick with cedar, Douglas fir and pine.
Bobbie turned back to face Silverton. If you didn’t know about the border, you would think Silverton was an extension of Tangle Falls. When she’d been growing up, the locals had pretty much treated the two towns as if they were one. Border crossings had been cursory check-ins back then. The guards almost unfailingly polite and friendly.
All that had changed after 9/11, when passports became required, and rules strictly enforced. And then covid had changed the relationship even more drastically. Abruptly on March twenty-first, 2020, both borders had been closed to nonessential traffic. And remained closed for more than a year. The closure had caused all sorts of hardships. To businesses, to tourism, to personal relationships.
The border closure had been a brutal reminder of the power wielded by nations. The power to protect their borders, to keep people out, to lock people in.
Bobbie would never again take freedom of movement on the Friendship Bridge for granted.
On the Canadian side of the bridge Bobbie presented her documentation and, once she’d been waved through, she took a final look over the bridge. Now in his truck, Leif had paused to make sure she had crossed safely. When she waved, he gave a nod and drove off. She wondered if such manners were dying off in their generation.
Though a very different man from Leif, Colin had been gentlemanly too. He would make her special matcha tea for her every morning and bring it to her in bed before he left for his auto repair shop. Though he’d been dead a long time, some mornings she still had a split-second anticipation of her husband’s tea delivery. She was afraid she’d appreciated the tea more than the man for too much of their marriage.
It was a sad fact of life that one didn’t always appreciate a thing—or a person—until they were gone.
Quiet Colin, padding around the house, fixing things as soon as they were broken, replacing burnt light bulbs, cleaning the furnace filters, taking care of jobs so fast they never made it to a to-do list. It was only after his fatal heart attack that she realized how much work a house could be—especially a heritage home like theirs.
It troubled her that she couldn’t remember many things that she had done for him. She’d cooked most of their dinners, but he always helped with sous chef duties, then did all the cleanup when they were finished eating.
Colin would warm her car for her in the winter. He rubbed her feet while they watched television together. She was on her feet all day, so they often ached. But what about Colin? He’d worked hard as an auto mechanic, yet never mentioned any aches and pains of his own.
Then there was the question of children. She knew Colin had wanted them. After five years of marriage—three without the use of contraception—he’d booked himself a doctor’s appointment to see if the problem was his.
It wasn’t.
They’d been cooking chili the night he told her that. He was chopping an onion, she was at the stove with a wooden spoon, sautéing the ground beef.
“So, I must be the reason we can’t conceive. Maybe we left it too late.” She should have cared more, Bobbie remembered thinking at the time. But the truth was, she spent her days working with children and rather enjoyed coming home to a quiet, orderly house and Colin.
“It doesn’t matter,” Colin said quickly. “I’m happy the way we are. I suppose if you wanted, you could go see a specialist too…”
He put no demands on her, in fact never raised the subject again. A few times she mentioned needing to make an appointment with her doctor to get a referral to a specialist, but six months later, at her annual exam, she forgot to raise the subject.
And so…no children.
Bobbie pushed the old regret from her mind, focusing instead on her final view of the river before stepping off the bridge. Upstream, a flash of bright yellow caught her eye. Something had snagged on the branch of a dead tree. In life the tree had grown at an improbable angle from the riverbank, and now, in decay, was partially submerged in the roiling waters.
As an avid birder, Bobbie rarely left the house without her binoculars. She removed them from her messenger bag and focused on the patch of yellow. It only took a few seconds to realize she was looking at a human body.
The shock of it made her hands tremble, and she lowered the glasses and took a deep breath before taking a closer look. She couldn’t see the head—it was obscured by one of the tree branches—but from the slack look of the body, dressed in the bright jacket and hip waders, she guessed the unfortunate soul was unconscious, probably dead. With trembling fingers she dialed 911.