The truck belched a farewell puff of black smoke. The rattle of the engine diminished in the distance. Nell moved to the gravel shoulder of the road and looked around her.
They had been climbing steadily through scrub forest until Wendell had turned the last corner. Spread all around her were the barrens—rounded outcrops of granite surrounded by low shrubs and licked by the pink foam of bog laurel. Delicate tamaracks huddled in the hollows. The afternoon sun glinted on the scattered ponds, turning them into gold coins tossed with a profligate hand over the landscape. The silence was so intense as to be almost a presence in itself.
Nell took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the clean, sweet air. She couldn’t go back to Holland. She’d smother there. Maybe, just maybe, when she got to Mort Harbour, she’d find a welcome…
A slight movement caught her eye. She turned her head. Where the rocks rose to a peak against the horizon on her left, a caribou had just stepped into the open.
She had been told it was rare to find caribou here in summer; they tended to migrate to higher ground in an effort to escape the flies. Her heart tripping with excitement, she crossed the road and carefully traversed the ditch. Caribou, she also knew, were relatively tame. With luck, she could get a closer look. Even a photograph.
The barrens had looked smooth and inviting from the road. But Nell had been in Newfoundland long enough to know that the smoothness was deceptive and the invitation a mockery; walking anywhere past ten feet from the highway could be extraordinarily difficult. Especially when laden with a heavy backpack. The first hollow she came to, she shucked off her pack and tucked it among some scrub spruce out of sight of the highway. After unzipping her smaller haversack, she loaded it with her camera, a couple of apples and her water bottle, and took off again. Her boots gripped the granite, slithered over clumps of wet grass and plunged into the dark brown peat, which sucked hungrily at her heels. She stopped to apply repellent, and saw with a jolt of pleasure that a yearling had joined the other caribou; Nell’s binoculars brought it so close she could see the tag ends of leaves hanging from its blunt muzzle.
Slowly, Nell lowered the binoculars. She was standing knee—deep in rose pink laurel blossoms. Flecks of mica in the granite sparkled and shone like tiny jewels; a sparrow was piping its small, clear song from a wizened spruce nearby. For a split second, she became a part of her surroundings, engulfed in a wave of happiness so pure it was as though she was bathed in the gold of the sun.
The moment passed, but the memory of it was hers. With a sigh of repletion, she counted a third caribou as it ambled into the open. It was a cow, like the other adult. Nell scrambled over a series of outcrops and jumped from rock to rock across a puddle. All three caribou had stopped to graze. She edged closer, keeping hidden from them as much as she could, until she reached a clump of feathery tamarack near enough to give her an excellent view. Crouching down, she made a seat for herself by a granite boulder and stretched out her legs, focusing the binoculars. Across the barrens drifted the click of caribou hooves; she was convinced she could even hear the animals’ jaws munching on the dry lichens. Their coats were glossy with health, the hair a blend of thick cream and a lustrous dark brown. Like café au lait, she mused, smiling to herself.
Time passed. Nell munched on an apple and took a couple of photos. And then, from the dark ribbon of the road, she heard the distant murmur of an engine. The vehicle that appeared was a cross between a Jeep and a van. To her intense annoyance, it slowed, pulled over and came to a halt. She saw light glint from what could only be binoculars.
She tucked herself lower, thankful that she was hidden from sight Scowling, she watched the driver get out and stretch. A man. She didn’t want to share her solitude with a man. She didn’t want to share it with anyone. Maybe once he’d had another look through his binoculars, he’d be on his way.
Instead, he shut the van door so quietly she didn’t hear the sound and headed across the road toward the caribou. Even from her faraway perch, she could see that he was limping slightly.
Go away, she thought fiercely. Get lost. Go to Caplin Bay, or Drowned Island, or St. Swithin’s. But don’t come here.
A sparrow flitted into a nearby shrub, momentarily distracting her. Rather horrified, she discovered that she was glowering at the man as though he was her mortal enemy. She wasn’t normally so antisocial. But then, nothing had been normal ever since that day, late in May, when she’d decided to clean up the attic of the house in Middelhoven where she’d grown up. In an old trunk pushed against the chimney, she had found a diary belonging to her grandmother, Anna, a shadowy figure whom she only remembered meeting once, long ago, when she was a little girl. She’d taken the diary downstairs and had sat up late that night reading it from beginning to end.
Only two months ago. It felt like a lifetime.
The man, Nell was glad to see, was struggling with the bog and the underbrush just as she herself had. Unfortunately, if he kept going in the direction he had chosen, he would end up tripping over her. In these vast stretches of wilderness, where people were so few and far between, it seemed a supreme irony that an intruder should shatter her peace and happiness. Damn him anyway, she thought vengefully.
He was closer now, near enough that she could hear the crackle of twigs from his passage and the rasp of his boots on the rocks. He was wearing jeans and a dark checked shirt, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His binoculars were slung carelessly over one broad shoulder. With a faint twinge of unease, she noticed his height, the strength latent in those shoulders and the grim lines of his face. No moment of perfect happiness for him. He looked like he was on his way to the funeral of his best friend.
She had to do something. She couldn’t let him fall on top of her. Not with that face. Definitely not the kind of man to find a chance meeting on the barrens amusing. She tensed, bracing her knees to stand up, wondering if she should clear her throat to warn him of her presence before she spoke.
And then he solved the dilemma for her. His foot slipped. He lurched forward, grabbing for the slender trunk of the nearest tamarack, his involuntary cry of pain raising the hairs on the back of her neck. As she instinctively twisted to help him, he began to swear, with quite astonishing virtuosity, in French.
His jaw was tight, and Nell could still see the deeply bitten lines of pain around his mouth. But her sense of humor, which had gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion, managed to ignore these symptoms. She half stood up and demurely, in French, added a couple of very crude expressions that she had learned in her younger days in Paris and that he had omitted.
The man whirled. Before she had time to even croak a protest, she found herself slammed on her back against the granite boulder, his body pinning her so hard that the rock dug into her spine. His hands bit into her shoulders, his face only inches from hers. His eyes were blazing like those of a man demented.
He’s mad, Nell thought blankly. Out of his mind. I’ve come all this way to be murdered by a psychopath.
But Nell hadn’t roamed Europe on her own without learning a thing or two; and she had never been one to lie down tamely to fate’s blows. Fueled by a mixture of sheer terror and adrenaline, she brought her knee up to his groin with lightning speed.
The man’s body wasn’t there. Her knee knifed empty air.
Before she could strike again, he had hauled her roughly to her feet, shaking her as if she were of no more account than a carpet to be beaten. With a truly impressive degree of rage, he snarled, “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, sneaking behind a tree like that?”
She should have said something conciliatory to calm him down. Rule one. Don’t fight back. Shoving against his chest with all her strength, Nell
