Mia and I pack one bag. Between us, we don’t have much. I never mention to James where we are going. Mia asks Ayanna to watch Canoe for a few days, and the woman agrees without reservation. Her nine-year-old son, Ronnie, is thrilled to have a cat to keep company. We ask the taxi to drive us to her apartment on the way to O’Hare. It’s with great difficulty that Mia is able to part with Canoe for the second time. I wonder what happened the first time she said goodbye.
The airport is a horrendous place for a person in Mia’s condition. The noise is deafening: thousands of people, loudspeakers, airplanes soaring overhead. Mia is on edge; we all see it, though she’s tucked between Dr. Rhodes and me, and I have her arm looped through mine. Dr. Rhodes suggests a dose of Valium, which she has brought along in her suitcase just in case.
Gabe peers over. “What else have you got in there?” he asks. The four of us are sitting in a row at our terminal.
“Other sedatives,” she replies. “Stronger sedatives.”
He sits back and reaches for a newspaper that someone has left behind.
“Is it safe?” I ask. “For the...”
“For the baby,” Mia finishes impassively. I can’t bring myself to say the word.
“Yes,” I say, humbled that she was able to.
“It’s safe,” the doctor assures us, “this once. I wouldn’t suggest using it frequently during pregnancy.”
Mia takes the pills with a sip of water, and then we wait. By the time our flight is announced, she is nearly asleep.
We will fly to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a forty-five-minute layover, before continuing onto Duluth, Minnesota. There, a so-called friend of Gabe’s, Detective Roger Hammill, will meet and drive us to Grand Marais. He refers to him as his friend, but even I can hear the disdain in his voice when he speaks of this man. Our flight is early, 9:00 a.m., and as the airplane ascends into the dreadfully cold sky, we know it will be a long day. Our only saving grace is that Mia is asleep.
Mia and I sit side by side. She has the window seat, and me the aisle. Gabe sits opposite the slender aisle and once or twice brushes a hand against my arm and asks if I’m okay. Beside him Dr. Rhodes is lost in an audiobook, the headphones covering her ears. The rest of the plane is oblivious to our situation. They jabber on and on about the weather, skiing conditions and their connecting flights. A woman loses herself in the “Our Father” as the plane takes off, praying we land in one piece. She grips a rosary in her trembling hands. The pilot warns of a bumpy flight and asks that we remain in our seats.
By the time we land in Minneapolis, Mia has come to and is upset once again by the commotion. I ask the doctor when she is due for more medicine, but Dr. Rhodes assures me that we must wait; we need Mia to be lucid for this afternoon. As we wait for our connection, Gabe offers up an iPod for Mia, and finds the least offensive music he can possibly find to drown out the sound.
I wonder what will happen when we arrive. The thought of it is enough to make me sick. I think of Mia’s reaction to the cat. What will her reaction be when we see the place where she was held prisoner all this time? I think of the progress we’ve made since she returned home. Will it be lost?
I excuse myself to use the bathroom and Dr. Rhodes takes my seat beside Mia so that she won’t be alone. When I come out of the bathroom, Gabe is waiting for me. I walk into him so that he collects me in his arms, and says, “Soon, this will all be through. Trust me.”
I do.
In Duluth, we’re escorted to a police department SUV by a man who introduces himself as Detective Hammill. Gabe calls him Roger. Mia says it’s nice to meet him, though Gabe reminds me that it isn’t the first time they’ve met.
He’s a big-bellied man, about my age but to me he looks much older, and I’m made aware than I am getting older by the day. There’s a photograph of his wife taped to the inside of the SUV: an overweight blonde woman, with a circle of children huddled around them. There are six children, each as burly and plump as the next.
Mia, Dr. Rhodes and I slide into the backseat while Gabe takes the front. He offered it to me, but I happily refused, not up to the burdensome task of small talk.
The drive is over two hours. Gabe and Detective Hammill lose themselves in idle banter about police work. They try to one-up one another, and I can tell that Gabe does not like the man. Gabe’s voice is not overly friendly, and at times he is short, though for the benefit of us women, he remains civil. He tries to speak to Mia and me more than our chauffeur, and for much of the drive, the rest of us sit in silence while Detective Hammill gives a soliloquy on two Tiberwolves wins this season against the Chicago Bulls. I have no knowledge of professional sports.
We travel along Highway 61 for the bulk of the journey, riding, in part, along the shores of Lake Superior. Mia’s eyes are steadfast on the waters. I wonder if she’s seen them before.
“Anything look familiar?” Gabe asks more than once. He asks all the questions I don’t have the courage to.
Earlier, Dr. Rhodes made it clear that Gabe should not pry too hard. Gabe made it clear that he had a job to do; hers was to pick up the pieces when they fell.
“Assuming the shortest distance between two points is a straight line,” Detective Hammill says, peering at Mia in the rearview mirror, “you would have traveled this path.”
We pass through Grand Marais and take a path known as the Gunflint Trail. Detective Hammill is a wealth of information, although little he has to offer is new to me, having memorized every detail of the scenic byway in the sleepless nights since Mia returned. We travel along a two-lane road, through the Superior National Forest, surrounded by more vegetation than I believe I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Much of the greenery is dead now, buried under mounds of snow; it will not be unearthed until spring. The evergreen trees embrace the snow in their needles, where they lie heavy from the weight.
What I see in Mia as we continue along our journey is a straighter posture, her eyes more attuned to the outdoors, not a glassy-eyed look like I’ve seen in the past, but an awareness and an interest.
Dr. Rhodes is instructing Mia in visualization and repetitive affirmations: I can do this. I can hear James now, mocking the woman for her irrational techniques.
“Do you recognize anything now?” Gabe asks. He’s turned around in his seat, and she shakes her head. It’s late afternoon, three, maybe four o’clock, and already the sky is becoming dark. Clouds fill the sky, and though the heat runs steady, my hands and toes begin to numb. The heater cannot compete with the subzero temperatures outside.
“Damn good thing you got out when you did,” Detective Hammill says to Mia. “You never would have survived the winter.”
The thought sends a chill through me. Had Colin Thatcher not killed her, Mother Nature would have done the job herself.
“Ah,” Gabe says to lighten the mood. He sees something pass through me that he doesn’t like. “You’d be surprised. Mia is quite a fighter. Isn’t that right?” he asks with a wink. And then he mouths the words that only she and I see: you can do this, as the tires of the SUV hit a mound of snow and we all turn and find ourselves face-to-face with a bleak log cabin.
She’s seen the pictures. There were so many times I found her sitting lethargically, staring at images of this very cabin, or staring into the vacant eyes of Colin Thatcher and seeing nothing. But now she sees something. Detective Hammill opens the door, and like a magnetic force, Mia emerges from the car, and I have to stop her. “Mia, your hat,” I say, “your scarf,” because it’s so cold out here the very air will freeze her flesh. But Mia seems completely unaware of the cold and I have to force the gloves onto her hands like she’s a five-year-old child. Her eyes are lost on this cabin, on the stack of steps that lead from the snow-covered drive to a door that’s been barred with yellow caution tape. Snow covers the steps, though footprints remain, and tire tracks in the drive suggest
that someone has been here since the last snowfall. The snow is everywhere: on the roof, the porch, the uninhabited world around the home. I wonder how Mia felt arriving at this home, so remote one might believe they are the last inhabitants on earth. I shiver at the thought of it.
There’s the lake that I’ve seen in Mia’s pictures, frozen over a thousand times, unlikely to thaw before spring.
I’m overwhelmed with such feelings of loneliness and despair that I don’t see Mia making her way up the steps with comfort and familiarity. Gabe reaches her first and offers to help. The steps are slick and more than once her feet slip.
At the top they wait for Detective Hammill to unlock the door. Dr. Rhodes and I follow close behind.
The detective presses the door open, and it creaks. The rest of us fight for a look inside, but it’s Gabe, with his general decorum, who says to Mia, “Ladies first,” though he follows close behind.
Gabe
Christmas Eve
Somewhere in Minnesota it begins to snow. I drive as fast as I can, which isn’t fast enough. It’s hard to see through the windshield though the wipers go as fast as they can. This is every six-year-old’s dream: snow on Christmas Eve. Tonight Santa will come, his sleigh loaded with gifts for every girl and boy.
Detective Hammill calls. He’s got a couple of guys keeping the cabin under surveillance. He told me about it, a little cabin lost out in the woods. But they haven’t seen anyone come or go; they haven’t gotten a visual of anyone on the inside.
By the time I arrive he plans to have a team assembled: ten or so of his best guys. This is a big deal around here. It’s not every day that this kind of thing happens.
I think of Eve. I go over it a thousand times in my mind: what I will say, the words I will use, to convey the good news. And then I consider the possibility that there isn’t good news: that Mia isn’t in the cabin, or that she doesn’t survive the rescue. There are a million things that could go wrong.
By the time I make my way up the coast of Lake Superior, Roger’s guys are getting antsy. He’s got a half dozen of them headed out to the woods. They set up a perimeter. They’re armed with the department’s best firepower.
Detective Hammill is a man on a mission. Seems he has something to prove.
“No one takes a shot until I get there,” I say as I gun the engine along a narrow, snow-covered road. The tires skid and I struggle to regain control. Scares the shit out of me. But what worries me more is the brassiness in the detective’s voice. Even more than me, he’s a guy led into the line of duty by the prospect of carrying a gun.
“It’s Christmas Eve, Hoffman. My guys have families to see.”
“I’m doing the best that I can.”
The sun sets and it’s dark out here. I floor it. I fly through the narrow pass, nearly decapitating myself on branches that hang low from the weight of the snow. I don’t know how many times I come to a near standstill, the tires kicking up snow and going absolutely nowhere. This piece-of-shit car is going to get me killed.
I’m going as fast as I can, knowing I need to get to Thatcher before Detective Hammill does. There’s no telling what that guy might do.
Colin
Christmas Eve
This afternoon I returned to town and put in a call to Dan. Everything’s ready to go. He says he’ll meet us on the 26th in Milwaukee. It’s the best he could do. The guy wasn’t about to drive all the fucking way to Grand Marais. He made that clear.
It’s my Christmas present for her, a surprise for tomorrow. We’ll leave by sundown and drive all night. It’s the safest way. I suggest we meet at the zoo. Nice public place. Open Christmas day. I’ve gone through it in my mind a thousand times. We’ll park in the lot. She’ll hide out in the primate house. I’ll meet Dan by the wolves. I’ll find her when he’s gone, when I’m sure we aren’t being trailed. From there, the quickest way to Canada is in Windsor, Ontario. We’ll drive into Windsor, and then as far as we can get on the gas money we have. I have enough cash to get us there. And then it will be gone. We’ll live under pseudonyms. I’ll get a job.
I’ve got Dan working on a fake ID for Ma, too, and when I can, I’ll get it to her, somehow. When I figure that part out.
I know this is my last night in this shitty old cabin. She doesn’t. I’m secretly saying my goodbyes.
Tomorrow is Christmas day. I remember that when I was a kid I’d leave the house early on Christmas day. I’d count out a dollar and two cents from a change jar we kept. I’d walk to the bakery at the corner. They were open until noon on Christmas. We pretended it was a surprise, though it never was. Ma would lie in bed long enough to hear me sneak out the front door.
I never went straight to the bakery. I’d be a Peeping Tom, staring through the open windows of the other kids in the neighborhood, just to see what they got on Christmas. I’d stare for a while at their happy, smiling faces, then think fuck them as I trudged through the snow the rest of the way.
The reindeer bells on the bakery door would announce my arrival to the same old lady who’d worked there a hundred years. She wore a Santa hat on Christmas and would say Ho, ho, ho. I’d ask for two fifty-one-cent chocolate long johns that she’d slip into a white paper lunch sack. I’d return home where Ma would be waiting with two cups of hot chocolate. We’d eat our breakfast and pretend that it wasn’t Christmas day.
This time I’m staring out the window. I’m thinking of Ma, wondering if she’s okay. Tomorrow will be the first time in thirty some years we haven’t shared a long john on Christmas day.
When I can get my hands on paper and a pen I’ll write her a note and drop it in a mailbox in Milwaukee. I’ll tell her that I’m okay. I’ll tell her that Chloe is okay, just to give her useless parents some peace of mind, if they give a shit. By the time the letter makes it to Ma, we’ll be out of the country. And as soon as I can figure out how, I’ll get Ma out of the country as well.
Chloe comes up behind me and wraps her arms around me. She asks if I’m waiting for Santa Claus.
I think of what I’d change if I could, but I wouldn’t change a thing. The only regret is that Ma isn’t here. But I can’t fix that without ruining this. One day it’ll all be right. That’s how I satisfy the guilt. I don’t know how or when. I don’t know how I’ll get the fake ID to Ma without being found, or how to send her enough money for a flight. But someday...
I turn and gather her into me, all hundred-and-some pounds. She’s lost weight. Her pants no longer rest on her hips. She’s always yanking on them to keep them from falling. Her cheeks are hollow. Her eyes have begun to dull. This can’t go on forever.
“You know what I want this year for Christmas?” I ask.
“What?”
“A razor,” I say. I comb the mustache and beard with my fingers. I hate it. It feels disgusting. I think of all the things that will be better when we get out of the country. We won’t be so fucking cold. We can shower with real soap. I can shave this woolly face. We can go out into the world together. We won’t have to hide, though it will take until all eternity for us to feel safe.
“I like it,” she mocks, smiling. When she smiles I see all the pieces fall into place.
“Liar,” I say.
“Then we’ll ask for two,” she says. She lets me feel the soft hair on her legs.
“What would you ask Santa for?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says without thought. “I have everything I want.” She rests her head against my chest.
“Liar,” I repeat.
She pulls back and looks at me. What she wants, she says, is to look pretty. For me. To take a shower. To wear perfume.
“You look beautiful,” I say and she does. But she reiterates in a whisper: Liar. She says she’s never felt so revolting in her life.
I settle my hands on the sides of her face. She’s
embarrassed and tries to look away, but I force her to look at me. “You look beautiful,” I say again.
She nods. “Okay, okay,” she says. Then she fingers my beard and says, “And I like the beard.”
We stare for a moment before calling a truce.
“One day,” I promise, “you’ll wear perfume and all that.”
“Okay.”
We list the things that we’ll do one day. Go out to dinner. Watch a movie. Things the rest of the world does every damn day.
She says that she’s tired and disappears to the bedroom. I know she’s sad. We talk about a future, but in her mind she’s convinced no such thing exists.
I gather our things, trying to be sly. I set them aside on the counter: her drawing pad and pencils, what’s left of the cash. It takes all of two minutes to gather the things that are of importance. She is the only thing I need.
Then, out of boredom, I carve the words We Were Here into the countertop with a sharp knife. The words are serrated, not a masterpiece by any means. I drape my coat over the engraving so she won’t see it until it’s time to leave.
I remember that first night in the cabin. I remember the fear in her eyes. We Were Here, I think, but it’s someone else who leaves.
I watch the sun set. The temperature in the cabin drops. I add wood to the fire. I watch the minutes on my watch tick by. When I think the boredom is certain to kill me, I start dinner. Chicken noodle soup. This, I tell myself, is the last time in my life I’ll ever eat chicken noodle soup.
And then I hear it.
Eve
After
She’s been here before. She gathers that immediately.
Mia says that there used to be a Christmas tree, but now it’s gone. There used to be a fire constantly roaring in the stove, but now it’s silent. There used to be a smell much different than this; now all there is, is the piercing odor of bleach.