11 Days Before the Storm
The warmth has held, but everyone knows we’re expecting a sharp drop and a snowstorm in another couple of weeks.
Just a few more days and the floors will be going in. The roof is done. There are things to do—always more to do—but we can winter here. My bank account will stop hemorrhaging, but I’ll need to stock up food and firewood. Ensure the first aid kit is up to date. We’re close enough to Red Fox Lake in the event of an emergency—it’s a ways from the Whitehorse hospital, though, because that twenty-minute drive gets a lot longer in the winter, and suddenly I’m rethinking everything because I wasn’t supposed to be doing this without Nick.
Montgomery hasn’t posted anything new and hasn’t shown up at my door.
But I’m still watching for her.
I’m walking through the woods with Nadia—we’re not far from the house, I can see the grey stone of the rear wall in my peripheral vision, but I’m thinking again about ways to mark the trails before the snow returns. Birds sing and flitter through the trees, and the breeze is warmer than I’ve been used to the past few days.
We’re going slow, her little hand in mine, when she suddenly squeals something unintelligible and bolts forward.
I lose my grip but even with her in a full run I’ll catch up in a few steps. Her dark hair streams behind her, the sunlight giving it a golden sheen.
A few long strides and I’m next to her. “Hold on, what is it, Dee?”
She halts and so I do; I drop down to her level as she thrusts her finger ahead to point at something.
It takes me a minute and then I see the slightest twitch several metres ahead of us between the narrow trunks of newer trees.
A snowshoe hare. Her coat is still brown from summer, but is starting to go white with the approaching winter. She blends well; the threads of sunlight streaking the dead-leafed ground matches the pale dappling on her coat to help camouflage her.
“What’s the bunny doing?” she asks.
“She’s probably getting something to eat,” I say. “Do you see how still she is?”
Nadia nods. She loves wildlife, has since a young age—Nick was looking forward to taking her out here to explore as she got older. She’s completely rapt, more so than she is with TV or books or anything else.
“She can go so still to protect herself. When she doesn’t move like that, predators can’t find her.”
Nadia frowns and spares me a glance. “Pretaters?”
I nod. “Bigger animals that might want her for dinner.”
Her dark eyes get wide and lips part to speak but my phone rings.
I pull it out and recognize Janelle’s number. “Hey,” I say as I answer.
“It’s gone national,” she says. “There was some CBC special that made mention of the Lost Ones Advocacy Network and they used the anniversary of Nick’s disappearance to launch a story about missing people in the territories.”
It’s taking all of my energy to remain in a crouch, to not drop to the ground as my stomach bottoms out. A tremor works up my arms and I squeeze the phone so I don’t drop it.
No, no, no, no, no...
I have no idea what to say.
“Immy?” Janelle prompts.
“Yeah, yeah, still here. I, uh...”
“It’s popping up a few places. It might ultimately be really good—I know Montgomery’s a goon for that stunt she pulled, but nothing I’m seeing mentions any of those bullshit theories and there’s a call for more information. So maybe...maybe something will come of it.”
Maybe. But it might yet be very bad for me.
I thank her and hang up. Nadia’s been watching me this whole time and now we both look back to where the hare was, but she’s gone.
Smart rabbit to use the distraction.
*
I review the CBC coverage myself, both the brief national news segment video and the further articles on the site. Nick’s disappearance is a small piece of a much larger puzzle they talk about, and there are half a dozen other missing persons cases from the past few years brought up. Each story is similar to Nick’s: people gone without any evidence of where or why, those left behind scrambling to find an explanation. In some cases, there’s a level of certainty that drugs were involved—maybe a fatal overdose, body never found. In others, foul play is suspected, but no one’s ever come forward with sightings. Still others are the Nicks of the world, there one moment and gone another, with wild theories and speculations from armchair sleuths who never set foot in the territories.
But the CBC article links back to the Lost Ones Advocacy Network, and I find there another profile of Nick pleading for information.
There are photos of me online.
Not only the one Montgomery took but one I don’t even recognize at first—it’s from nearly two years ago, a New Year’s Eve party. Me and Nick together with a group of others, our arms around one another as we smile at the camera, both with silly headbands that say Happy New Year’s among a shimmer of blue and silver decorative stars.
The sight of his face makes me ache.
He’s a beautiful man. Beautiful might not be the right word because of the strong angles of his face, the carved jaw—maybe handsome is better. His eyes, dark and warm. His hair, sleek and black, just brushing his shoulders.
We look good together, I think—we look happy. We were from day one, and that’s not nostalgia or grief clouding my memory; we had fights, like any couple, but we were compatible, stable. He was a good father, a good husband, a good man. I was a better person with him.
I see why this photo was chosen—it humanizes him, it shows him as a normal man, it displays his wife for sympathy. I’ve been so careful about not having my photo taken but we definitely had a few drinks and that’s clearly why I’d forgotten about it.
This photo puts me front and center in the story, and even though I know I look different now, I know all of the steps I took—the hair, the glasses, the extra weight, the clothes, and even the sheer fact that I’m smiling—make a difference...
I still see a different girl looking back at me.
I scroll down to see the comments appearing—three hundred and counting, clearly none of them moderated.
It’s always the wife, posits one.
Another declares Nick killed himself because of me.
More and more stream by, jumping wildly between extremes of sympathy to violent conspiracy theories. I try to make myself read through all of them just in case—like there might be a warning there, a simple I know her, a name I haven’t used in five years, but eventually I close the tab when my stomach churns and I can’t look anymore.
I feel exposed. Raw. Terrified. My fingers tremble as I set my phone aside on the counter and I squeeze them into fists to steady me—squeeze so hard my whole hands aches. When I ease my fingers open again, my nails have left half-moon dents on my palm that don’t go away.
Even though I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later—even though I didn’t do social media, even though I took precautions to ensure people didn’t take my picture—I’m still surprised. I still didn’t see this coming.
I’m envious of the hare we saw in the forest and wonder if I just hold still enough, the danger will pass.
But I am not a hare.
Not anymore.