October 29

6 Days Before the Storm

 

 

It’s been strangely quiet.

We’re sticking to wearing socks around the house while the floors settle. The temperature sharply plummeted this morning, but the sky is clear still. Forecast calls for heavy snow in a few days.

Bright flags of colour stand out in the trees behind the house. I spent an hour late yesterday afternoon walking the trails with Nadia, marking low-hanging branches and trunks with vinyl flags every few trees. Different colours for different trails and directions, always leading back to the house. With every step I thought of Nick potentially out there last winter, unable to find his way home. Like the flags might reach through time and bring him back to me.

I haven’t told Janelle about Owen. I’m not sure what to even say. He hasn’t contacted me, didn’t drop by with the contractors, and I’m assuming he’s not going to be dropping by anymore even though he’d left his favourite hat here.

While I can’t move the furniture in yet, I can start hanging things on the walls. With winter approaching, I opt for adding hooks by the door for outerwear, and I hang Owen’s hat on the very end. I’m not even entirely sure where he lives in Red Fox Lake—I think he has a little cabin on the edge of town, but that describes about twenty houses off the top of my head. The alternative is to hang out at the bar and watch for him, but I don’t need any more rumours around town about me.

New off-white Roman shades—cheap ones, picked up from Walmart when I got Nadia yesterday—cover the lower-floor windows now, though I’ll have to replace them with proper blackout ones in the spring. I feel a little more secure with them down, knowing at least no one can peer inside at my child.

After lunch, I gather up the compost that’s been building in the counter bin and shuffle my feet into shoes to take outside. By next summer, the outside compost should provide some dirt for the gardens. Nick wanted to have a heated greenhouse and I don’t think I’ll ever get that far, but there might be a few seasonal things I can grow.

I open the door and a paper flutters at my feet.

The corner of it is tucked under a stone the size of a large coin, keeping it in place. I set the bin outside the door as I lean down and scoop up the paper—it looks like a newspaper article, and one carefully cut out so there’s no masthead for me to identify.

An article about a possible suicide and missing body. And I don’t need that masthead to know it’s dated five years ago.

The heat of the sun touches my skin, but a cold terror ices my veins.

My gaze shoots up to search the driveway past my SUV, the trees. There are no footprints I can see—the ground is too hard and there’s no snow yet. Spruce and fir trees march a long dark line to the left of the driveway, and a person could slip in there and disappear in moments. A bitter wind chills my cheeks, and when I breathe out it fogs up my glasses, obscuring my vision.

I shove the newspaper in the compost bin, but I leave it on the step and close and lock the front door.

 

*

 

I wake in the night to shattering glass.

I fly out of bed in seconds. I wore jeans and a tee overnight, and tennis shoes that are more suited for summer but are easier to sleep in than boots. My phone is in my back pocket and I’m out the bedroom door to stand in the hall in front of Nadia’s room before my brain has fully registered what’s going on.

Someone’s in the house.

Someone’s in the house.

Fear subsides as adrenaline takes over, shuffling my panicked thoughts to the back of my brain so I can act. I ease Nadia’s door mostly shut to cut back the glow of her nightlight, threads of pale blue giving me something to see in the darkness. The baby gate still blocks off the top of the stairs.

I listen. I don’t even breathe. I don’t think it was a window—it had to be the jar I left on the doorknob again. And I should hear steps on the shattered glass, on the hardwood.

I don’t.

Wind whistles and the temperature creeps down while I wait in the cold darkness of the upstairs hall, staring at the gaping maw of the black stairwell as if daring a monster to arise from its depths. I suspect the front door is open. But I don’t hear anything.

I wish our bedrooms were built facing the front of the house, so I could look outside and see if a figure is retreating. But I’m blind up here. I have no idea.

Heading down will put me at a disadvantage—someone could be waiting just around the corner from the stairs, if they somehow made it across the glass without a sound. And if I make it down there, if I clear the house of an intruder, what is left? I relock a door I know this person can open?

Breathless seconds pass and I still don’t hear anything. The glass might’ve made enough noise to scare them off. Or they might’ve backed off then planned to approach again.

If Nadia wasn’t here, I’d take more chances. But she is, and she has to be my priority.

I open her door, silently step in, and then seal the door shut. There’s no lock—I didn’t want to risk her locking herself in accidentally—so I go to her dresser and unlatch it from the wall, carefully shuffle it over.

“Mommy?” Nadia says, the sheets rustling.

“I’m just playing a game, Little Sparrow.” At least with her awake, I can make a more noise. I tug the dresser and push it up against the door.

She’s sitting up in bed and I realize I might’ve done the thing I tried so hard to prevent—I might’ve set her up for trauma, for hiding in her room from a man who may hurt us. I back up to sit with her, make my face a wide grin as I reach for her bedside lamp. My fingers tremble and take two tries to grasp and tug the chain, then her teal-and-grey floral bedroom is filled with light.

“I’m sorry I woke you up—the heater stopped working in my room and I was so cold.” Though I try to keep my voice cheery, I keep the volume down.

She blinks sleepily at me and I urge her to lie down again, brushing her hair back from her eyes as I glance around the room.

The dresser won’t hold someone determined but it’s about the heaviest thing in here. I can add my weight to it, of course, but if he gets that far, I’ll have to have another plan for Nadia. It’s not like I can send her out the window to run for help—too far a drop, too far from town. We have no neighbours out here anyway. She can hide under the bed or the closet, but that’s it.

So allowing something to happen to me, leaving Nadia on her own, is not an option. If someone comes up here for me, the only outcome is that I kill them. I can do that—at least I have the will and inclination for it. But I may not have the means. I scan the room for weapons, and that leaves me with the lamps. The bedside one is small but heavy, and I’ll have to be close to use it. The one in the far corner is a floor lamp that will give me some reach, but it may not have the weight or the momentum to do serious injury.

While I’m contemplating, I’m also listening, but I hear nothing at all. No steps on the stairs. I wouldn’t hear more than very loud noises downstairs, but at least that means he hasn’t gone for the steps yet.

Nadia settles down on her side with a yawn, clutching a beat-up Mr. Bunny who is missing an ear.

I pull out my phone. It’s ten to three. The nearest RCMP detachment is technically in a town next to Red Fox Lake and about ten minutes away, but their hours are limited. A 911 call will go to Whitehorse. I don’t know how long it’ll take anyone to get here—maybe twenty minutes, maybe more.

The reality is, if there was someone actually at the door this second trying to get into the room, I wouldn’t hesitate. But like the graffiti downstairs last week, if whoever opened the door has left, and if I’m calling about an emergency that is not actually pressing...what then? What about when they look deeper into me when they figure out this isn’t some random teenage prank? And what are the chances they’d do something to help when the laws and courts routinely fail victims?

There is still no sound outside Nadia’s bedroom.

So I text Owen:

Are you awake?

I haven’t eliminated him as a suspect, and I listen in case there’s a ding in the hall. I can imagine him perched silently on the stairs as the sound comes and betrays him, but it never happens.

My phone is on silent, and a few minutes later it buzzes in my tight grip.

Yeah. U ok?

I think someone’s in my house.

Another minute and an ellipsis appears, then:

Be right there. Hide.

I am.

I wait there on the bed while Nadia slumbers, still holding my phone and keeping an eye on the time. I want to close my eyes in the hopes it’ll help me focus on the noises in the house, that I might hear someone coming; I don’t because I have this irrational fear someone will be standing there in the room with me when I open them.

Again I wish the bedroom window faced the front of the house. Neither the master nor Nadia’s room do, and I wish I could go back and advise Nick of that mistake now. Our master bedroom has side- and back-facing windows so we could see the sun rise over the woods, which was a lovely idea but not a practical one now when I want to watch for the arrival of help—or retreat of whoever broke in.

Ten minutes have gone by when I hear distinct steps on the stairs beyond the closed door.

I tense head to toe as I silently rise from the bed and tuck my phone in my back pocket. My weight shifts from foot to foot in preparation and I calculate the steps to the lamp just in case, my frantic heartbeat pulsing in my ears.

The hardwood in the hallway groans a little, then I hear a quiet: “Imogen?”

A heavy breath whooshes out of me. I cast a quick look at Nadia, who is back to sleep, then as quietly as I can, I move the dresser enough to open the door a few inches.

Owen appears in that slice of space and glances over my shoulder to check the room, then meets my gaze. “They left.” He whispers it and Nadia doesn’t stir.

My shoulders deflate and I nod, hold my hand up for him to wait, and then finish shuffling the dresser back and latching it to the wall again. When Nadia stirs, I tell her the heat is back on and she should go to sleep; in response she turns and flops on her stomach with her head facing the wall. This time Mr. Bunny tumbles from her fist as her hand slacks, and flops on the teal-striped area rug.

I step into the dark hallway and shut her door behind me.

Owen has the Maglite from downstairs and all the upstairs doors are open like he’s checked everywhere. He indicates over his shoulder to the stairs, where the glow of the lower level lights shine, and I nod. He goes first.

It’s cooler downstairs than it should be—the door must’ve been open the whole time since I heard the glass shatter. It’s closed now, and there’s the glitter of broken glass across the floor in front of it.

I shiver involuntarily and head straight to the kettle. I shouldn’t have coffee at this hour but I need some warmth and will have an herbal tea. While the water boils, I get the broom and dustpan.

Owen does a slow circuit of the downstairs, and when I finish scooping up the broken glass, he opens the door again and shines the flashlight on the front step. There’s the faintest dusting of snow, and beyond him I can see the footprints—his and whoever else was here.

I’d have to really look to know if they all match. My gut, though...my gut says they don’t. Because while he could be staging break-ins and the vandalism so that I’ll run to him, two days have passed since he was last here and he hasn’t initiated contact since. If this was all a ploy for me, he’d be using it every time I pushed him away. But I haven’t pushed yet. Not even when he kissed me.

“I’m going to see where the prints go,” he says.

“Owen—”

“I won’t go far. Have your phone?”

I nod.

“I’ll text in ten minutes. If I don’t, get Nadia and drive to the city.”

I reluctantly agree, and when he closes the door behind him, I lock it. I take up vigilance at the kitchen island with my tea, letting the heat from my mug warm me and trying not to let my mind spin out of control.

It’s after three in the morning. There is no doubting myself: the doors were locked. That jar only would’ve fallen if someone had picked the lock and turned the knob. It is irrefutable: someone broke in while I slept.

The noise of the glass chased him off, but if it hadn’t? What would he have done?

And what would deter him when the inevitable next time came?

At eight minutes, there’s a knock at the door and Owen calling, “It’s me.”

I open the door, and I’m stepping back to let him in when he gestures me onto the porch.

Trepidation stirs but I follow, hitting the exterior light as I do.

He leads me right to the front of the house instead of the left towards the woods as I’d expected, and shines the flashlight over the stone and wood. “This is the first thing I saw when I pulled up.”

WHORE is written on my home.

This time it’s not paint I have around—it’s written in black and might be spray paint, but I’m not close enough to see. The word takes up about three to four feet, cutting over the lower windows.

Jesus Christ.

The world tilts a little under my feet from exhaustion and worry and the shock of adrenaline that’s been coursing through me. I breathe deep and blink until everything rights itself again, then head past Owen for the house.

He follows and shuts the door behind him, while I return to my tea at the kitchen island and take a long sip for warmth and steadiness.

He takes off his boots by the door and comes to stand at the other end of the island. He doesn’t have a coat—it looks like he ran out of his place in a hurry, worn jeans and a rumpled sweatshirt. A white t-shirt peeks from beneath the hem. The cold wind has chafed his cheeks to red and I only just realize he’s shivering.

I leave my barstool to turn the heat up in the living room and then head for the kitchen counter. “Tea? Coffee? I think I have some hot chocolate.”

“Coffee, if you don’t mind.” He sits on one of the barstools while I get the coffeemaker brewing. “The paint isn’t too wet and it would take a while to dry in the cold. It could’ve been done any time tonight, but probably not just now. At least several hours ago. Maybe even mid-evening.”

So it might have even been done earlier in the day. I haven’t been outside since I found the newspaper article, not even to finish dumping the compost. Presumably I would’ve seen or heard something while downstairs with Nadia, but I couldn’t say for sure.

But someone tried to get in the house not half an hour ago—the paint would be really wet still if it had been done then. Had someone graffitied and then come back later?

“The prints go into the woods,” he continues. “I lost them.”

Like yesterday when I discovered the ones outside the window. I pour the coffee and debate what to say as I carefully bring the mug over to him. My hands are trembling and I curse them, even though I know it’s the body’s reaction throwing me off, something as involuntary as breathing. A bit of coffee sloshes over the edge and droplets scald my knuckles and drip on the island’s countertop.

Owen’s hand comes over mine, his fingertips icy but at least not shaking. He extracts the mug from me with his other hand but doesn’t let me go, holds my hand there on the island to with his fingers folded over mine. “Imogen...first, I’ve gotta tell you, some folks saw my truck here the other night. Dally at the grocery store asked me about it...so there are rumours.” Redness crawls up his neck and it’s not from the cold. “I’m sorry for that. But no one in town would break into your house. What’s going on.”

He doesn’t ask, because it’s not a question. I’ve dragged him out here at three in the morning without phoning the police and he is owed an explanation.

I don’t disagree, I’m just not sure what to give him.

I deflate and sit kitty-corner to him. He releases my hand and I pull over my mug, wrapping both hands around it to warm them. I stare into the depths of my tea, the steam filling my face. My glasses are still upstairs and I wonder how different I look without them—Nick and Nadia are the only ones to have ever seen me in the Yukon without.

My lips part while I still try to form appropriate words. “I was...involved with someone. Before I moved to Whitehorse, before I met Nick. He was...abusive.”

Owen says nothing for several long minutes, staring at the rapidly dissipating steam from his coffee without taking a sip. “The timeline never seemed to fit. When you and Nick met...someone asked him one time and he said he first met you when he went to visit his aunt, in Vancouver. So I figured maybe you’d hooked up then, that’s why you came to the Yukon, but...”

Nadia’s birth certificate lists Nick as the father. That was his decision as much as it was mine, meant to protect her if anyone ever came looking. I had been in Vancouver before coming to the Yukon, getting a driver’s license under Imogen Sharp so there was a bit of a paper trail before I kept going north. But Nick and I had never met in B.C., and he’d been there and gone back to Whitehorse long before I’d arrived. We said we’d met there, as a backup if anyone got asking.

I’m treading carefully because Owen’s apparently suspected some of this and I don’t know what he has told to others already.

I aim for as much honesty as I can. “He...my ex...” I blink, hard, because all the ways trauma has reshaped my brain to survive keeps me from verbalizing so much of this now. If I don’t talk about it, if I don’t think about it, maybe it happened to someone else. “One of his coworkers was going through a divorce that got ugly—the wife got custody of the kids. And he...he looked me in the eye and said a defense lawyer would be cheaper than a divorce. And if I ever tried to take his child from him, he’d get out of jail before they found my body.”

Owen shakes. He curses under his breath and flexes his hands on the mug so tightly I think the ceramic might break.

“When I got pregnant, I ran,” I say. “Literally got as far as I could, which turns out to be the Yukon.”

“He’s found you.”

I shrug and take a sip of tea. “The day after...you were last here. Yesterday. I noticed some prints circling the house. Someone had been staring in the window the night before in the rain. Watching us.”

He rubs a hand over his mouth, possibly to cover another curse. “And tonight that’s written on your house.”

“It could still be someone in town, but...”

“The police—”

“If I can prove anything and get a restraining order, that wouldn’t protect Nadia. If this goes to the authorities, the courts...men like that get granted custody all the time. I’d have to prove he’s a threat to her, and I don’t even have enough evidence to prove he’s a threat to me.”

“Fuck,” he mutters and drains more of his coffee. “Why would he put that on your floor?” He seems reluctant to repeat the word.

“I told him I miscarried before I ran,” I said. “He said it was my fault. That I’d managed somehow to have an abortion and killed our baby.”

“Fuck,” he repeats in a whisper. “You don’t think...” His gaze turns up to mine. “Could this have something to do with Nick disappearing?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think he would’ve waited a year to then start harassing me, if he’d found me back then.”

“Then...goddamn, the article. All over the news.” He rubs his mouth again and sets the mug down as he leans back. “You think that’s it? I did this when I invited that advocacy group.”

“You didn’t know,” I say quickly. “But there are pictures of me out there. If someone was looking...”

“I’m sorry.”

I smile wryly. “You’ve run up here twice now to a potentially dangerous situation because I’m too afraid to call the police. I think you’re forgiven.”

“But...if you went to the police, surely they could offer something...?”

He keeps bringing me this solution like a white man who has never been abused by the system or those who uphold it can. The laws, the authorities, all exist to help people like Owen. And me, really, had I not been in a situation to know that I could not trust them; if I’d been any other white woman who wasn’t an abuse victim, I probably wouldn’t get it either. The courts, all these systems in place, will not protect me. And there is no way I can explain this to Owen for him to truly grasp—it’s too foreign a concept.

“Men like him still get custody if it’s proven they’ve only harmed their partners and not their children,” I say carefully. “I cannot risk my daughter.”

“If you can’t go to the cops, what are you going to do? Can you...leave, again? Go somewhere else?” The look he gives me suggests he doesn’t like that idea, likely for personal reasons, but will offer it as a solution in case it’s what I want. “Maybe move back to Whitehorse? Less isolated. Closer to the RCMP if something happens.”

Owen remains a bit of a wild card. I don’t know him well. I don’t trust him completely. He is not Nick and I won’t pretend for a moment they’re the same kind of man. He feels guilty for his part in things, possibly feels guilty for coming onto his friend’s maybe-widow, and that’ll obligate him to me but not one hundred percent.

“Disappearing by myself was hard enough,” I say. “With Nadia...I don’t want her in a position of having false documents one day. And I can’t afford to leave the house. Moving to Whitehorse would make sense but all our savings were sunk into this place. I’ve been putting off applying to have Nick declared...” I shake my head. “Legally, he’s still considered alive, and his name is on half of everything. And I’m not ready to...”

He drums his blunt fingers on his mug and says nothing.

I miss Nick. I won’t say I felt safe with him, because I’m not sure I even know what that feels like. But I felt like...I had someone at my side. I felt a good kind of heavy, like I was solid and strong and unmoveable. I felt like I could weather things. I felt like I could take a few moments to rest and someone else would hold the fight until I rose again.

I don’t have that now. I haven’t had that since Nick went to this house in the storm and was never seen again. And I appreciate Owen’s help, I’ll use what is offered, but he will never be Nick.

“If he knows it’s you,” Owen says at last, “if he’s sure, why hasn’t he gone public? Like go to the courts for custody? Why stalk you?”

I suspect I know the reason, but I will not speak it to him. “Maybe...maybe he’s not sure it’s me. Maybe he’s trying to get a rise out of me, so I slip up. Maybe he just wants me good and scared before he kills me.”

Owen meets my eyes. “He won’t kill you.”

I strongly suspect he plans to, but whether or not he’ll succeed remains to be seen.

It’s a promise from Owen, but there isn’t fire behind it. He won’t kill for me, I don’t think. Maybe in the heat of the moment, in self defence, but while I believe everyone has in them the ability to kill in the right circumstances, he would not be easily driven to it—not in this instance.

I should be buzzing still, but I’m honestly just exhausted. I don’t want to think about this anymore, don’t want to deal with it. At least it’ll be a few more days before I move the rest of the furniture from storage—I’ll have time to try to get the graffiti off my house.

“I don’t know what home security stuff works out here without reliable WiFi,” he says as he thinks about it. “Installed some in a house a couple years back, there are a lot of companies working out of Whitehorse, but out here in winter? Can’t count on it.”

“I’d like to change the locks but apparently it doesn’t make a difference.”

“Might be good to add locks anyway. Another deadbolt. Chain lock. Keyless might be an option. Wireless camera with motion detectors that sends shots to your phone, maybe.”

After tonight, some kind of camera setup is definitely at the forefront of my mind. “Latchkey kid knows a lot about locks.”

He offers a faint, sheepish grin. “I’ve installed a few. Do you have locks upstairs?”

I shake my head. “Bathroom doors, not bedrooms.”

“I can get some. Install them tomorrow afternoon.”

“You’ve already done so much, Owen—”

“I’d do it in the morning but I have a job. So afternoon. One lock isn’t a deterrent but three on each entry point might help. Doors are solid—Nick pick them?”

I nod.

He does as well, thoughtfully, as he looks at the front door. “Good frame. Heavy. Built for insulation, withstanding ice and storms. Not flimsy—I think a chain lock will help. Leave it with me.”

“If you’ve got an early morning, you should get home and sleep, then. We’ll be fine here—”

He reaches over and puts his hand over mine again, warm at last and solid. “I’ll sleep on the couch. If it’s okay with you...?”

I don’t know how much I’ll be sleeping myself, but it can’t hurt, so I start to rise. “I’ll get out some blankets.”