Black Otter Bay (7 page)

Abby tried to be open-minded about her mother's decision to leave, but she'd come to understand that sometimes a person's head and heart could have differing opinions. Last August, for her thirteenth birthday, Abby's father took her on a thirteen-day canoe trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Every summer they went camping together, just the two of them, each year venturing farther into the wilderness. With every passing year they added one day to the trip in honor of another birthday. Last year, they'd traveled well up into Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. Jackie had moved out a few months prior to the trip, and Abby's initial sadness had recently been replaced by a simmering anger.

Looking back on last summer's canoe trip, she had to give her father his due. He wasn't much for talking about himself
or sharing feelings, but in his taciturn, modest sort of way he'd attempted to reach a hand out to his daughter. Sitting by a campfire next to a nameless lake in the far north country late one night, their tent in the shadows behind them and the moon reflecting off the water before them, her father explained to her how the energy of the city called to Abby's mother.

“You know that your mother grew up in Chicago, right?” he'd said. “She's got that big-city blood in her, just like the mysteries of these deep, cold lakes course through you.” Abby had liked that image, and the idea that she could somehow be related to this incredible wilderness.

“Your mother was actually pretty excited about moving up here when we first got married. I think she had some notion about how it would be. You know, like one of those Norman Rockwell paintings. I think she looked forward to a slower pace, and raising a family far away from gangs and violence.”

Abby sat on a rock next to the campfire, poking at the flames with a long stick. She found it thrilling, and somewhat intimidating, to be having this grown-up conversation. She'd only just become a teenager, and it seemed like a whole world of adult emotions and passions was already opening up to her. She didn't dare speak for fear of sounding like the child she still felt herself to be.

“I'd say your mother knew that Black Otter Bay wouldn't work for her even before you were born. There's not much privacy in a small town. But you have to give her credit. She did try. Remember how she went fishing with us? And camping, too.”

“Oh, sure,” Abby pouted. “It was like babysitting the whole time.”

Her father laughed. “But think about it. What if you suddenly found yourself living in Chicago? How would you feel about riding a crowded subway with all those strangers, or going to school in the city with thousands of other kids? It would be kind of frightening, wouldn't it?”

“I guess so,” she replied.

“Well, your mother did it. She thrived on it, just like you thrive on a run through the woods.”

“But she wanted to live here,” Abby argued. “And then she didn't. It's not fair. Once you decide, you should stick to it.”

“It's not always that easy. Sometimes people make mistakes. You wouldn't want her to stay here if she was unhappy, would you?”

Abby considered her father's words in silence for a while, until she realized that just thinking and talking about her mother made her angrier. She threw the poker stick into the fire, stood up, and stalked off down to the shoreline. Over her shoulder, she said, “Isn't it more unfair for her to make all three of us unhappy?”

Tears had threatened to erupt, but in the dark, gazing out over the placid lake, she managed to blink them back. Now, as she ran the Big Island Lake Trail, she let the tears roll. Letting her frustration push her even harder, she wondered aloud, “How can it be that I miss her so much when she makes me so mad?”

It was her mother's relationship with Randall Bengston that Abby had the hardest time justifying. With long, wispy, thin hair and shifty eyes, he gave Abby the creeps. Randall's mother, Rosie, owned the bait shop, but he had no interest in the business or small-town life. Jackie had found a kindred spirit in Randall. The lure of the city called to both of them, and when Jackie left Black Otter Bay for good, the two of them took up together in a small apartment on the eastern edge of downtown Duluth. Abby and Ben had spent a couple days with her after she was settled in, but they had no interest in going back. They saw their mother when she came home to visit, but she didn't make the trip up here much anymore. It was probably like her father said, Abby thought: Jackie didn't want to spend time in a tiny, rural town any more than Abby wanted to visit the big city.

Randall held minor financial interests in several small businesses in Duluth. He wore flashy suits, drove a small sports
car, and Abby thought he strutted around like one of those hyperactive little dogs, a cockapoo or whatever they called them. If the man ever had to do an honest day's work, like her father did down at the taconite plant, it would kill him. Randall owned an art gallery, known as The Tempest, in the East End of Duluth. Jackie worked for him, dressing up in tailored business suits, greeting customers and, after getting to know them, showing select pieces she thought would be of interest to them. The prestige of her position appealed to her. The clientele was generally older and affluent, and Jackie's graceful bearing and knowledgeable conversation suited the job perfectly.

By night, she worked the dollar slot machines in the downtown casino. Recently, Abby had overheard some troubling talk about her mother. Rumor had it that she owed the casino money. She might even have a gambling problem. Her father wouldn't acknowledge the rumors, wouldn't discuss it with Abby at all, other than the one time when he'd said, “It's just a bunch of mean-spirited people saying these things. Don't you believe them.”

Mean-spirited?
Abby thought. Her own classmates were the ones doing the talking. When she considered her mother's behavior, she preferred to think of her as being temporarily insane. She'd come to her senses sooner or later. And Abby really didn't care what her friends said. She wasn't embarrassed about her mother leaving, but if she ever came home, she had some serious explaining to do.

Abby's pace never faltered as she covered the distance to Big Island Lake. Sure-footed and determined, she ran lightly, her thoughts carrying her past the burning in her lungs and the ache in her thighs. It helped that it was lighter on this western side of the ridge. There was more animal sign, too, and at one point she spotted a pileated woodpecker in its undulating flight through the woods. Deer tracks littered the forest floor, especially now with the snow gone and everything wet and muddy.

Dropping down off the hillside, Abby noted a large opening in the foliage ahead. It wasn't so much that she could see
through the trees into the clearing, as that the existence of the opening was apparent to someone used to looking for such things. And an opening that large in this country signified one of two things: the site of recent logging operations or the presence of a lake. Quickly scanning the terrain, Abby estimated her location. The abandoned road leading to the boat landing and Rosie's minnow seines wound in off the county highway about a quarter mile from the base of the hill. The trail she was on would take her to the iced-in side of the lake where she and Ben had first come this morning.

There wasn't much underbrush this early in the season, so after plotting an imaginary line through the woods, Abby jumped off the trail on a heading to cross the old roadway. Within minutes, patches of blue water flashed through the trees. The sun had dropped a bit but was still a long way from setting, and bright reflections off the water flickered through the early summer foliage.

To be on the safe side, when Abby came to the roadway, she followed it from just inside the treeline. She didn't expect to see anyone at this hour, but considering the events they'd witnessed that afternoon, there was no sense in taking chances.

Through a series of short curves, the overgrown roadway led Abby to the old boat landing. As she'd expected, no one was there. She paused for a moment at the water's edge to catch her breath. Scanning the lake surface, she saw that much of the ice had disappeared over the afternoon, with the remaining floes a dark gray and mottled with holes and standing water. Abby stood on the spot where the big fancy car had parked. Looking at the ground around her, it seemed as though the gravel and weeds were more disturbed than the passing of one car would warrant. Then she remembered the second vehicle approaching as she'd made her escape, the pickup truck she'd glimpsed through the trees. Studying the tracks, she wondered if the ground could have been dug up this much by just the two vehicles turning around in the small clearing. Finally shrugging
off the mystery, Abby took another deep breath, and then turned into the brush to retrieve the backpacks.

Fifteen minutes later, she still searched. Nothing. Everything was as she remembered, except their belongings were gone. She even got on her knees at the exact spot where they'd first noticed the car. She found where the backpacks had been, where they'd started eating their lunches. Nothing. At the water's edge, she stood where they'd fished, looked back at the spot on the grassy bank where Ben had kept the fish wet. But other than a few places where the brush had been disturbed, a person could easily have thought that no one had been here since last fall.

Then she remembered the trout they'd caught. Scrambling along the shore, she came to the spot where she'd stored the freezer bag of fish. The anchoring rock was there, but no bag. She considered the notion of a bear wandering in and stealing the backpacks. And the nose of a bruin would have easily detected the bag of fish. But as she studied the vacant space at her feet, Abby's heart suddenly began pounding again. This time it had nothing to do with the run through the woods. In the mud next to her tennis shoe, she spotted the print of a large boot. Squatting for a closer look, even in her relative inexperience she could see that the impression had been made by a big man. Next to her own footprint, the indentation was huge and deep. It was smooth-soled, like a dress shoe, a style the big man in the fancy car would have been wearing.

Abby grunted in bewilderment, then hurried along the shoreline searching for any sign of their belongings. Her thoughts went to hip waders, how every pair she'd ever seen had thick-lugged soles. The man must have removed them, she decided, before searching the area. Scrambling back to the open boat landing, Abby stood still long enough to take a deep breath. She looked back up the road behind her, and out over the lake. The breeze had died down, making for a peaceful stillness at this early evening hour, but to Abby, the silence echoed
with mystery. Things had happened here after her hurried departure earlier today, events with no witnesses. Big Island could have told her a few things if it could talk, or those loons calling back and forth to each other.

She wondered why the man had taken all their gear. There was nothing in the backpacks to interest a grown man. He'd even taken that stupid fishing pole, and the freezer bag of small rainbow trout. He'd taken everything, including their notebooks containing their names and address.

That was the factor that turned Abby aboutface and thrust her at a full run up the road. The man knew who they were. He knew where they lived. Ben was home alone, counting on her to fix this whole mess. She angled off the road into the woods, ducking branches, hurdling puddles and deadfalls, racing for home. Her mind whirled with fears and questions. What would the man do with the information? What could he do? They hadn't done anything wrong. He was the bad guy. She barely noticed the animal tracks she crossed, didn't really hear the ravens calling to roost above her, and ran right past a pair of white-tailed does watching her from under a copse of cedars.

Over the ridgetop she climbed, huffing, breathing deep gulps of fresh air. Lake Superior spread out to the horizon before her. A few rooftops in town became visible far down below. Barely able to check her flying descent, Abby dropped down the face of the ridge, grabbing tree branches along the way, using her knees as shock absorbers, all the way to the familiar landscape behind town and, finally, to the back door of their house.

“Ben?” she called. “Ben!”

Through the kitchen she ran, noticing the sink still full of dishes, and into the front room and the staircase to the bedrooms upstairs. “Ben?” she called, before leaping two and three steps at a time. By now it was apparent that her brother wasn't home. The rooms had a silent, vacant feel to them. “Where are you, Ben?” she called in desperation, as if by a strength of will she could make him be home.

Back downstairs. They always left notes for each other near the cordless telephone on the kitchen table. Nothing. Then she ran through the front room again, abruptly stopping in the front entryway. Their backpacks sat side by side on the floor inside the front door. Abby slowly approached, then squatted to inspect them. All her things seemed to be present: notebooks, pencils, books, even the plastic container of worms from the compost pile. Stuck behind her backpack was the telescoping fishing rod.

From her crouching position she contemplated the sudden appearance of their belongings until the phone rang behind her, causing her to cry out and nearly fall over. Lunging back through the house again, she grabbed the phone on the second ring. “Ben? Ben, is that you?”

Silence on the line, then a man's voice, deep and steady. “Hello, Abigail.”

No one called her Abigail. It wasn't even her real name. She'd seen her birth certificate; her given name was Abby. Timidly, she asked, “Who's this?”

“I think you know who it is,” the voice said.

“What do you want? Where is my brother?”

“Whoa, Abigail. Slow down. I thought perhaps you'd appreciate an opportunity to thank me for returning your school supplies.”

Abby was getting mad. “What have you done with Ben?”