Page 20

October 2016

Over the course of several more painful meetings with Detective Ritter, Sarah had learned all she could about the man who was her husband. The officer had dribbled out pieces of information at each meeting, and Sarah had pounced on them like a junkie finding the next hit. It had been humiliating, but she needed to know. Ritter, meanwhile, seemed to be driving toward a truth that only he knew.

“You mean you didn’t know Jonathan’s parents were alive,” Ritter said. “How is that even possible?”

Sarah couldn’t answer. She sat in a small office in the downtown station. She might have thought it was a former broom closet but for the window. She stared outside at the orange-leaved maple tree against a painfully blue late-October sky. This late in the season, much of the canopy had withered and died, but against the odds, this tree had kept most of its foliage. It saddened her to think that its efforts were in vain.

“I mean, come on,” Ritter persisted. “You expect me to believe you lived with the man for nine years and you didn’t know he had family in Vancouver? A brother? A sister in Calgary?”

“I didn’t.” How to tell him she never questioned Matthew’s story about his past? “He told me his parents were dead. Why wouldn’t I believe him?”

Sarah wove Matthew’s story—as she knew it—for Ritter. An only child, a struggling single mom, a shadow of unhappiness. He had lived in a tough but respectable neighborhood in Victoria. His mom loved him but worked constantly, so he lived a latchkey life. She met a man when he was in high school, and there was tension from the beginning. He wasn’t a bad guy, Matthew admitted; he just wasn’t ready to parent someone else’s son. Matthew left home at eighteen, chasing something different through university in Vancouver and working part-time jobs to pay rent. He saw his mother infrequently, returning home less and less. When she’d died the year after Matthew graduated, his stepfather disappeared from his life.

“I find that hard to believe. All this time, Matthew never let it slip he’d grown up in Vancouver, not Victoria? That his mother was alive and well, retired and helping to raise his daughter? My girlfriend can’t even hide a new pair of shoes. How does a guy hide a family for nine years?” Ritter said.

“I don’t know.” Sarah’s mouth flooded with bitter questions. Out the window, two black squirrels chased each other through the tree branches. They flitted in and out of the picture, disappearing and reappearing under the lip of the window.

“Okay, let’s say that, just for a minute, I accept you’re telling me the truth. What about the money, Sarah? All that cash funneled into a secret account for Grace Evans, and you don’t notice?” Sarah flinched on hearing the name of Matthew’s abandoned daughter. Ritter made a show of flipping through his notebook. “Your story is what? You found the bank statements the night you came back from Patricia Bay?”

“Yes,” she said. “Matthew took care of all the financial stuff. I never paid much attention.”

Out the window, one of the squirrels backed his quarry onto a thin branch that sagged under the weight of both animals. Sarah felt her heart thud, worried the smaller one was about to fall.

“Look, theater work doesn’t exactly pay much,” Sarah continued, “and most of the profits go back into the company. I make a small salary, but it mostly covers day care costs with a little extra left over. Matthew worries about the money, pays the bills. I rely on him to tell me what’s going on with our finances.” She was present enough to recognize how frivolous this made her sound; she was also beyond caring.

“Look at me, Sarah.” Ritter tapped a manicured hand against the table in between them.

She turned slowly and looked into his steel-gray eyes. How had she not noticed that color before? It felt like she had stepped into the pages of a mystery novel. The detective’s steel-cut eyes bored into the suspect. Her mind wandered through a split-screen version of her life. Her reality—this god-awful station, this coffee-breathed detective and his ridiculous questions—gave way to an altered version where this was all part of a cheap paperback, a silly fiction she could read on the beach while the kids dug deep holes in the shifting sand.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t help that,” Sarah said flatly and turned back to the window.

The smaller of the squirrels hung precariously over the void. Sarah felt an urge to cup her arms beneath its fall. Its tail flitted. Once. Twice. And then it bolted, straight at its tormentor. The branch bobbed under its steps, and in the rebound, the creature vaulted over the larger squirrel, landing safely on the trunk before scampering out of sight. Sarah chuckled. A dissonant sound, even to her ears.

“You find this funny, Sarah?” Ritter said.

“Isn’t it?” she said, a meek challenge in her tone. “Nine years of marriage to a man I called Matthew Anderson, only to have him disappear into thin air, leaving me and my kids stranded in the wilderness. And then, in the search, you learn his real name is Jonathan Evans. My kids walking around with a name not his, not theirs. Everything I knew about the man I slept beside for nine years is a complete lie.” Tension consumed the air between them. Sarah scrutinized this man in front of her, this harbinger of ruin who offhandedly laid waste to everything.

“I’d say it’s pretty hilarious,” Sarah said, not laughing. She stood, daring him to stop her, and grabbed her coat.

“You’re not going anywhere, Sarah.” Ritter stayed in his seat. He faced the chair Sarah had just vacated. “Here’s the thing. I think you did know, Sarah. I think you knew about Grace and Faith, and you were worried. You saw cracks in Matthew’s devotion to you, to your family, and you didn’t think that was fair.”

Sarah opened the door to leave.

“He was calling her. That’s how you found out.” Sarah froze. Ritter reached into the folder on the table.

“Phone records, Sarah. From Matthew’s cell phone. He called the same number twelve times over the last two months. A number with a 778 area code. That’s Vancouver Island.” Sarah turned to face Ritter. A distant ringing, like an old rotary phone, rattled in her head. “Most of the calls were pretty short. A few seconds. Like someone was leaving a message or, maybe, building the courage to speak. But then, in July and August, four calls. Each lasting a little over twenty minutes.”

Sarah shuffled back to the seat across the table from Ritter. The dull ring in the back of her head increased.

“You knew, Sarah. You knew Matthew was in touch with his other family. His first family. You knew, and you were going to stop it.”

“I didn’t.”

“He was funneling money to them; he was talking to them; it was only a matter of time before he left you for them. Isn’t that what you were thinking, Sarah? You said yourself, he’d been distant lately—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Busy, you called it. He was lying to you, Sarah, and you couldn’t allow that. It wasn’t fair, was it?”

“No.”

“So, you went on pretending to be the devoted housewife, biding your time. But I’ve seen the anger, Sarah. I know how hard it must be to keep it in.”

The ringing in Sarah’s head overpowered Ritter’s words.

“Let it out, Sarah. It’s time to face the consequences. Give your kids some peace. Let them put this behind them.”

It was the mention of her kids that did it: the idea of them hearing Ritter’s accusations, believing them.

“If you bring my kids into this, I will fucking end you,” Sarah said in a low growl.

“Ah, there she is.” Ritter sat back in his chair, oozing satisfaction.

Sarah allowed herself a breath. She heard the thump of her pulse beat, felt her heart’s demand to be recognized. She let them quieten, gave her mind time to comprehend. When she spoke, it was a knife.

“You have nothing that supports this ridiculous theory of yours. No body, no proof, and no clue what happened to my husband. You can spew this crap all you want, but you and I both know, it’s meaningless without any actual evidence. So, either put up or shut the fuck up.”

Sarah left. The door slammed behind her.

A month later, Sarah found herself sitting in a Vancouver café, waiting. She’d ventured out of her hotel just as dawn split the horizon. The hipster-chic neighborhood she was staying in backed up against the Vancouver waterfront. The air smelled like rain—a permanent fixture of November on the coast—though the pavement was dry. Still-shuttered boutiques and restaurants lined the streets, lorded over by occasional glass condo towers. After a few blocks, English Bay unfurled in front of her. Sarah joined joggers and dog walkers in their morning routines. She imagined herself as others on the street might see her, as if she were just another gawking tourist. It was a nicer picture than reality.

In the café, the smell of deep-roast coffee floated on lounge music. A weak sun backlit commuters scurrying in and out. Sarah chose a table near the front with a view of the door. Within the swelling din of customers, she played out possible scenarios of the coming conversation. All of them inadequate. What could you possibly say to your secret mother-in-law?

The letter had arrived in the mail, rerouted through two police services before arriving at her door. Gwen Evans. The name struck Sarah as fashionably old fashioned. Her letter was short but precise.

I am Jonathan Evans’s mother.

I have asked the Vancouver Police whether it is possible to get in touch with you and they have kindly agreed to forward this on my behalf. They have told me little about you or your family, only that Jonathan was living in Ottawa and that another family exists.

I know you have no reason to agree, but I would very much like to meet you. I am probably one of very few people who can understand the pain that you are going through. I do not believe my son is a bad man, not truly, but he seems incapable of not inflicting damage.

Gwen Evans offered to pay Sarah’s way to Vancouver and promised no other request than a meeting. Anything else would be up to Sarah. Incapable of not inflicting damage. Those words rolled around in Sarah’s head. She let them fall off her own tongue, testing the sharpness of them.

Sarah knew little about this woman. Ritter had mentioned she was a retired librarian living on the West Coast. And still alive. The other piece of information Sarah carried inside her, an unreachable thorn that would be with her always. Gwen Evans was the mother of a liar.

“Sarah?”

Sarah looked up to see a petite older lady standing beside the table. She would have guessed the woman to be somewhere in her midsixties, younger than she expected. Her clothes were tailored to her frame, and she wore a navy blue trench coat with a scarf in layers of indigo. Her gray-streaked blonde hair was short with sweeping bangs settling just above red plastic-rimmed glasses.

Remembering herself, Sarah stood. “Gwen, um, Mrs. Evans?”

The question was an afterthought, a formality. The eyes were the same, as was the slight upturn of the nose. This was Matthew’s mother.

“Oh, please call me Gwen.” A forlorn smile passed between the two women, one only possible from a shared hurt.

“May I sit?”

“Of course, sorry. I’m, uh—”

“I know.”

The older woman removed her coat and took the seat across from Sarah. Around them, the café had quieted, the stream of rush-hour commuters having dwindled. A band of sunlight from the front window pierced the room, though both women rested just outside its reach.

“So,” Gwen said after a few meaningless pleasantries about the flight, the hotel, the weather. “I would imagine you have a million questions.”

“A few.”

“Fire away. It’s the least I can do.” Gwen turned gentle eyes on Sarah.

Questions twisted through Sarah’s head. She hesitated. She looked down at her cold tea, took a couple of breaths to quiet her mind. The first question was one she hadn’t expected to ask.

“Do you know where Matthew—Jonathan is?”

A shudder of the chin and flutter of the eyes spoke to Gwen’s anguish, though she held Sarah’s eyes. It was the look of a mother to a loved, complicated, and disheartening child.

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I have no idea. If I did, I would tell you in a heartbeat.”

The answer, while expected, devastated Sarah. She closed her eyes against it. Just before those words, somewhere in the tattered vestiges of hope, she had believed the answer would be here, that by unearthing Matthew’s secret, like a hapless archaeologist, she would uncover mysteries of his past to explain the present.

A hand rested lightly on Sarah’s. “I am so sorry, Sarah,” Gwen said in a faltering voice. Was it enough? To hear the woman who raised him offer a hushed apology in a West Coast coffee shop.

“I don’t understand,” Sarah said.

“I know. You can’t. It’s not understandable.”

Rendered speechless by the immensity of it all, Sarah let Gwen take the lead. She described a regular kid with a regular life in a regular suburb. Her talk wove from playdates and Sunday school to basketball tryouts and family vacations, each vignette laced with nostalgia and remorse.

“We were as June and Ward Cleaver as it was possible to be. Three kids, a house in a nice neighborhood. My husband coached soccer; I ran the school bake sales, for God’s sake. Even I knew it was a little too stereotypically suburban.

“I wish I could tell you Jonathan was damaged in some way, that some trauma in his past could explain this pattern he seems to have of disappearing. The truth is, I can’t explain anything about his adult life. I barely know him anymore, and the more time passes, the more I wonder if I ever truly did.”

“The police told me Jonathan had siblings.”

“Yes, he’s the youngest. Charlotte is the oldest; she’s a veterinarian in Calgary. Works with big animals, horses and cattle. Some of her stories can get a little off putting. She and her husband have two girls.” Gwen risked a small smile. “Jian and Wren. And Nathan’s here in Vancouver. He’s a single dad. Beth, my granddaughter, has special needs, so I help out where I can.”

An alternate life swam through Sarah’s mind. One with family, cousins, and large, boisterous dinners. How to account for the lives that might have been? If one decision had been different, one action taken on another day? Gwen’s interlaced hands rested on the small table, and Sarah concentrated on the veins threading beneath her skin. There was a lifetime in those hands, stories of joy and hurt etched into flesh. Sarah’s eyes dropped to her own hands, oddly pale against the scratched mahogany of the table. Her eyes traced the largest vein as it rose and fell like a roller coaster; she followed it back through the events of her life. Images unspooled for her as if a video were playing on a slow rewind—the campsite at Nagadon Lake, Charlie gleeful on the park slide, Bella’s first day of school, Izzy standing beside her at the wedding. The movie ended with the final scene of Matthew standing at her apartment door on a frigid winter night. In this new movie, this alternate life, she closed the door.

“Can I ask? Do I ... Are there grandkids?” In the hesitancy of Gwen’s voice, Sarah saw another one of Matthew’s victims. Another mother abandoned.

“Two. A boy and a girl.”

“Oh!” On the exclamation, Gwen’s interlaced hands rose to her mouth as if in prayer.

“Mirabelle, Bella. She’s nine and every inch Matthew’s daughter. She’s spunky and a handful, but ridiculously smart. Charlie’s four. He’s the sensitive one—”

“Charlie?” Gwen closed her eyes, tears catching in her lashes. When her eyes opened, Sarah read a painful question on her face and waited for the older woman to give it voice. “May I see photos?”

Sarah pulled out her phone and scrolled to the most recent pictures. She chose one from a local petting zoo. The photo showed the kids standing proudly on either side of a Jersey cow named Bella.

“Oh my,” said Gwen in a whisper. An uncontainable tear slid down her cheek on a blink. “He looks so much like him.”

Sarah said nothing.

“My late husband was named Charles. Everyone called him Charlie.”

The new information sliced through Sarah. Unable to draw air to speak, she kept her gaze on her hands as the two women rested in their adjoined griefs. Gwen wiped her bottom lids gingerly, careful not to smear her makeup.

“I’m sorry. It was a few years ago now, but I still find myself processing it sometimes.”

Eventually, Sarah was able to draw in just enough air. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

What else was there to say? Charles. Charlie. Sarah was afraid to ask. Serendipity had no place here. She tried to remember, had the name been her idea or Matthew’s? She pictured the list on the fridge, the one they added to periodically— Kai , Liam , Peter , after her father. When did Charlie appear? Had she liked it? Or had she come around to it? She saw the name scrawled between Samuel and Tiho . Whose handwriting? But she knew. Of course, she knew.

“How long ago did you lose him?”

“Um, let’s see. He died in July of 2012, so it’s been a little over four years now.”

Sarah didn’t need to do the math. There was no doubt her son—born in October of that year—was named after Jonathan’s father. How many layers of betrayal were possible in a single life?

“Oh, look at me. Wallowing in self-pity. And here I was trying to impress you,” Gwen said as a strained smile diluted the sadness in her eyes. “You came here to learn about Jonathan.”

Sarah rose through layers of sorrow and brushed at the webs of memory. With effort, she brought her mind to the woman in front of her. “Tell me everything.”

Back in her hotel later, Sarah sat in front of an untouched room service plate, her laptop open on an archive page of the Vancouver Sun website. A dated photo of Matthew was centered on the screen; underneath was a sensationalized headline: Local Man Vanishes . Sarah read.

The Vancouver Police Service is seeking the public’s assistance in locating missing person Jonathan EVANS, 28 years old.

Evans was last seen leaving his home in Surrey on Friday, May 11, 2007, at approximately 7:15 a.m.

He is described as a Caucasian male with a medium build, short brown hair, and hazel eyes.

At the time of his disappearance, he was believed to be wearing a navy jacket, khaki pants and a pale blue dress shirt.

Police are concerned for his well-being.

If anyone has any information about his whereabouts, please call ...

Jonathan had left for work on a Friday morning in May. As usual. At the time, he lived in an apartment with his wife, Faith, and their three-year-old daughter, Grace. Gwen had received a call from Faith late that evening. Matthew hadn’t come home yet, and she couldn’t reach him. Did Gwen know where he was? Had she heard from him?

“I love my son, but I’m also not under any illusions as to who he is ... or at least was back then,” Gwen had said in the coffee shop that morning, a harder edge to her voice. “Jon didn’t always do consequences well. Charlie used to say he was ‘slow to mature,’ like Peter Pan. He’d make a choice in life and stick with it; never question it, never consider alternatives, and definitely never look back. He burned some bridges because of it. I can honestly say, though, he always believed he was doing the right thing, even if it was terribly misguided.

“Despite all that, I never expected Faith, or anyone for that matter, to call me because she couldn’t find him. Their marriage had been difficult from the start. Jonathan had met Faith at university. I guess youthful intensity was too easily mistaken for love. The result was a pregnancy and a shotgun wedding the month after they graduated. Grace arrived six months later into a family that loved her but weren’t mature enough to love each other through it.”

Within weeks of Grace’s birth, Gwen heard rumblings from Jonathan.

“Back then, we had these big family dinners every Sunday. Jonathan would drink a little too much, and we could all see he wasn’t happy. It made for some awkward moments, but we didn’t think too much of it. Growing pains, we thought. There were signs, we just didn’t put them together in time.”

“What signs?”

“Little cracks at first, I guess. More and more there seemed to be a tension between him and Faith. But they were both so attentive to Grace. I mean, it would have been a lot for anyone. Getting married, starting a career, having a wife and baby to support.

“The rest came out later. After he disappeared. Apparently, he blamed Faith for the pregnancy. Over beers one night, Jonathan told his brother, Nate, that she had trapped him, and he couldn’t forgive her. Nate assumed it was drunk talk. Of course, we tried to support him, but Charlie felt strongly Jon owed it to Grace to ‘grow up and step up.’ That was Charlie. He had one of those cheesy motivational-poster lines ready for any occasion. It was infuriating, actually,” Gwen said with a twinge of amused melancholy.

A thoughtfulness fell over the table. The light in the coffee shop had shifted, indirect sunlight muting shadows in the room.

“We should have known.” Gwen’s voice was thick with memory. “He’d done it before.”

“Done what before?”

“Disappeared.”

It was a typical young adult story, Gwen said. Academic suspension midway through his first year of university; a young man lost and not ready to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. He worked for six months, earning as much as he could in dead-end jobs before spending the summer as a tree planter somewhere in Northern BC.

“We didn’t hear from him much while he was up at the camp,” Gwen said. “It was pretty isolated. The only communication was a satellite phone for emergencies. We’d hoped the isolation and hard work would knock some maturity into him. Then, one night toward the end of the summer, he called from a pay phone in Calgary. Charlie answered. Jonathan said he was about to board a flight to Europe with friends. No explanation. No contact info. We tried to get more out of him, but he just said he had to run and left us worried and wondering. We barely heard from him over there, other than two or three postcards to let us know he was still alive. He was pretty much off the grid for eight months, though that was before cell phones and Facebook.”

“What happened when he came home?” Sarah seized on the idea of return.

“It’s a bit cliché to say, but he came back a changed man. I always joked he grew up so much that he got taller during that lost year. Maybe it was the tree planting and the lousy meals out of a backpack, I don’t know; he seemed to have grown into his size. He went back to school, switched to computers, focused on his studies, hung out with friends. Nothing unusual. He followed a path after that, or at least we thought. Met a girl, graduated, had a kid, found a job. True, it wasn’t in the typical order, but we thought he was happy, settled.

“I suppose we all thought he’d turn up again when he disappeared a second time. None of us could believe he would leave Grace.”

The sound of the other child’s name reverberated in Sarah’s ears; it rang like a dull hum long after the end of a loud concert, her mind tuned to the cacophony rather than the quiet.

The family was sure it was foul play, Gwen said, but the police found nothing to suggest Jonathan hadn’t just upped and walked away. And of course, he never came back. The story so eerily familiar, it crept along Sarah’s spine.

“The police told us his case had moved to a ... I can’t remember what they called it.”

“A passive search.”

“That was it. A passive search. They said they’d follow up if anything came up, but nothing did. Not until two months ago when a new detective, the old one had long since retired, came to the door. Some young guy, looked barely out of grade school. He told me some recent DNA evidence suggested Jonathan was in Ontario. And now, you.

“I can only imagine what you’re going through, Sarah. I watched Faith survive this. I know it’s hard, but she’s been amazing, raising that girl all on her own. She’s a strong woman and a great mom.”

Gwen’s words about Faith burned in Sarah’s chest. She stood abruptly. “Sorry. I need to use the washroom.”

Sarah walked to the back of the coffee shop; it felt like moving through deep water. She concentrated on each step and keeping the tears back. In the bathroom, she locked and leaned against the door as if she could keep out the thoughts that flooded her mind. She imagined another woman, another family, laying claim to her husband, to her life. Her mirrored reflection looked back at her. Soft overhead lighting cast shadows beneath her eyes. She pulled in a long, deep breath. And then another. She willed herself to push back images of the other woman and kept her mind focused on Bella and Charlie.

Back at the table, Sarah overpowered Gwen’s concern with questions about Grace. “And Grace? What became of her?” Sarah was terrified to ask, but the compulsion was unstoppable.

“She’s brilliant.” Pride flushed Gwen’s face. “She’s twelve now. A wild head of stubbornness and curls. She’s interested in ocean studies and tells me she plans to live at my house when she starts the oceanography program at UBC. She lives with her mother on Vancouver Island, but I see them whenever I can.”

For much of Gwen’s story, Sarah felt as if she had been watching herself talking with a pleasant stranger about a sad story in a quiet café. This man, this Jonathan, had no connection to Sarah or her family. The moment Grace’s name crossed her own lips, Sarah’s illusion was pierced and her entire being—every nerve and muscle—was trained on the answer. There was an unanticipated relief then, crippling waves that threw Sarah off balance and tossed her into an interminable sea of questions.

Grace had survived the loss.

Though it was hard to hear over her relief, Sarah just caught Gwen’s tentative question. “When, or if, you’re ready, do you think it would be possible for me to meet your children?”