“Have you tried calling the condo lately?” I ask, pushing aside my trepidation.
“I’ve been a little busy,” she says testily.
I pull my cellphone out of my jacket pocket. “What’s the number?”
Her lips crinkle.
“What?” I say.
“I’ll call when the driving’s not so bad,” she says.
“That’s not going to happen until you park the car.” I read the pinched lines on her face. “You don’t want me talking to Avery, do you?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Afraid of what I might say to him?” I say.
She takes her eyes off the road just long enough to give me a dry, what-do-you-think look.
“I work with kids his age every day,” I tell her. “You think I can’t control myself just because he spent the night with my daughter?”
Marla kneads the steering wheel. “You make it sound like he kidnapped Severn,” she says sharply. “Like she didn’t have a choice.”
“What are you saying? You think this was her idea?”
She pierces me with a penetrating stare. “I think you know it was.”
I narrow my eyes, trying to decide whether she’s simply pushing back or knows more about Severn than I’ve imagined. Before I can make up my mind, her arms go rigid. She slams on the brakes. I grab the dashboard for dear life as I feel the car fishtail.
“Jesus Christ!” I exclaim.
She fights with the steering wheel. I feel my seat belt digging into my shoulder. My head pops back as the car behind us kisses our bumper. I brace myself, waiting for the next impact, but it doesn’t come. We’re stopped now, aimed askew, straddling two lanes. A wisp of snow blows across the hood. I look over at Marla. Her hands are shaking.
“What was it?” I ask. “A patch of ice?” My impatience is bubbling at the surface. I’m thinking of the police, tow trucks, all the time we’ll waste here while Severn becomes increasingly lost to me.
Her eyes are round with panic. “Something ran out,” she says, her lips continuing to move, but her voice failing.
“What?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” she says, gulping air like a goldfish.
I unbuckle myself in disgust and get out of the car, stepping ankle-deep into the slush. It’s a cab that’s rear-ended us; the driver glaring at me. He has to wait for the traffic to clear before he can open his door and begin his cries of bloody murder. In the meantime, I scan the pavement for signs of roadkill—a dog, a cat, a squirrel—but see nothing, just a steady progression of annoyed drivers edging their way around our accident.
“You crazy?” yells the cabbie, now out of his vehicle. “Why you stop in the middle of nowhere?” He has a Middle Eastern accent. He must hate winter driving even more than I do, I realize.
“Something ran out in the road,” I say, despite having no evidence to support my claim.
“What ran out in road?” he says, waving his arms. “Nothing ran out in road.”
I examine our respective bumpers. “Doesn’t look too bad,” I say, trying to cut a quick deal. “Maybe we don’t need to get our insurance companies involved.”
He’s still angry, but I can tell he’d just as soon not wait for the police or see his premiums go up. “Papers,” he says with a modicum of compromise. “Show me your papers.”
“They’re just in the car,” I say, sensing that I may be able to talk my way out of this mess after all. “I’ll get them for you.”
He follows me, perhaps worried that I’ll try to make a break for it. I open the passenger door and reach for the glovebox. Marla is gasping for air now, her hands splayed across the dashboard.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, knowing full well that she’s not. There’s a panic in her eyes that I recognize. I last saw it in Helen in the weeks before she died.
The cabbie sees it too. “Hey, lady, I not hit your car so hard,” he says, suddenly worried that a case for personal injury is about to be made against him.
“Just try to take a deep breath,” I tell her.
It’s no good. Her translucent complexion is turning an even more ghostly shade of white.
I realize this has nothing to do with our trivial collision.
I turn to the cabbie. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“You follow,” he says, heading back to his taxi. “I take you there.”
As I help Marla around to the passenger side, I wonder whether I should have asked him to call an ambulance instead. She grips my arm like a vice, her lungs straining, fear still floating in her eyes. At one point, she leans against me heavily, and I’m afraid she’s about to pass out, but then she recovers. The cabbie’s already edging back into traffic by the time I get her strapped in, so I scramble around to the driver’s side and slide behind the wheel, not even bothering to adjust the mirrors.
Chapter 8
If my plan to reach Helen was to succeed, I knew I’d need help. I walked by the bookshop several times after school the following week, casting nonchalant looks through the window as I passed, before finally entering one snowy day when I was reasonably certain that Will was looking after the place on his own. He greeted me with his customary conviviality, rubbing his hands at the prospect of challenging me to another round of historical trivia. Between customers, we debated Peary’s questionable claim of being the first explorer to reach the North Pole. We each offered competing theories on how the ancient Egyptians could have built the pyramids. Then, once I thought he was sufficiently softened up, I made my pitch. At first, I could see that he thought I was pulling his leg. But when I didn’t show signs of getting to any kind of punchline, he looked at me as if I were some kind of amiable lunatic.
“You’re serious,” he said.
“It’ll be a hook to get more kids into your shop,” I said. “And their parents.”
“You think you’d be that much of a draw?” he said sceptically.
“I did it a couple of times in my history class. It was a big hit.”
I saw that he wasn’t convinced. “Walter’s the one to talk to about this kind of thing,” he said. “It’s his shop.”
“I was hoping you’d talk to him for me.”
Will chuckled. “Really.”
“The costume’s the thing that catches people’s attention first.” I pulled a photo of myself in full regalia from the pocket of my parka to show him. “I worked two summers in Penetanguishene.”
“What? At the loony bin there?”
“There’s a historic site just across the road. An old British outpost.”
“Walter’s not much for razzle-dazzle,” he said. “Maybe you haven’t figured that out yet.”
I jabbed the counter emphatically with my finger. “Give me a chance. I swear that I