13 Days Before the Storm
I wake the next morning deciding I’m going to paint.
The colour doesn’t even matter—I just want to get something on the walls. I tossed and turned all night thinking about how my home must’ve looked, unfinished and cold, to a stranger. One of my husband’s oldest friends. Someone who saw the original plans and now sees how unfinished it is, how far from Nick’s vision.
The thought bothers me, makes me more self-conscious here than I am used to.
So I’m going to paint.
After breakfast I bundle up Nadia and take the SUV to Whitehorse. I text Janelle before I leave to let her know we’re hitting Canadian Tire, in case she’s available for lunch.
As I’m waiting at the counter for my paint to be mixed, Nadia parked in the cart beside me, my phone rings in my back pocket. I pull it out to see Janelle’s number, and hold it to my ear while my other hand is on Nadia to just reassure myself she’s there. She’s never been one to try to leap out of a cart, but I never stop being on edge.
“Hey, you want to do lunch?” I ask when I answer.
“You haven’t seen it yet?”
My spine snaps straight. “What?”
“Are you almost done there?”
I look over at the counter—the young guy is bringing over the first two cans of paint and I’ve already loaded up the primer. I don’t have all the supplies I need, but if I don’t have time, I can get more on the way home or tomorrow. “Almost.”
“Come over, I’ll have lunch ready.”
We both hang up and I politely request he hurry with the rest of the paint while I grab the cart and angle it toward the painting supplies.
*
I’m sure I forgot this or bought too much of that, but I don’t even take stock of what I throw in the cart. I spend way too much money but promptly forget about it and throw everything in the back of the SUV before I drive us across the Yukon River to Janelle’s home in Riverdale.
I’m on autopilot. Usually I marvel at the beauty of the landscape, the greenery in her neighbourhood and the mountains that rise in the distance. But this trip, I barely notice anything and I’m eager to get out. Her vehicle is in the driveway but neither of her husbands are home.
It’s something I’m used to now but took a little adjustment originally. Easton is the one she’s technically married to, but they’ve been with Jacob almost as long as they’ve known one another, and the three of them operate as a complete unit. Easton is generally the stay-at-home parent, but Janelle’s working part-time hours so he can get back into the local arts scene and eventually find work once the boys are in school.
Janelle’s waiting for me, red-painted front door open to the sunny yellow hall beyond, as I climb the steps with Nadia in tow. She takes over with an easy cheery energy I envy, settling my daughter with her twin boys who are already in the living room. They sit around the coffee table with mac and cheese for lunch under the natural light from the big bay window at the back of the house, all happily chatting before I’ve even pulled my coat off.
I’m a bundle of nerves when I sit at the messy kitchen table with my own dish of KD. She also has a salad out and fresh fruit, but I’m not at all hungry and instead drink a glass of water she’s offered me. I don’t see either of her husbands—Jacob would be at work, but Easton’s usually here. He might be out shopping and I’m probably a bad friend for not caring to ask, but her cryptic call has my stomach in a mass of cold knots.
She spins her laptop around for me to see. “I have a news alert for Nick’s name and this popped up this morning.”
It’s on the Lost Ones Advocacy Network homepage—an article by Jenni Montgomery.
I scan, and when Janelle orders me to eat, I obediently shovel macaroni in my mouth as I scroll down.
The article mentions the strangeness of Nick’s disappearance and his “history” of depression. There are stats about missing people in the north, then some non-statements from the RCMP about this case. It alludes to my unwillingness to talk and manages to imply that I might know more than I’ve said without outright saying as much, which is annoying and is probably what Janelle is angry about.
What stops me, though, is the full-colour accompanying photo of me with the top paragraph.
It’s supposed to be about Nick, but there isn’t a photo of him until the very bottom with the plea for anyone who has information to contact them—no, it’s all me. She snapped it when I was going into the General Mart. The wind had lifted my hair back from my face, and at that angle I’m not sure the glasses do enough to disguise me.
I look different now, I know. I’m thirty pounds heavier—comfortably so—and my face has lost the gauntness. Short, blonde, and wavy hair is different in every possible way from its natural state. And I’m bulked up in my late autumn clothes.
But I don’t know if all the changes are enough. I don’t know if there’s a familiarity in the photo that would snag someone’s attention—someone who is looking, someone who expects me to appear changed.
I try to school my features into something more relaxed, aware that Janelle is staring at me, but I’m doubtful I succeed.
She rests her hand on mine, her skin so warm I realize my fingers are ice. “I’m sorry. For someone who’s claiming to help, there’s nothing but speculation there.”
At the bottom it says the network would be posting follow-ups—Montgomery is staying in Whitehorse to see what else she can find.
I lean back with a sigh. The KD isn’t sitting well in my gut. “At least the internet’s such shit in Red Fox Lake, no one will see it yet.” The speculations and rumours bother me a little, but in the larger perspective, they don’t rate as concerns.
There is something much worse that can be stirred up here.
My heart drums a violent tattoo against my ribs, like it might try to escape. Panic claws its way through my veins but with practiced effort I breathe through it, keep any outward sign of it at bay. Survival depends on burying it, on observing before acting, on not letting myself seem afraid.
“She’s at a B&B somewhere in the city,” Janelle continues, and if she notices I’m a step away from a panic attack, she kindly doesn’t bring attention to it. “I’m sure the post will somehow make its way through Red Fox.” She drums her fingertips on a rare empty corner of the oak kitchen tabletop. “I want to say that anyone who reads this will see it’s full of shit, but...”
But people are, in general, very easily led. Especially in Red Fox Lake, anything that confirms their biases about me will be welcome—no one will want to read between the lines and acknowledge how little of substance is in the actual article.
“It was Owen,” I say. I haven’t told her this yet—I’ve just been silently rolling yesterday’s visit around my head over and over again for the past twenty-four hours.
“Owen?”
“He invited them here.”
Her dark eyes get wide. “What?”
I give a very brief summary of the unexpected visit.
“That’s...” Her expression finishes that sentence for her: she finds it weird.
“He offered to help with the house if needed. Free of charge. That man has never said more than a dozen words combined to me in like four years.”
“I always kind of thought...” She shrugs. “That he liked you, a little.”
I never got that impression from him, so I give a non-committal mmm in reply.
“I hate to think of you in that house alone with all this going on,” she says. “We’ve got the room if you want to stay with us for a while—Jacob suggested it this morning.”
I’m already shaking my head. “I appreciate it, but I also don’t like the idea of her coming around my house when no one’s there. The only security features are the deadbolts.” I’d been the one obsessed with being secure out there in the middle of nowhere; in Red Fox Lake, barely anyone locked their doors and Nick couldn’t fully understand my obsession with security. Even the average Whitehorse resident wasn’t as careful about it as me. “Tomorrow I’m going to start painting.”
“You finally settled on some colours?”
I shrug. “I can always change it later.”