I’d inherited the extensive property over ten years ago from my Great-aunt Agatha, Great-grandpa Joe’s unfortunate daughter, I hadn’t moved in until my life in Toronto had taken a turn for the worse. Now that I could look at my former marriage without blinkers, I should probably say a turn for the better. But three years ago, after I’d finally convinced myself my marriage to Gareth really was over, I could only think of fleeing everything that reminded me of my ineptness and his betrayal.
Unfortunately, where love was blind, hope lingered. It had taken Gareth’s last deceit, two years ago, to erase any remaining vestige of love and make me see the real man behind the handsome face I’d lived with for fifteen years.
My truck slid to a stop. Sergei greeted me joyfully from inside the house as I bounded up the stairs to the verandah. Like Aunt Aggie, I used this expansive porch with its spectacular view of Echo Lake as my living room when the weather was civilized. Unfortunately, winter’s pending arrival had forced me to move its wicker furniture, along with Aunt Aggie’s bentwood rocker, into the ground floor of the turret where the five-windowed sides provided almost as good a view.
The dog barely stopped long enough for his usual greeting pat on the head before racing towards the woods for a longoverdue release of his bladder. I went inside to check for phone messages. Although Yvette’s condition had been deemed to be satisfactory when I’d left the hospital a couple of hours ago, I was worried about a setback. In addition to a broken arm and a concussion, she had cracked a couple of ribs, which in turn had punctured a lung and might possibly have damaged other organs. Thankfully her leg wasn’t broken too, just badly bruised.
I’d remained by her side while she waited long, painful hours in emergency for the doctor’s examination, the X -rays, the cast, the re-inflation of her lung and finally her transfer to a considerably more comfortable hospital bed. Fortunately, I hadn’t had to contend with her father. Although I had tried to call him several times during the night, I’d failed to reach him at home. I found this surprising, since he didn’t fit the profile of a man with friends or a business that would keep him out all night. But Yvette, now awake, seemed to take it in stride. However, as her initial stoic acceptance gradually changed to tearful glances at the sound of approaching footsteps, I realized that no matter how unsavoury I found him, she wanted her father by her side. By the time I’d left at around six thirty that morning, she still hadn’t been able talk to him.
The minute I stepped into the brighter light of the windowed turret, I noticed the message light flashing from the phone on my desk. With a sense of foreboding, I pressed the playback button and heard a brusque, official-sounding voice asking me to call the Somerset hospital immediately.
I tried several times to phone back but got either a busy signal or voice mail. Afraid of wasting more time, I pushed all thoughts of sleep aside, put the dog back in the house and returned to my truck. I spent the entire thirty-five-kilometre journey into Somerset imagining the worst. By the time I reached the outskirts of this once bustling logging town, I’d convinced myself that she’d had a major relapse.
I threaded my way through the streets towards the threestorey hospital built on the banks of the Carrière River. Apart from the silver steeple on the town’s Roman Catholic church and the polluting funnels of the pulp mill further downstream, no other building rose above the low rise of the town’s five hundred odd residences. Although Somerset offered little in the way of citified amenities, it was the closest thing we had to civilization, the major attractions being a large chain-owned grocery store, a government run liquor store and a main street of bars.
I ran up the cement stairs of the hospital and along its antiseptic halls to Yvette’s room. Although I tried to downplay my fears, I jumped to the worst conclusion when faced with an empty bed, where less than three hours ago the injured young woman had lain.
I made a beeline to the nursing station and breathed with relief when told my imagination had got the better of me. Yvette was very much alive, just no longer in the hospital. She’d left less than an hour ago, against the advice of her doctor. In fact, the nurse had been calling me to see if I could convince Mademoiselle Gagnon to remain another day in the hospital.
When questioned further, the nurse admitted it wasn’t so much Yvette who had wanted to leave, but her male visitor pressuring her. Needless to say, the image of Papa Gagnon hauling his daughter out by her broken arm sprang to mind. But he was immediately ruled out when the nurse described this visitor as being in his thirties. Nonetheless, I was convinced Papa Gagnon was behind this abrupt departure. It smacked too much of his brand of paranoia. He’d want to remove his daughter from the threat of any outside influence and get her back firmly under his control.
I decided to drive straight to the Gagnon farm to satisfy myself that no further harm had come to her, and if need be, extricate her from her father’s grasp and return her to the hospital.
five
I followed the tracks of the vehicle that had probably brought Yvette home, up Gagnon’s snow-covered lane, past his empty fields to the farm buildings whose sparkling appearance never ceased to annoy me. Although Papa Gagnon couldn’t seem to find the spare change to dress his daughter in anything other than hand-me-downs, he obviously had more than a dollar or two to spend on his farm.
Unlike the drab, unpainted barns of most farms in the area, the two Gagnon barns sported fresh coats of emerald green paint, made more vivid against the backdrop of white. Their red metal roofs, partially hidden by the fresh, wet snow, had also been redone the past summer. And the farmhouse, built in the traditional Quebec style of the main roof extending over the front verandah, was similarly painted the same rich green. It too wore a new red roof.
But even though Papa Gagnon’s farming income might provide enough to pay for these beautifying touches, I doubted he had the money to buy the sleek but mudsplattered Mercedes parked in front of the house. I assumed this sporty import belonged to the man who’d removed Yvette from the hospital.
I brought my pickup to a stop behind the car’s filthy bumper and jumped out. Papa Gagnon was waiting. He must have been on the other side of his front door, watching the road, for he was standing on the top step with his shotgun in hand by the time I rounded my truck.
I didn’t hesitate. Although I’d retreated yesterday from his pointed gun, today I wasn’t going to let it prevent me from seeing his daughter.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” I said in my nicest high-school French. “I believe Yvette is home from the hospital. I would like to see her.”
He replied in a fury of joual, the Quebec dialect whose blurred pronunciations and colloquialisms are unintelligible to those of us not born real Québécois, or, as they jokingly call themselves, pure laine, meaning “pure wool”.
“Please speak slower,” I asked. “She is okay. Now leave.”
“Not until I’ve seen her,” I persisted. “Impossible.”
“I’m sorry, but I won’t leave until I’m satisfied she is all right.” I planted myself on the bottom step and looked directly into his gun barrel.
His rheumy eyes glared back at me. The wind lifted the few wisps of grey hair on his otherwise bald head. Once he might have been tall, even good-looking. Now he canted slightly to the left, his back bent from over-work, his legs bowed, his face ravaged by the outdoors. Holding his gun steady, he propped his back against the verandah post as if intending to wait me out for as long as it would take.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the lace curtain of the front window fall back into place. Next, a man in his midthirties
