Page 14

September 2016

Sarah, with Izzy’s help, combed every inch of Matthew’s study looking for an explanation. None came. When the kids, still sleep crusted, shuffled in looking for breakfast, Sarah let Izzy distract them with sugary cereal and television.

“In the morning?” Bella said. “We’re never allowed to watch TV before school.”

“Auntie’s rules!” Izzy said. The kids ran around the kitchen chanting the phrase in delight before settling on the couch.

Sarah felt a warped kaleidoscope of emotions pass through her body. She exchanged a look with Izzy that was understandable only through shared blood and childhoods.

“You have to tell the police, Sarah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t see there’s an option. Boychuk must have said it a hundred times: let him know if we find anything out of the ordinary. This qualifies.”

Sarah sat down on the only chair in the room. A single piece of paper—pulled from the mystery envelope—rested on her lap: the rental contract for a storage facility in a small town a few hours’ drive away. She dropped her elbows to her knees while her fingers twisted her wedding ring.

“But what if it’s nothing?” she finally said. “It’s probably just a bunch of junk. We can ask Matthew about it when he comes home.”

“Sarah.” The layers of sadness in Izzy’s tone darkened the room.

“There’s nothing more to say.”

“Sarah, you have to be reasonable—”

Sarah left the study for the first time since the evening before and made her way to the bedroom. She ignored Izzy calling her name. She climbed the stairs, dimly aware of what she was about to do. She dressed, throwing on a pair of faded jeans and Matthew’s tattered UBC sweatshirt, the sweet musky smell of his deodorant still trapped in the fabric.

Izzy stood at the bottom of the stairs when Sarah came back down. “Breakfast?” she asked.

“Can you take the kids to school?” Sarah said, an afterthought.

“Sure, but where are you going?”

“I need to see what’s in there.” Sarah strode past her sister and out the front door.

“Where? The storage locker? Sarah? Where are you going? Sarah?” Sarah heard her sister’s questions, but her mind didn’t have space to formulate a reply.

It was easy to find the location through the app on her phone. Bowmanville. A straight shot up Highway 401. The address and unit number were written in the top corner of the contract. Matthew’s signature, along with the date, March 18, 2007, was on the bottom. Almost ten years ago.

Over the three-and-a-half-hour drive, Sarah chased theories about what to expect and sipped at the idea of betrayal. Matthew was keeping secrets. Her mind ping-ponged between possibilities—from the delightful to the diabolical. A surprise new car for the family? An extravagance, like a speedboat, for himself? A meth lab? A murder scene? All of it seemed possible and improbable.

The storage facility sat on a side road parallel to Highway 401, the oversize S ELF S TORAGE sign visible to the streaming line of cars. Sarah had passed it countless times on trips to Toronto without ever noticing it. The sky was a uniform gray when she arrived. In the distance, the concrete towers of a nuclear power plant loomed apocalyptically. The buildings were a gauntlet of identical doors, each with their own story to tell. Sarah stared at the number 35 in mustard yellow. She noted fresh paint, cinder blocks in good repair, and a new roof. It was nothing like what she imagined from a secret storage unit, one that held the potential to upend her family. Illegal activities and items are prohibited on the premises at all times was printed on the back of the contract, though the phrase offered no answers or comfort. Sarah debated walking away. Pretending she’d never found the key and leaving the contents to wither into obscurity.

“What’s in there, Matthew? What didn’t you want me to know?” The key slipped in easily. The click of the padlock was heartbreakingly satisfying.

Until that moment, Sarah had hoped it was a mistake. That the envelope was the remnant of another time. Grief can do that: transport you to a moment where hope is stronger than reality. Vertigo crashed over her. The bitter coffee she’d guzzled in the car sloshed in her stomach. From this point on, everything she thought she knew about her husband would be altered. No matter what was in the locker, her understanding of the world shifted when the lock pins tumbled into place. Denial gave way. She was left empty and utterly alone.

Sarah yanked up the metal door before reason convinced her otherwise. It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the shadowed light; when they did, she thought it was empty. A feeling akin to relief lowered her shoulders.

“What the hell, Matthew?” she said, almost on a laugh.

Sarah moved deeper into the locker. She guessed it to be about ten by ten feet and about eight in height. The door took up almost two-thirds of one wall, allowing daylight to flood the middle of the space. She heard her footsteps echo on concrete. She almost turned to leave, almost chalked up the strange discovery to a forgotten past, when a flash of silver caught her eye. Sarah moved as if approaching a caged wild creature. Her steps brought her toe to toe with a battered two-drawer metal cabinet in the back corner.

The top drawer was empty, but the bottom one held a handful of files. She pulled them from the drawer and laid the stack on the top of the cabinet. The first contained clipped articles, the topics seemingly random. Most were from a variety of local BC papers, years apart, the type of news items glanced at on your way to something juicier. Sarah leafed through them, more confused than interested—the disappearance of a young man with few details, a pie-eating contest, and a local veterinarian who birthed a foal through a snowstorm rounded the collection.

The second file gave her pause.

A stack of papers was bundled together with a black clip, starting with a birth certificate for a baby boy named Jonathan Evans. Sarah lifted the document to get a better look. The paper was thick and creamy, with leaf watermarks embedded beneath the words. The names of the baby and the parents meant nothing to Sarah. She was about to set it down when something familiar grabbed her attention. June 14, 1979. Jonathan Evans, whoever he was, had the same birth date as Matthew.

She rifled through the rest of the documents, not taking each in fully. All were in the same name and told the story of a stranger’s life. High school and university degrees, a social insurance card, credit cards, bank cards, a printed page of usernames and passwords. The final document—a faded student card from the University of British Columbia—she picked up with trembling hands. There, beside the name Jonathan Evans, was her husband’s picture.

The card fell from her hand, landing with a dry clap on the floor. She stumbled out of the locker into a fine drizzle, the sky finally making good on its threat. She felt mist cling to her face, like oil against her skin. She reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and hit the preprogrammed number. A familiar voice filled her ears. You’ve reached Matt Anderson. I can’t get to the phone right now. Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you shortly.

“Matthew? Where are you? What the fuck is going on? Do you hear me?” Her screams echoed against aluminum and concrete.

Sarah sank into a squat beside a locker door facing number 35, the phone drooping in her hand. Questions crashed against her skull, building into a futile rage. She rocked her body against the pounding in her head, seeking comfort in rote motion. There must be some mistake? I must not have seen the photo properly. Though she knew. Of course she knew. She remained crouched, safe on the ground, unable to disentangle herself from the nightmare.

She didn’t know how long she sat there before standing, though the discomfort in her knees offered a suggestion. She shook her legs, bringing back sensation to her feet. The towers of the power plant appeared to have moved closer, like the legs of a silent, stalking beast whose head reached above the clouds. She stared up at them, daring them to crush her. Her right hand spun the wedding ring on her finger until the skin underneath prickled.

“Sarah?” The familiar voice came from behind her. Sarah wasn’t surprised, though perhaps she should have been. “Izzy called me. She said you had found something.”

She turned to the kind eyes of Rob Boychuk. He kept his distance, his hand extended in front of him as if offering her a line back. She could lie. Say it had all been a mistake. But what would be the point? Her sister had already opened the door. Now Sarah had to manage the madness that would follow.