30

The new diamond grill was busy, and Martin and Sadie had to wait, which was fine because Martin wanted to walk around town. The air was clear, the mountains almost showing off, and he was impressed.

What do you think’s wrong with Stacey? he asked.

I don’t think it’s anything like the flu. She rarely gets sick. But she worries a lot, and it’s been hard for her with her dad in a care home and her mother gone now. Just before you arrived, we went through the attic and found three or four journals Della had stored there. She’s been reading them is my guess. You can imagine coming upon things your mother wrote about all the years she was alive and you sit down to read them. It must be emotional for her.

She’s got one more year in school, right?

Next year’s the finale. She’s a good student. She’ll want to go someplace after she graduates, I’d bet on it. She doesn’t belong here. You know what’s sad about the situation?

No, what?

She says she wants to grow up to be like me. She’s so much bigger than that, but I don’t know how to tell her.

How long do you plan on mothering her? Are you staying here another whole year?

I’m guessing. What would you do if your only brother had a kid in the same situation? It’s not an easy decision, is it? I took off when I was about her age. I owe it to my sister not to let that happen to Stacey. It feels like the right thing to do.

Amber’s mom and dad always treated Stacey with kindness, and with what had happened over the last year, they checked up on her whenever they saw her. Amber’s mom knew something wasn’t right when they arrived for their impromptu sleepover. She pestered them both with questions and got nowhere. Amber knew how to get her mom to back off if necessary, and they found sanctuary in the bedroom.

Your mom or dad never said anything about how it all started? Amber said.

Della and Sage, you mean. No. I asked her once why there weren’t any pictures of me as a baby, and she said they were lost in a house fire or the movers lost them. Something like that. You hear people talk about what their kids were like as babies, problems they might have had, but they did none of that. That’s because they didn’t know me.

So, they adopted you somehow?

I wish. They stole me. In the town of Hope. I’ve never seen the town, but that’s where they stole me. In broad daylight.

Amber left to make them both a hot chocolate and grab a bag of potato chips from the cupboard. Her mother asked if everything was all right in there, and Amber said they weren’t as good as they could be.

They sat quietly, drinking hot chocolate and nibbling on chips. Amber considered how she’d feel if a few hours ago she’d found out her mom wasn’t her mom and her dad wasn’t her dad and that the two of them had stolen her and drove her to Fernie to live. She would stomp into the kitchen kicking and screaming and throw things until she got an explanation. Maybe she would phone the police or run away. But for Stacey, her make-believe mother had died, and her fake father was as good as gone himself.

Maybe there were circumstances, Amber said.

Oh, there were circumstances all right. They couldn’t have kids. They’d tried for years, and they wanted one so they grabbed me in the park and drove away. It’s all here. I’ll show you.

Stacey found the section near the end of the second diary, where Della admitted everything, so Amber could read it. How they couldn’t have kids and how desperate Della had been. Even Sage, loser that he was, had tried to get her to reconsider.

So what are you going to do?

I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know who I am at this point. All I know is where I didn’t come from. I could be anybody.

So you were a little kid walking around crying, and they found you, right?

Exactly. Even if people find a dog on the loose, they know enough to take him to the pound. That’s the first place people look if their dog goes missing. If we found a lost kid crying in Fernie somewhere, we’d call the police or something. Think about it. Fifteen years ago, someone lost me, and for fifteen years they didn’t know where to look. They probably think I’m dead by now. Isn’t that what most people would think?

Maybe they’re still looking, Amber said. Remember when we were younger and we tried to become investigators? We need to do that again. We’re older now so we can figure this out.

I’m almost an adult. Imagine giving birth to a kid and not meeting them until they were an adult. If we found them, they might not want to meet me. And how can I prove I belong to anyone after all this time?

They have experts for that stuff, Amber said. They could do genetic tests to make sure. I think if I lost my child, I’d want to see them as soon as possible, grown-up or not. What we need to do is find out where you came from. Until that happens, you’ll feel like you do now, which is awful.

Amber and Stacey had shared many sleepovers, but never one where they talked so far into the middle of the night. They had hot chocolate three more times and ate a ham sandwich after midnight. They made two lists, one with what they knew from the diaries and the other what they needed to know. The latter was shorter, but when the lists sat side by side, they seemed equal. They discussed how much Stacey didn’t look like Della and Sage and what her real parents might look like. The dad wouldn’t be as tall as Sage, and the mom would have lighter hair. Freckles maybe. Stacey thought maybe they were poor and let her wander off because they couldn’t afford to keep her. Amber said maybe, but they might also be rich, maybe famous, and once found her life would change for the better.

They agreed not to tell anyone else about what they knew. Not Amber’s parents or the police or anyone. Not until they could figure out what had happened.

Amber said, This is a tragedy for you, and anyone would see it that way. But there’s one good thing. You live in Fernie, and I live in Fernie, and if none of this had happened, we wouldn’t be friends.

I’m thankful I have you to help me think everything through, Stacey said. It felt like keeping her private thoughts to herself but in a bigger room. As they both faded into sleep, Stacey realized she still needed to tell one other person about everything that had gone on. She mentioned her by name, but Amber had already fallen asleep and didn’t hear her.

Martin had never fished in his life, and he met someone in town willing to teach him. He would do anything for the chance to skirt the arterial waterways that flowed between what he referred to as serious mountains. He used Sage’s fishing gear without asking, but Stacey didn’t care in the least. This left Aunt Sadie home alone a lot, sometimes for an entire day, unless Stacey was there, which wasn’t often. She always had something to do, like picking huckleberries, a good enough reason to be somewhere else.

Hey, kiddo. Where you off to? Aunt Sadie asked.

I’m going to meet friends downtown.

Don’t go yet. We need to talk. Something’s going on, and I know your mother wouldn’t leave you to stew like this. I thought we could go somewhere. Just the two of us.

Stacey hadn’t cried since the night she and Amber had gone through the diaries, and she thought she had finished with the emotional part of it all. But she was sobbing now, unable to control her breathing. More than anything, she wanted to run out of the house and up into the mountains to be by herself, but she knew better. She had to face reality, and this marked the beginning. After days of rehearsal, she had almost stopped thinking of Della and Sage as mom and dad. Almost. Now, standing in the kitchen in confrontation, she couldn’t think of the woman in front of her as anything but her Aunt Sadie. Stacey hadn’t revealed what she knew for the most pathetic of reasons: Aunt Sadie was all she had left from the life she used to have, and once Sadie learned the truth, that would end too.

She gave her aunt the briefest of book reports, then went to her room and brought out the four volumes Della had written and pointed to the second volume as the one she should read first.

You’re mentioned in three or four places, Stacey said, as she headed for the back door. She said you were nuts but a lot of fun to have for a sister. It could be way worse, you know. At least you had a sister for a while.

The golf course rehired Amber for the summer, but Stacey, too confused to think about working anywhere, didn’t apply. Besides, her aunt would pay for everything. Stacey and Amber pretended they were writing a play about missing children and went to the library to ask questions. They kept a list of missing children, all of them Canadian, and two from B.C., but the list only went back two or three years. The librarian, a kind and helpful woman, wore her hair in a braid that funnelled all the way down her back. Stacey couldn’t keep from staring at the braid. She imagined pulling on it to lead its owner to someplace else in the library that would have all the answers.

These children have all gone missing recently, Amber said. There must have been kids missing before this.

Oh yes, there were plenty. Every year new ones disappear. If the child isn’t found in the first month, they often never are.

What happens to the children that aren’t found? Stacey asked.

Well, dear, I guess you have to use your imagination for the answer to that. It’s not the sort of thing most people want to talk about.

Amber persisted. But if they were missing, even if they weren’t found, they must be on a list somewhere.

I bet they are, the librarian said. I think you’d have to go to the police to find that out.

With no one home at Amber’s house, they went there to chart out a plan. They would go to the police but not in Fernie. They would drive all the way to Hope and ask there. The police must have records that went back fifteen years, and if they asked questions there, no one would know them or know why they cared. Amber would take a few days off. As many as necessary. Stacey would borrow money from Aunt Sadie. She would get the oil changed and take the green car, which was her car now. It was a long way to drive, but they would take turns. Amber had her licence finally, and she had a cousin that lived in Midway, so they could stay one night there. Amber would tell her parents they wanted to visit Stacey’s relatives in Hope, and Stacey didn’t need to offer any explanation because no one would care. The librarian had said that, after a month or two, the chances of finding a child were slim, but even though fifteen years had melted away, it made sense not to let any more days or months or years go by. Maybe she had a brother or sister, older or younger it wouldn’t matter, and they would be getting older just like her. If she had a sibling, Stacey wanted it to be a boy. It would be even that way. One boy. One girl. Besides, it already felt like she had a sister named Amber.

I think I might head downtown to play pool with some fishermen I met, Martin said as soon as they finished the dishes. No one said anything about the diaries, but Stacey understood Martin’s exit had been preplanned. I won’t be back until eleven he said, as if reading from a script.

Molly knocked on the front door as soon as he left. She said she and Hart had a movie to watch and did anyone want to join them. Aunt Sadie said no so definitively that Molly left without bothering to argue.

Stacey sat on the couch, her head leaning forward, staring at her hands, her lower lip between her teeth, trying not to show emotion. Aunt Sadie sat beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.

I can’t believe it, she began. I don’t think anyone would believe it. All afternoon I’ve tried to imagine what you are going through, and I can’t. It’s horrific and disgusting, and no one deserves to go through something like this. I can sit here and tell you I’m sorry, but that’s a pissy thing to say. Of course, anyone would be sorry. And mad too. I can’t believe my own sister would do something like that.

Aunt Sadie got up and paced back and forth in the living room. She didn’t know what else to do with herself, but she had the urge to smash something. She’d never understood unwarranted violence before, but she understood it now as she lifted a black vase from the bookshelf, one Della had taken a shine to before she passed. Sadie had bought it so Della would have something to feel good about. She held it in her hands for a long time. Stacey looked up and saw her holding the vase, and it was as if the two of them had a part in its journey to the floor and the hundreds of pieces that scattered across the room. What remained after was a silence that left no room for words, only feelings. Outside, Lucky barked, a sound filled with yearning, one that not even a loyal dog could fill.