CHAPTER 13

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“ELENA, PLEASE. IT’S important.” “I said I’m busy.”

Ken was hovering awkwardly in her bedroom doorway, shirt half untucked and thick stubble around his chin. Elena sat on the edge of her bed painting her toenails. It was a delicate operation, keeping the purple glitter within the boundaries of her littlest nail. She wasn’t interested in what he had to say. Whatever he was going to tell them, it wouldn’t be true.

“I’ll be in the living room with Rob.”

Elena watched Ken leave out of the corner of her eye. She blew on her toenails and put her foot carefully onto the carpet; heels down, toes up. She walked as casually as she could, on her heels, into the living room. Much as she didn’t want to listen to Ken, she hated the idea of Rob knowing something she didn’t.

Ken was standing in front of the TV waiting for her to sit. She flopped down on the sofa beside Rob, close enough that her elbow bumped his ribs and he grunted at her, but he kept watching Ken. Mamma perched on the arm of the couch and put one hand on Elena’s shoulder, tapping her fingers nervously.

Ken had a newspaper in his hand. It wasn’t the Stapleton Herald—too thick. It was one of the big papers that Dad sometimes bought on Sundays. Ken’s mouth started moving —something about preparing themselves for a difficult time —but Elena was craning her neck sideways trying to read the headlines. There was a photo of the smoking ruins on the front cover and thick type next to it: SAWMILL WORKER.

“Elena, are you listening?”

She flicked him a look before scanning back across the type she’d just read. He hid the paper behind his back. She slumped into the depths of the sofa and folded her arms.

“A reporter got hold of some information about your dad.”

“What information?” Rob leaned forward anxiously.

“His disappearance is being investigated by the police as suspicious. They’re saying the explosion could’ve been deliberately caused by an angry employee.”

Elena looked from Ken to Rob to Mamma and back again to try and understand how serious this was. “You mean, Dad?”

Ken shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “According to the report, the cops think it’s strange that his truck was found near the scene, but there’s no sign of him. This journalist is making him sound like ... an unstable guy.”

“What kind of unstable?” Elena asked.

Ken glanced at Mamma first, but he answered her question. “They’re saying he’s an alcoholic with anger issues and that he is seriously in debt.”

Elena could feel Mamma’s fingers sink into her shoulder.

Rob got to his feet. “So, they think it was his fault?”

“Well ...” Ken stalled.

“Of course, it wasn’t his fault,” Mamma said. “It’s just a big misunderstanding.”

People sometimes got the wrong idea about Dad. He was a big man and he didn’t smile a lot. That was all. Sometimes he got angry with Mamma but they still loved each other. And he drank his tall cans on the lawn chair or the living room sofa but that wasn’t hurting anyone, was it? Sometimes Ken came over and they both drank from cans together. No one seemed to be saying bad things about Ken.

“All we know right now is that the police are investigating him, but because of this report, some people in town will come to their own conclusions before the cops do. You kids are going to have to be tough.”

Ken offered the newspaper to Rob, but Elena snatched it from his hands. “Hey! Gimme that!” he shouted, but Mamma had already grabbed the paper and was tracing the words with her fingernails.

“Sawmill sabotage. Evidence links troubled worker to deaths.” Mamma repeated his name: “Curtis Reid, 37.” She picked out the important details: “Married, father of two, missing for 28 days.”

“He’ll be fine,” Mamma said, and then she traced a few more lines. “Police are investigating a possible link between Reid and the sawmill explosion ...” Mamma couldn’t read any more. She dropped the paper on the table and walked out.

There were many things that Mamma cared less about since the explosion, like what they had for dinner or how they dressed, or whether they’d done their homework or helped unload the dishwasher. But she still managed to drag them both to church.

Mamma pretended not to notice that the atmosphere in church had changed. The Whitmores shuffled so far along the pew when Elena’s family joined them that Elena thought they might fall off the other side. People looked away instead of saying hello and a few old folks scowled at them. Father Craig didn’t treat them any differently but he was always standoffish. Church used to be boring. Now it was cold.

Eventually the listening and the singing and the praying ended. The congregation stood up and drifted towards the door. Nobody actually said anything unkind to them as they left, and they never would.

Elena didn’t want to hear Mamma’s voice calling out for Dad when they returned home, so she walked through the yard and curled up on a lawn chair. Soon came the bounce, bounce, bounce of Rob’s basketball. He was probably avoiding Mamma too. It was a cool day and she zipped up the pink collar on her white windbreaker and folded her arms.

Rob lobbed the ball at the hoop and missed eight times out of ten, but he still strode around the yard like he was good at it. Thud, thud, thud. Elena wasn’t sure why he was on the school team. Maybe they were short of players. She had suggested that once at the dinner table, and Rob lurched out of his seat towards her before Dad put a hand on his chest and settled him down again. Who would do that now? Mamma couldn’t handle him. Mamma couldn’t handle much anymore. Rob was constantly hunting for loose change so he could go and buy bread or whatever had run short. Sometimes Mamma stayed in bed all through dinnertime and Rob made the two of them a mish mash of items from the cupboards; mac and cheese, cream of mushroom soup and packets containing bits of meat and vegetables that you could bring back to life by adding hot water.

Elena watched as the ball cracked the edge of the hoop. Ken never came by to help them with anything. He only brought them bad news. Mamma’s friends (whose husbands worked at the mill) never visited either. They needed other people, people who were on their side. They needed family.

“Rob?”

“What?” He let the ball roll and came over to her.

“Are all Mamma’s family in Italy?”

“Yeah.”

Elena paused. She knew that already, but she had still hoped for a different answer. She’d never been to Italy but she knew it was far away; too far for visiting. Mamma’s parents immigrated to Canada when Mamma was little. A few years later, after Mamma had grown up, Nonna died and Nonno moved back to Italy to be near his brothers. That’s what Mamma said. Mamma stayed in Canada and married Dad.

Elena had asked several times over the years if she could talk to Nonno over the phone, but Mamma always gave the same response. It wasn’t possible because Nonno didn’t speak any English. Elena thought that was strange for someone who’d lived in Canada, and anyway, she didn’t mind. She only wanted to hear his voice, she didn’t need to understand his words. But Mamma said no. Mamma didn’t even speak to Nonno, and he was her dad. As she got older, Elena realized Mamma could speak to Nonno if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to, and Elena never got any closer to figuring out why. It was difficult to speak to Mamma about some things because as soon as the conversation got interesting she would go quiet and leave the room to do something else. In any case, Nonno and the rest of Mamma’s family were in Italy and they weren’t coming to help.

“Are all Dad’s family up north?”

Rob shrugged. “I dunno. Why?”

“Maybe they’ll come and help us find Dad.”

“If they cared about us, we would’ve met them by now.”

Elena disagreed. They’d come. They had to. Up North wasn’t that far away. It wasn’t like Italy. They could drive here in probably a day or so, Elena thought. When they came, she’d finally see what they looked like. Grandma or Gran or Nan; Grandpa or Granddad or Gramps, they could choose. Elena wanted a Gramma and Gramps, ideally. She liked the word Gramps. Grumpy Gramps, except he wouldn’t be grumpy around her. Old people almost always liked her. Dad called them Jim and Audrey whenever she forced him to tell her something about them (which wasn’t often because he said they weren’t worth talking about) but she wouldn’t call them that because no one called their grandparents by their first names.

At least she had Rob. On their first and only search, they had found dad’s truck.

“We have to keep looking for Dad.”

Rob frowned. “Mom is never going to let us go out like that again.”

“He was at that cabin and Frank knows something.”

Rob lost it. “Why do you keep making things up all the time?”

“Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because you’re always like this. Coming up with stupid stories about things that didn’t happen.”

“You can’t just give up.”

“What if he did it?”

Elena couldn’t believe those words came out of his mouth. There was no way he could really think that, but he repeated it.

“What if he set the mill on fire?”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“No, you don’t. You’re too dumb to understand anything.” Rob picked up his basketball and for once, quietly walked inside.