‘I've only got a couple of minutes,’ the woman's voice said. It sounded as though she was walking.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name's Ellen Robertson.’
‘I got that. But—’
‘I need your help.’
‘What do you mean, “help”?’
She paused. ‘I'm afraid.’
‘Of what?’
‘I think the same thing's going to happen to me.’
‘Look, I've got no idea what you think you know about—’
‘I live near Black Ridge,’ she continued, calmly, as if I hadn't spoken at all. ‘Twenty miles from where you used to live.’
For a moment this derailed me, but then I thought – so what? What happened was in the local papers. Available from district libraries, and doubtless on the Internet.
‘So?’
‘Wait a moment,’ she said.
Again I heard a noise like the swishing of a coat worn by someone who was walking quickly. It lasted maybe twenty seconds, and then I heard her breathing harder, her mouth back at the phone.
‘I have to go,’ she said, and the quality of her voice had changed. She sounded apprehensive, nervous. Maybe more than that. ‘I'm sorry, but—’
‘Look,’ I said, finding a tone of voice I hadn't used in a long time, except perhaps to Kyle the night before. ‘Help me out here. I don't know who the hell you are. You're telling me things that don't make sense.’
‘I'm the one who needs help,’ she said, her voice abruptly strong again – too firm, as if held right up against the brink of hysteria. ‘There's no one who's going to believe except maybe you, and now I realize you won't either. I thought perhaps you knew but evidently you don't and I can't risk emailing again because he's scanning the Wi-Fi now. If I tell you on the phone you're going to think I'm crazy and …’
She stopped suddenly. There were two seconds of nothing. Then she said ‘Goodbye’ very quickly, and I was listening to the roaring silence of a dead line.
The obvious thing was to call right back, but the ‘goodbye’ had been smeared, as if the phone had been jerked from her mouth on its way to being stuffed in a pocket. I could pretend she was a lunatic trying to take advantage of me in a way I hadn't yet determined, but I know how people sound when they're scared and freaked out. By the end of the call, the woman I'd been talking to was at least one of these, possibly both. I couldn't just throw a ringing phone into her world.
It sounded like an email wouldn't be a good idea either. The idea that ‘he’ – whoever ‘he’ was supposed to be, a husband presumably – was pulling her messages out of the ether sounded paranoid (it's not as easy as people think), but an email is an irrevocable act. Call someone, and if the wrong voice appears at the end of the line you can claim a wrong number or put the phone straight down and take your chances with Caller ID. Once an email's sent, it's gone. It paints what you've said on the wall and no amount of scrubbing will get it off again.
‘Fuck,’ I shouted. It was the loudest sound the house had heard since I'd been living there. I had no idea I was going to shout before the sound had already echoed flatly off the walls. I did not like to hear a noise that loud coming from inside me.
I stuffed the phone in my jeans pocket and stormed out onto the deck, down the external stairs and along the walkway over the dune. It was still raining, but I didn't know where else to go, or what else to do.
At eight the next morning I called the restaurant. It rang and rang. I gave up, tried again half an hour later. Finally I heard it being picked up.
‘Pelican?’ An unfamiliar voice.
‘Who's that?’
‘Eduardo.’ The cook sounded cautious. Addressing the public didn't come under his brief. ‘Who is it, please?’
‘It's John,’ I said. ‘I need you to find something on the computer.’
‘I don't know,’ he said, doubtful again. ‘I don't think Ted is happy if I was fooling around on there.’
‘There's no reason for him to hear about it.’
‘I don't know computers.’
I forced myself to keep a level tone. ‘Eduardo, it's no big deal. I'll tell you exactly what to do. I just need to get a number off the database.’
‘Whose number?’
‘Becki's.’
‘Ah, it's easy,’ he said, sounding much happier. ‘She print it off, leave it here, after the burglary. Everybody's is here. Is okay.’
‘Great,’ I said, relieved at not having to lean any more heavily on him. ‘Give me hers, and while you're at it, Ted's home phone too.’
He recited them, slowly and painstakingly. I thanked him, and was halfway to putting the phone down before he asked something.
‘You okay?’
‘I'm fine,’ I said.
I called Becki first. I wasn't banking on her to be up, certainly not to sound so businesslike at that time of the morning. She listened without interruption, and immediately agreed to the two things I asked of her. So finally I called Ted.
‘Don't tell me it's happened again,’ he said, straight away.
‘Nothing's wrong with the restaurant. I'm at home.’
‘So …’
I told him that I would be gone a day, maybe two. That Becki had agreed to cover for me on the floor, if reservations merited it. The truth was they probably wouldn't.
Ted listened as I laid it out for him. ‘What's this about?’ he asked, finally.
‘Family business,’ I said.
‘Didn't realize you even had one. A family, I mean.’
‘Well, I did,’ I said. ‘I do.’
‘Anything I can help with?’
‘I appreciate it, but no.’
‘You let me know if that changes.’
He was being kind but I wanted this over with. ‘I will, Ted. It's no big deal. Just, it has to be now.’
‘I hear what you're saying,’ he said.
I'd packed a small bag and locked the place down half an hour later, and ten minutes after that Becki arrived to drive me over to Portland.
* * *
I was on a plane at 12.40, business class, which is all I'd been able to get at short notice. I spent the bulk of the flight staring at the back of the seat in front, trying to concentrate on how strange it felt to be in the air again. I'd flown a lot in the past. For work, and longer ago for other reasons and under different circumstances and in planes that did not offer hot beverages. Sitting on the flight to Yakima, I realized it must be the first time I'd been on an aircraft in over three years.
Yet my hands strapped me in without conscious thought. I passed my eyes dutifully over the laminated ‘Let's pretend a crash isn't going to finish us all in a shrieking fireball of death’ sheet, and accepted a coffee from the stewardess with the frequent flier's casual indifference.
The distance between then and now is always far shorter than you think. By the time the plane had reached its cruising height, I was cradled in the past's unyielding embrace, and listening as it told me the same old story again.
That I'd once had a son, and he died.