THERE WAS A missing person’s cyber-centre. There were missing person’s helplines, message boards, registers, indexes and clearing houses. There were missing Irish people and missing Yugoslavian people. Lots of missing Yugoslavian people. There were kidnappings and unidentified bodies and unsolved mysteries and fugitives.
Dec surfed aimlessly for hours. Where to begin?
With a photo of Lindy. He could post it on line. And he knew where to find one, even though it would mean going back up to the big house.
He made his way upstairs to the room with Lindy on the door. He opened it, stood on the threshold.
There wasn’t much there. She had never lived in this room. It had been a place for her to hang her clothes, play her guitar, write her songs. The guitar was long since gone — one of the few things she bothered to take with her. There were photo albums on a bookshelf along with her high-school yearbooks and a few romance novels. He sorted through the photographs, found himself trembling a little, hurrying. He picked what he needed, then he closed the drawer. He should go — go right away. But it was too late.
He heard his name being called. The voice seemed to come from far away. He looked around in alarm before crossing the room and looking out the window.
She stood on the back lawn by a birch tree, beckoning him. She was wearing a short, cotton-print summer dress with spaghetti straps. She was shoeless. By the time he had made his way outside, she was at the far end of the garden. There were steps there cut into the steep bank leading down to the Eden River. She disappeared down the hill. He ran after her, tumbling down the steps like a bruised-knee child, laughing at the headlong speed of his descent.
As soon as he reached the bottom, he gathered a pile of lumber: scraps of two-by-four and off-cuts of plywood, a few cedar logs. He had a big wooden-handled hammer from his grandfather’s workshop and bottles of the biggest nails he could find. He was building a raft.
“Now, that’s some boat.” She was squatting on the last earthen step. “You reckon that thing could take us out to sea?”
He stopped hammering and looked at his handiwork. He shrugged.
“Maybe as far as the Tay.”
“Good enough,” said Lindy. “The Tay connects up to the Rideau, doesn’t it? Then there’s the canal to the St. Lawrence, and after that you’re laughing. Next stop Gay Paree.”
Dec looked out at the lazy river. All he wanted the raft to do was float. If he could pole his way across to the other bank, that would be something. There was an apple orchard there that he could plunder like a pirate. But Lindy wanted so much more.
“Build me a boat that will carry two, and both shall row, my love and I.” It was one of the songs she played on the guitar, but not as much lately. The guitar didn’t seem to take her where she wanted to go, either.
A noise made him look up from his work. It was over in the bushes where the old road was. A rustling, that was all. Then a glimpse of something moving, something brown.
“A deer,” said Lindy. Her eyes were smiling. “Did you see it, Dec?”
He wasn’t sure what he saw. “A buck,” she said. “He was beautiful. We’ll tell daddy we saw a buck.” Her eyes grew large. “Let’s say it was a giant buck with huge antlers, each with a hundred points on it.”
“Daddy gets mad when we make up stories,” he said.
“I know,” said Lindy, beaming.
Now Dec sat on the same earthen step. He closed his eyes and a sense of uneasiness claimed him. The ground was damp. It was cold in the deep shade. A deer. Had there been a deer?
Night was coming on. He climbed to his feet and headed back up the earthen stairs. He stopped and looked down at the riverside.
A raft.
He had made her a boat of some kind. A birthday present. It came back to him but not clearly. His memories, so crystal clear one moment, were disjointed, fragmented the next. Had he made the boat or had he only thought of making it?
There was one way to find out. Back in the room with Lindy on the door, there was a shelf on which were arrayed, like trophies, all the presents he had made for her: things of paper, things of felt, and things of string and pipe cleaners. The ashtray with notes painted on it, a little house made of off-cuts from his grandfather’s lathe. But no boat.
“Deckly Speckly?”
He jumped at the sound of Sunny’s voice. She was standing at the door.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped. He saw her flinch, her lip quiver. “Sorry,” he said. “You just caught me by surprise.”
She looked miserable. “Daddy said I could come Up ’cause your Note said you were Here and the alarm system isn’t turned On yet. He said when the ’larm system Is on I won’t be able to Come here any more on my own Because I’m Too Small. I couldn’t find you but I stayed Anyway because you know Why?”
“Why?”
“I miss my Polly Pockets.” She said it so sadly, he was afraid she was going to cry.
He looked at her tenderly. She was wearing her yellow raincoat with a green cardigan under it, and she had a bandage over her ear. They had gone to see the doctor.
He squatted and she came to him. He gave her a hug.
“What’s this?” he said. He gently pushed her away until she was at arm’s length. Then he smiled. Every available pocket was stuffed with tiny dolls.
She tried to cover them up. Her brow furrowed.
“Daddy will be mad,” she said.
Dec grinned with complicity. “He won’t be mad if he doesn’t know.” Sunny smiled, and it was Lindy’s smile, devilish and one hundred watts strong.
“Let’s go,” she said and ran to the grand stairway. But when she got there, she wanted Dec to go ahead of her. He waited obediently at the foot of the stairs. He looked up and watched her mount the wide, smooth oak rail, watched her hug it to her chest. She didn’t slow herself at all as she came hurtling down the graceful curve until she flew into his arms, knocking him clear over.
She roared with laughter and flung herself back spread eagle on the carpet. Dec laughed, too, until it occurred to him that his sister was lying exactly where Denny Runyon had fallen.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “Dec has work to do.”
Sunny didn’t take his hand. She was gazing up at the bust on the bookshelf.
“Hello, Mr. Play-Doh,” she said, pushing great gobs of hair from her eyes. “Sorry we don’t get a chance to Talk no more.”
Dec looked at the statue. He saw his mother perched on the ladder, eye to eye with it. What was she doing? I was sharing a little secret with Mr. Know-it-all, she had said.
“Any more,” he said distractedly, and he took Sunny’s hand to pull her up. She leapt into his arms and wrapped her legs around him.
“Any more,” she said.
“You’re too old for this,” he complained. “You’re too heavy.”
Sunny threw her head back and laughed. One of her Polly Pockets fell out. She jumped down to retrieve it and shoved it back in her pocket. “’Member Deckly, Don’t Tell.” She put her finger to his lips. He pretended to bite her finger. But she was serious. “Daddy doesn’t like it when we Take stuff out of the Big House. Once it’s Here, it’s a Memory, right?”
“Take whatever you like,” said Dec.
“Somebody else is,” she said.
Dec was busy locking the front door.
“Is what?”
“Taking stuff!”
“Like what?”
She looked at him as if he was setting a trap. “In Lindy’s room,” she said. “I wanted to look at that yearbook, the one where she’s Queen of the Pumpkin Patch. Birdie showed it to me a long time ago. But it wasn’t there.”
“Are you sure?” he said.
She glared at him. “’course I’m sure. Three books are there. One is Gone.”