I’ve seen. I’m tempted to burst out cheering.
On the ground, before the principal reaches them, the young woman embraces the boy and he hugs her back fiercely. Like, way too tightly for a twelve-year-old with half the school staring at him.
Then she grips his shoulders, puts her forehead against his, and delivers some kind of quiet lecture. He just nods, blinks, and glances up at Principal Tolmie, who is headed their way looking like a police officer itching to clamp handcuffs on someone.
“All yours.” The woman hands Dean over and takes her time striding back to her bike, thanking the firefighters on the way.
Seriously? So this sister or whatever she is just arrives, takes over, orders him down, then leaves? No, not yet, as it turns out. What she does next will haunt me for hours. She picks up her bike, turns, and glares at me. A long, slow, vicious look. I turn to see if there’s someone behind me, maybe some enemy she has bad blood with.
I’ve never seen the woman before, so there’s clearly some mistake. It’s only as she turns to ride off — tires spewing gravel, once again — that I catch the logo on her T-shirt. It sends shivers through my body: Swallow Canyon Expeditions.
• • •
Spring means the days are getting warmer and longer. By the time I’ve biked home from the supermarket and drugstore, I’m imagining pulling the dented barbeque out of our garage and grilling Mom a hamburger. Maybe it’s red meat she needs. Or just a reason to come downstairs and sit on the back patio with me. Later we could watch the stars come out and discuss which constellations are which, like the three of us used to do. Dad would have his stargazing chart laid out on the picnic table and his garage-sale telescope set up on a rickety tripod. He’d sit back on the wood bench he and I built, wearing that worn green sweater Mom knit him, a grin on his face and an arm around each of us. I swallow hard, remembering the clean, damp-wool smell and prickliness of his sweater when he hugged me.
When I see her bedroom window is open, curtains flapping in the breeze, my heart lifts. Then I spot Elspeth’s moped by the back door, and my mood does a crash landing. What’s the witch up to now? She should’ve gone home an hour ago.
I heave my backpack onto the linoleum kitchen counter and frown at the dirty dishes piled in the sink. Elspeth is happy to eat our food while fixing lunch for Mom — but do dishes? Not.
Never mind; she’s too busy looking after Mom, and I’m the official dishes guy, it seems.
Something smells weird. Lavender?
“Tristan, honey. So glad you’re home. Your mother’s sleeping, but I stayed late so you and I could talk.”
Talk? I glance at the new hair colour: pink. It clashes with her rainbow smock, purple miniskirt, and red clogs, but it brightens up the place, for sure. Where my uncle found this thirty-year-old space cadet and why Mom has fallen under Elspeth’s spell is beyond me. Oops. My negatory detect-o-meter is beeping.
“Hi, Elspeth. Interesting hair colour. Hey, am I imagining it, or is there a fascinating fragrance in the air?”
“Lavender, darling. It’s part of our aromatherapy session. It calms her.”
“Cool. But is it possible she doesn’t need to be calmed? Maybe she needs to get up and move, instead.”
Elspeth reaches out to pat my hand; I slide it away and begin storing groceries. Aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, horoscope-reading, crystal-touching: these are what my uncle’s paying for out of what I think should go toward groceries, repair bills — and my climbing club fees. But Elspeth is Mom’s caretaker for now. And who knows? If she ever convinces me aromatherapy can make Mom better, I’ll be the first to haul wheelbarrows of lavender home.
“So, Tristan, you know your mother is not mending with time as much as we hoped.”
“Mmm.”
“I feel she is drifting away from us.”
I picture a lily pad floating across a lake, buffeted by wind, its brown edges curled down into the murky water.
“Tristan?”
“Yes.”
Elspeth looks across our small living room and its few pieces of worn but sturdy furniture at the stairs, as if my mother might come gliding down in her nightgown any second and overhear us. She motions us into the living room, where I evict a basket of dirty laundry from the sofa so we can plunk down. With springs well-worn, the sofa sinks under our combined weight. She plays with the dozen or so rings on long, white fingers adorned by fake fingernails painted a startling pink.
I instruct myself to listen politely.
“When a loved one passes away and there’s no body to grieve over,” she begins, “the family’s recovery process is prolonged, delayed.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, gritting my teeth, but only gently.
“Not so much in your case, dear,” she adds with a lame pat on my shoulder that makes me recoil. “You are strong, and your need to be your mother’s pillar has brought you through the worst already, which I admire.”
Oh yeah? She thinks she’s a psychic now?
“But with no … body,” she continues, “there needs to be a special object that will draw out your mother’s grief. Not the few things Search and Rescue returned. Something else, something special. You’re okay with talking about this, right? I believe it’s therapeutic. But I don’t want to traumatize you, honey.”
“I’m fine,” I say, fingernails pressing into my palms, but only lightly.
She does a big, dramatic sigh. “Good. Because I feel she needs something important of his to hold on to, something that proves he’s gone. It will help her in her recovery.”
“But —” How is this any of Elspeth’s business? Why doesn’t everyone just accept Dad is dead? Why do we have to talk about it? I swallow a fat lump in my throat.
“Darling, I know we can’t ever expect to find the body. But before he disappeared, he may have shed or dropped something Search and Rescue didn’t find. On a tree branch or ledge, perhaps. I feel it; I sense it. My extrasensory perception tells me this. And — well, you’re a tracker and a canyoneer. And I know you want her to get better. If you could just try —”
“Search and Rescue tried for two whole weeks,” I remind her. “And brought back his shredded sleeping bag and a few clothes.”
“Shh, you’ll wake her.” Elspeth presses one of her pink-tipped fingernails to her lips. “Yes, Search and Rescue tried to find him alive, then tried to find the body. But their failure doesn’t mean that you — the one with the true spiritual family connection — can’t locate something they failed to discover. You’re his son, Tristan. You have powers they don’t.”
I open my mouth, but when nothing comes out, I shut it again.
“I feel it in my bones, Tristan. Your ability to locate something else he left behind, darling. She’ll come out of this depression. You’ll be a family again.”
“Tristan?” A sleepy voice drifts down from upstairs.
“Go,
