Outnumbered

  “You used to live there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With your family?”

  “No.”

  “By yourself?”

  I sigh and give her a hard look. She shrugs, and I go back to eating.

  “Just making conversation,” Seri says. “I’m not trying to pry.”

  We finish our meal in silence, but she keeps looking over at me. I know she’s going to keep asking questions if I don’t say something, and I figure Margot is a benign enough topic.

  “I lived with a girlfriend,” I finally tell her.

  “Oh.” Seri looks down and shuffles scrambled eggs around her plate. “What happened?”

  “Broke up.”

  “Is that why you live alone now?”

  “No.” I stand and reach out for her empty plate.

  “I can do the dishes,” Seri says.

  “You cooked.” I raise an eyebrow, but she doesn’t make me remind her about how she did the dishes when I cooked. She hands me her plate and cup with a wry smile.

  “So, why are you alone now?” she asks. “I thought maybe you had just always been a hermit.”

  I glare at her, but she’s smiling playfully. I shake my head, still not knowing what to make of her.

  “We broke up because I was moving out here,” I tell her. She sits quietly eyeing me and waiting for more. I dunk the dishes in the water and start to scrub. “She didn’t want me to live alone, but I was a shitty boyfriend, and we both knew it.”

  “You don’t seem all that bad,” she says quietly. “A little moody, maybe.”

  “I’m moody?” I laugh. “You’re one to talk.”

  “I am a little out of my element here,” Seri says in her defense. “Being trapped in a snowstorm wasn’t exactly in my travel plans.”

  “How did you get here anyway?” I ask. The best offense is a good defense, and turning the questions back on her might just keep them away from me for a while.

  “I’m still trying to figure that one out myself,” she says with a nervous chuckle. “I was never the adventurous type. I moved to Montana for a while, thinking it was a good place to get away from it all. I heard a bunch of the fishermen there talking about making a trip to Canada, and it seems liked a good idea at the time. Once I crossed the border, I just kept heading north. I needed to get away from everything, and up here seemed like a good place for that.”

  “It is.”

  “I certainly wasn’t thinking about how inhospitable the weather is. It’s not like I was going all the way to Alaska. I thought the weather here would be more like Calgary.”

  “We’re a long way from Calgary.” Her story doesn’t make a lot of sense. Traveling to Calgary, or even Edmonton, I could understand. They were both good-sized cities with a lot to offer, but once people leave Alberta, they usually change their minds and head back south.

  “I get that now. I should have thought about it more or done more research. I wasn’t thinking though, not about that, anyway. Considering the consequences of my lack of planning wasn’t the main thing on my mind.”

  She pauses for a long moment before laughing loudly.

  “’If you keep that up, you’ll be just like her.’ That’s what my dad always said.”

  “Just like who?”

  “My older sister.” Seri’s voice drops in tone and volume. “She’s dead now.”

  “Sorry,” I mutter. I never know what to say when people drop a bombshell like that. Margot was pretty good about saying all the right things when some friend of hers was going through a crisis, but I never picked up the skill.

  “It was a while ago,” she says. “Two years this spring.”

  I wait for her to go on, but she’s just staring at her hands and rubbing at the nail of her thumb.

  “How did she die?”

  “It was an accident.” Her voice is quiet and small. She clears her throat before looking up at me. “A car accident. She was crossing against the light and got hit by a delivery truck.”

  “Oh.” Again, I don’t have the social graces to know what I’m supposed to say. “That sucks.”

  “Yeah.” Seri goes quiet while I finish washing and drying the dishes.

  Noticing movement by the door, I look over to see Solo checking out my snow boots. At first, he’s just pawing at the laces, then flipping over to grab them and attack the strings with his back feet. A moment later, he claws his way up the front of the boot, gets to the opening, and falls right in.

  He howls with his head shoved into the bottom of the boot and his butt still sticking out the top. His tiny feet claw at the air, but he can’t get himself turned around. With a chuckle, I bend down to grab his hindquarters and get him out of the boot. Solo shakes himself out, howls at me, and then prances away like nothing happened.

  “You are quite the knight in shining armor, aren’t you?”

  “What? Me?” I look at her, deciding she must be crazy if that’s what she is thinking.

  “Always finding someone to rescue.” Seri smiles broadly. “Is that how you met your girlfriend? Did you rescue her, too?”

  “Hardly. More like the other way around.”

  “Really? How did you meet?”

  “Kinda like you and I.” I put the dishes away before moving to sit by the fire. Seri moves next to me, holding her hands out toward the warmth. “We met in Yellowknife. I was out of money, and she offered me a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Cleaning fish. Margot works at the lodge, fishing for pike and trout. She sells them or trades them for other stuff she needs. She taught me how to catch and clean the fish and also how to hunt caribou.”

  “Is that where all the meat comes from?” Seri asks. “Caribou?”

  “Mostly,” I say with a nod. “Some of it is beaver or bear, but mostly caribou. In season, there are more of them around than anything else.”

  “Do you still work with her?”

  “No. I only do seasonal work now, showing tourists where to find caribou herds for hunting. I take them fishing sometimes if there isn’t anyone else available. I don’t own a boat though, so I have to borrow one of Margot’s if I do that.”

  “You still talk to her, then?”

  “Sometimes. Not a lot.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Beginning of the summer, I guess.” I take in a deep breath. I thought Margot was a safe topic, but now I’m not so sure. “We’re friendly, but that’s about it.”

  “Do you have other friends in Whatì?”

  “Not really. The people I know there are Margot’s friends.”

  “You really do keep yourself isolated, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your concern.” The muscles in my thighs clench and my stomach tightens up.

  “Sorry,” she mutters. She pauses for about thirty seconds before she finds another question to ask. “Do you eat caribou for every meal?”

  “Most of them. One caribou will last me most of the winter if I ration it right, and I have two out in the barn.”

  “Well, what else do you have? I thought I’d try cooking something different for dinner.”

  “You really don’t have to do all this cooking,” I tell her. “I’m perfectly capable of making meals.”

  “I know that.” Seri tilts her head to one side and raises the opposite shoulder. “I just don’t want to be a burden. You didn’t expect to have two people to take care of, so I want to do my part, at the very least. Earn my keep, you know?”

  “It isn’t necessary. I have to cook for me, and putting twice as much food in the pan isn’t a particularly daunting task.”

  “Well, I feel like I’m getting the hang of this cooking-over-a-fire thing, and I want to try something new. I’ve been told I’m a good cook.” She smiles broadly.

  “Who told you that?”

  “My mom. My sister. Ex-boyfriends.”

  I raise an eyebrow at her.

  “So,” she asks again
, “what else do you have?”

  “There are a few fresh vegetables that need to be used before they go off,” I say. “There are potatoes, carrots, and squash, which last the longest. You could do something with the broccoli and zucchinis.”

  “Yes! I can definitely do something with that. Do you have cheese?”

  I show Seri where the other food is stored in the kitchen. I also give her a rundown of what’s in the barn but explain that I don’t really want to trudge through the snow to get anything until it’s absolutely necessary.

  “I guess getting all that gear on just to grab something out of the freezer is a bit much, Seri says with a laugh.

  “It’s not the effort,” I tell her. “It’s the cold. Getting up on the roof this morning still has my lungs burning. It’s not safe to go out when you don’t have to.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she says. “Sorry, I’m not used to thinking that way.”

  “It takes some time to get in the mindset. You also haven’t been out since you got here. If you went outside, even just for a minute, you wouldn’t forget.”

  “I’m not even sure I could get out the way you did, climbing up that pile of snow.”

  “You would if you had to.”

  “I guess so.”

  Seri gathers up a pile of food to cook later while I tend to the fire. It has finally done its job, and the room is warm again. I move from the front of the fireplace to the chair and page through one of my books while Seri entertains Solo with a stick. She wiggles the stick on the floor near him, and he tries to pounce on it. Sometimes he arches up and hisses at the stick, which makes Seri laugh.

  I give up on reading and watch the two of them play. The whole scene is surreal, as if I were watching a television show instead of looking from the chair to the floor of my cabin. Solo is growing, filling out, and his hair isn’t so scraggly anymore, and Seri looks completely at ease playing with him while I watch. Normally, I would feel like an outsider to the scene, but I don’t. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re in my place or what. Everything seems very natural, and I’m starting to feel like the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting.

  This is not normal. Not at all.

  I should feel uncomfortable, but I don’t. I’ve had Solo less than a week and only first met Seri four days ago, but she looks perfectly natural in front of my fire, playing with my cat. I would never feel this comfortable with Margot here, and I’ve known her much longer. I’m actually enjoying watching Seri and the kitten play, and I even laugh along with her when Solo steps on a piece of loose bark, scares himself, and goes running off under the bed, no longer willing to face the evil stick.

  We spend the day like this, Seri and I taking turns playing with the cat and not really talking about much other than the weather and what Solo should be eating aside from milk. Though I usually bristle when someone tells me what to do, I don’t get tense when she tells me cow’s milk probably isn’t best for Solo, and we talk easily about whether or not he should drink broth made from caribou.

  That evening, Seri cooks vegetables along with chunks of caribou meat and seasons everything with spices she found in one of my cabinets. The meal is far tastier than anything I ever cook. It must smell better, too, since I have a hard time keeping Solo off of my lap while I’m trying to eat.

  After I finish the dishes, Seri asks about bathing, and I help her fill the basin in the bathroom with hot water so she can get herself clean. It’s not a large enough container to be considered a bathtub, but it gets the job done.

  She comes out dressed in a clean pair of sweats I handed her earlier, and the unreal feeling of normalcy hits me again. I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the strange sensation and then wonder why the hell I prefer to feel uncomfortable.

  “I really am grateful to you, Bishop,” Seri says softly. “I know if it hadn’t been for you, I probably would have died out there.”

  I shrug. I feel like we’ve already been over this, and I have nothing else that hasn’t already been said to add to the conversation. Though I am definitely getting used to her presence, I still don’t like the idea of sharing my space with her, and I’m waiting for the unease to come back. Her extreme reaction this morning didn’t help. I expected something like it the first time she woke up and found herself here, but she remained calm then.

  Maybe this morning was some kind of delayed reaction. Maybe the reality of it all finally hit her, and even though she initiated sex, she’s realizing I’m more physically powerful than she, and she is concerned about her safety.

  She has every right to be concerned. If she had any idea what kind of person I am, she’d go running into the snow, preferring to take her chances with the elements. Strangely enough, I hope she doesn’t figure it out. Once she got over her morning conniption, our conversations had been rather pleasant. If she knew about my past, would she continue to speak with me so freely?

  Probably not.

  “I lied to you.” Seri blurts out the words, bringing me out of my musings, but I have no idea what she’s referring to.

  “About?”

  “My sister. She didn’t die in a car accident.”

  “Okay.” I wait for her to say more, but she just sits there and stares at her hands. “So, how did she die?”

  “She was murdered.”

  A chill runs through me.

  Chapter 10

  “My sister Iris was a bit of a wild child,” Seri says. “She spoke her mind, which our conservative, old-fashioned, military father didn’t care for too much. She ran around with a lot of different boys in high school. Mom was sure she was into all kinds of drugs, but I think she only smoked a little weed sometimes, nothing more. Not in high school, anyway.”

  “She was your older sister?” Though I had previously not wanted to hear anything about Seri’s past, the mention of her sister’s murder has me intrigued. Maybe intrigued isn’t the right word. Is there a word for it when intrigue also scares the shit out of you?

  “Yes, she was older, but only by two years. She always seemed much older and wiser than I ever felt. She knew what to say, when to say it, and was never afraid of what other people would think of her. She didn’t care, not even when Mom and Dad were mad at her. She and our dad fought all the time, especially right before she graduated from high school and moved out. She went away to college and didn’t even come to visit until Christmas. She always responded to my text messages, though, and told me everything was going great.”

  I sense Seri’s change in tone, going from lighthearted childhood memories to something more ominous.

  “She didn’t come home at all during the summer, and soon after, she stopped responding to my texts. We found out later that she’d dropped out of college. One of her friends from high school went to the same college as Iris, and she said Iris was hanging out with these two guys from town. They weren’t students or anything, and everyone said they were drug dealers. People were even saying that Iris might have been supporting herself as a prostitute. I know that wasn’t true—she would never do something like that—but it’s what other people thought.”

  I swallow hard. I’d known a few pimps in prison, and they were nasty characters. If Seri’s sister got caught up with people like that, it’s no wonder something bad happened. The way Seri dismissed the idea of her sister selling her body is enough to convince me that it was probably true.

  “Just after the first of the year, the police called my parents’ house, asking when they had seen her last. The officer said Iris’s landlord filled out a missing person’s report on her when the rent wasn’t paid and that no one had seen her in a week. Dad was sure she had just taken off without telling anyone, but when the police put her picture up on television, a woman came forward with information.”

  Seri’s voice becomes monotone as she continues.

  “The woman was a known heroin addict and a prostitute. She said her boyfriend was a drug dealer and that he and his partner thought Iris stole some of their
drugs. She said the men beat Iris up, trying to get her to admit to stealing, but she wouldn’t tell them anything. She is a fighter.”

  Another chill runs down my spine, and I watch Seri closely as she recounts the tale like a police reporter standing in front of the press and reading facts from a dossier. I don’t miss that she used the present tense when she called her sister a fighter, but I don’t think Seri even noticed the slip.

  “The woman said she saw them haul Iris out of the house and into a truck and that she was bleeding when they took her,” Seri says, continuing her toneless narrative. “She didn’t have additional information that was helpful. The police investigated the men but discovered nothing to link them to Iris other than the witness. Two days later, two boys found her body at the edge of the river.”

  For the first time, Seri’s voice cracks slightly.

  I look at her face and watch tears form in her eyes. She stares into the fire for a few moments before she looks at me. Her voice is small and quiet when she speaks again.

  “The boys were only eleven or twelve,” she says as her voice cracks again, “just riding their bikes home from school. They stopped their bikes by a big tree with a double trunk, and when they moved closer to the bank, they saw her in the mud. They wanted to help, but they realized quickly that she was gone. The police were called.”

  Seri stops speaking and looks up at me as a shudder runs through her body, and the tears begin to fall. I know I should do something to comfort her, but what? Hold her hand? Give her a hug? Maybe I should offer her a drink—I know I could use one about now.

  As I debate the options, Seri wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She has been holding herself together pretty well up until this point, but my stomach tightens up as I wait for an inevitable meltdown that I won’t know how to handle.

  “She had…” Seri stops and closes her eyes for a moment. I don’t think she’s going to be able to finish, but she takes a few breaths and then starts again. “She had been in the water long enough that any evidence on her had been washed away. She had been so badly injured, they had to use her dental records just to identify her.”