The Find (22 page)

It was, she felt, surprisingly painful, to be doing this. It was unbearable, Scott thought, that they would go on walking until they reached the hotel, and then Anna would thank him one last time. She would cross the road and follow her colleagues inside; he would veer right, and then walk and walk not knowing where he was aiming for, and then start to run, trying to escape from feeling that life was impossible.
No
, he thought. I'm not going back there.

Still talking, repeating herself about the references and contacts that he did not want, she turned a little towards him.

‘I'm sure that things will go well for you,' she said, and he reached over and put his hand on her waist, felt its softness, the jut of her hip, the impact of her foot on the ground; she stopped, but did not pull away.

‘Anna—'

‘I know,' she rested her hand in the small of his back, ‘but listen, Scott—' He ran his hand up her side, encountered her ribs, the swell of her breast. The others had turned the corner and they were alone, one moment still looking, the next pressed together so that she could smell the traces of wood smoke on his skin. Their breathing and the small wet sounds their lips made filled each other's ears.

Everything else about them vanished, and they wanted it to. First the Mountain View was impossible, and then it did not matter at all; they slipped through the back way. Scott used an old pass key and let them into a back room.

‘Wait—' she said, pushing him away: they were still half-clothed but beginning to move as if they were not, ‘Scott, be clear, this is just tonight, okay?' His leg was jammed up between hers and he knew that when he ran his hand over her skin it made it hard for her to speak, and it was the same for him, but he was not wanting at all to speak and
just tonight
was a whole lot better than not at all.

‘Okay?' she said, ‘I don't want you to—' but it seemed that what she did want was clear enough and he gave enough of a nod that she let him: inside of her, out of himself, everywhere at once.

In the small hours, Scott pulled on his jeans and went to the kitchen to raid the fridge. He put what he could find on a tray. Breakfast rolls, grapes, little packets of cheese, two glasses of orange juice.

She drank her juice and then said that she liked him very much — there was something wrong with the way she said this, and he dimly remembered, then, how things had begun with him having to understand something. But she was still there, naked, the blanket pulled up around her legs.

‘Very much... Tonight was wonderful. Now, let's leave it like this. Otherwise, things will just get complicated and painful.' Why those words? Why complicated and painful? Why not
fantastic, wild, intense
?

‘It's a minefield. I'm sorry, but don't get involved.'

‘I am fucking
involved
!'

‘Then stop,' she said and began to get dressed. ‘Put your things on and come out with me, don't stay here alone. It's almost morning.' Her hand grazed his back as they left the room, and every nerve, cell and vessel in his body responded.

She went upstairs to her own room, and felt far more sad than she could justify. But it would be all right, she told herself. How else could it be? In a day or so he'd understand; they'd both get over it. Scott sat outside; a few hours later, he watched the floatplane roar away across the water, and then, rise, dwindle and disappear.

♦ ♦ ♦

Pale and puffy, her hair newly cut short, Lesley peered at her family, cheerful as ever. ‘It's fixed for Tuesday. They'll only be six weeks early,' she said. ‘Three pounds maybe? And then, I'll be able to get out of this bed!' she said. ‘Okay, not right after, but soon. It's going to be fine.'

‘
When
are you going to come home?' Sam asked. His hair had grown over his eyebrows and ears; Frankie's was in bunches, not braids. Both children, Anna thought, looked less clear-cut, wilder than usual.

‘I'm not exactly sure, darling,' Lesley told him. ‘I'm going to have to spread myself pretty thin,' she said to Anna as the kids went off with Vik to buy ice cream, and they both laughed, because she was so uncommonly huge.

♦ ♦ ♦

Even his father had someone, though Scott did not like the way Mac grew restless when Orianna was not there, the way his eyes gravitated to the window or the door, waiting for her return. He had seen that look before, and knew what it could lead to. Though they seemed happy, and she had found part-time work in a garden centre, for which she needed Scott's truck.

‘Thank your lucky stars,' Matt told Scott. ‘She did you a favour. A woman with problems is not good. It's
them
that are supposed to look after
you
.' They were in the tent Scott had erected on the patch of grass in front of the trailer. Despite the soft light, Scott noticed lines on Matt's face that he hadn't seen before, smelled the dope smoke on his clothes, the coffee on his breath.

‘You're insane, man,' Matt said. In his opinion, Scott should move back into his old family house, which Matt had bought for a song, with cash. He could do the necessary repairs and alternations, and set up an operation in the basement on a percentage basis. ‘What else are you going to do?'

What did he have? Years at the hotel. Excellent but uncertified computer skills. Basic mechanics but no formal qualification. Catering for a palaeontological dig. Looking after two people with health challenges. He would never be a palaeontologist, a politician, a detective, a guitarist, or a helicopter pilot. He had no computer, no income, was not a real Native, and he did not want to return to the Mountain View Hotel, or to run a grow-op.

He wanted to be with Anna Silowski, and he did not care if he was insane.

♦ ♦ ♦

When Madeleine and Christine were born, it was a week before they could be touched. They were in the NICU, with monitors taped to their scalps, sensors on their feet, drips in their stomachs, and visitors had to scrub and gown to visit them. It was like having
no
babies, Frankie complained. It was like having monkey babies, said Sam.

But soon they could be touched, held and studied up close. At home, a frenzy of feeding, laundry, meals, and since the irrigation had stopped working, watering too. Anna took on the groceries, the cooking and Frankie and Sam; she drove them to their school and play dates, arranged treats afterwards, fed them, made sure they washed their hair, read to them, made sure Vik played with them too when he got in. One story was about a girl who was jealous of her new baby brother, but finally came around when he gripped her finger and wouldn't let go.
He Loves Me Too
, the book was called. Lesley's mother had sent it.

‘But there's only
one
baby, in the story,' Frankie pointed out as she dug herself deeper into her end of the sofa. ‘And it's a boy, and anyhow, I'm not jealous. But I want a mountain bike.' A baby on her lap, Frankie's hair slipping between her fingers as she braided it, Sam clinging to her in piggyback, Lesley in her arms half sobbing from exhaustion, Vik's arm flung across her shoulder: there was no time, scarcely a waking moment free of human interaction, never an hour without some kind of touch.

Then Lesley's sister Jo arrived, and it was time to return to her own life: to the documentation of the Big Crow find, to her empty house, to the choice she had set aside before she left. The family, six now, gathered outside to wave her goodbye.

♦ ♦ ♦

Scott's first ride was in a red Jetta — driven by a maniac — but it got him on the ferry and then to a good spot on the road out of the terminal. Then he was in a battered Explorer on Highway 1, heading for Kamloops with Ken, who said he'd take him as far as Hope: easier to find a ride from there, mind you, the Coquihalla was a toll road. Soon the road snaked along a valley between tree-clad mountains, and Ken sped along, making the most of the company. If Scott was looking for work, there was a brother of his in Kamloops, who owned a restaurant and was starting up a ginseng farm.

An hour's wait just outside Hope, then a logging truck going for the pulp mill, driven by Alvin who waved away his ten bucks for the toll. Silence this time: they couldn't hear themselves speak. The mountains now were dry, hot-looking, like in a Western. Signs for the ginseng farm. Alvin dropped him right outside the campsite.

Back by the road, 7:30 a.m., destination Banff: snapped up by two gay men from the US in a shiny white rented SUV. There was
plenty
of work down south for someone like him, said Carl, the driver, had Scott considered modelling?

No. A silence ensued, talk about other things. Food. Cars. The climb towards Rogers Pass — gouged black rock, white peaks, and the bluest sky Scott had ever seen. They vanished into shady tunnels, burst out into the light. At a cafÈ near the summit he got lucky with a grey Toyota, driven by Eileen, travelling with her husband, George. They had a son Scott's age, who was backpacking in Europe.

‘Lord knows exactly where,' Eileen said. ‘Our fingers are crossed.'

Golden. Lake Louise. He called at the grocery store, and then walked to the riverside campsite, which was shady and cool. The year was turning. A few fires burned in the dark, kids yelled and careened round on their bikes or played Frisbee with their dads: the way things weren't, Scott thought. But all that was the past. He had had a bird's-eye view of Anna's place on Google Earth: just out of town, a few miles on from the museum, the only property at the end of a left turn. He would be there tomorrow.

♦ ♦ ♦

She saw him from behind, framed by the windshield, right there, walking the same way she was driving: Scott, with his green backpack. He had somehow stepped from one part of her life into another and for a moment she could only think that she was mistaken, that despite putting him out of her mind, she had somehow managed to dream him up.

Scott?

She passed, pulled over and watched him approach. She saw the loose walk, the set of his shoulders, the smile he didn't even know he wore. Very familiar, yet also strange. He saw a grey Volvo, very dusty; he heard classical music drifting out the open window. He was braced for trouble — for her to yell at him that he should not have come, or drive off.

‘Are you okay?' she asked. He shrugged, smiled.

‘I need to talk with you,' he said. In the back, Roger gave a couple of sharp barks, and then, when told to be quiet, growled and stayed put. Just for a moment Anna was afraid. But it was
Scott
. She leaned across to open the door.

‘I don't live far from here,' she said.

The key stuck in the lock. She had to put her bag down to get in.

He took off his shoes and followed her into the house, noticing only the general feel of the place, a mix of old and new, the weathered wooden floor in the hall, the modern-looking pictures on the walls. He waited while she fed the dog, and then poured two glasses of water from the jug in the fridge
and handed him one of them, watched him drink.

‘Why have you come all this way?' she asked. Though she knew, stiffened when he leaned towards her.

‘But you can't just walk into my life. You know my situation. And you're — I don't know exactly — young! Can't you see, Scott?' He could or would not see, his point being, you could not just turn something off once it had began. But he liked the way she said his name.

‘And I have to come to a decision about testing,' she told him. It was impossible then not to reach out for him.

—
♦ —

HE SAT IN THE WAITING ROOM
while she gave the blood sample. Painlessly, the thick, dark liquid filled the syringe and she, the scientist, became data. An object of enquiry. Not quite the same self anymore.

There
, the technician said, calmly taping cotton wool into the crook of her arm, as if it was nothing at all.

Four weeks later, he accompanied her to a different part of the hospital to see Dr Hutz. Hutz, short and plump, bald, his face cross-hatched with lines, looked up at him as they shook hands and asked, ‘Family?'

‘Scott and I have recently become close,' Anna said. Hutz waved them into their seats.

Hutz liked to begin by looking at the family background. Anna talked; Scott took it all in: the Russian grandmother who left her sick husband behind when she emigrated, Mama, Leo falling to bits, Vik and his kids… He listened, but also he watched: he watched the tensing and relaxation of small muscles around her eyes and mouth, the frown that came at every question and then smoothed itself away as she began to talk. He watched the tilt of her head as she listened, the way she closed her eyes when she was overwhelmed by what she was thinking, hearing or saying. It was impossible, he allowed himself to think, that she could be sick: she was just far too much alive. After all this, they would be free.

‘Mama kept things secret to protect us,' Anna told Hutz. ‘Once I knew,
I
had to protect myself. And her way seemed to be the best way. Now—' she smiled.

‘What's changed?' Hutz prompted. ‘What's different now?' Anna swallowed.

‘I don't think I would be sitting here now, if Mama were still alive.' She sat for a moment as if listening to some kind of private music, her face smooth with surprise. ‘And now—' her gaze rested on Scott; he could feel its warmth, ‘Now, I need to find out.'

‘Not for me. I don't need to know,' he said.

‘Because of you, I do,' she replied. Hutz took in a slow breath, let it out. He moistened his lips.

‘Whatever the situation between you now,' he said, ‘it is
liable to change once — if — you have the result, whatever that is.' How did Hutz drag you out of your comfort zone without you knowing until it was done? It was all in that soft, flat tone of voice.

At the same moment, they reached for each other's hands.

Afterwards, they made their way in silence to the elevator, which first refused to depart and then seemed to plummet down. It felt strange to step out into the ordinary afternoon light, the crisp fall air.

♦ ♦ ♦

Dr Persaud, the neurologist, asked Anna to walk in a straight line down the corridor, and follow with her eyes the course of a ballpoint pen, which he moved to and fro in front of her face. He'd looked down to tick boxes on a chart, but otherwise his eyes never left her. He was young and tactful and soft-spoken and was only doing what he'd been asked to do. Scott knew it was crazy to want to rip the damn clipboard out of his hands, but that didn't stop him wanting to.

‘A difficult job, though,' Anna agreed afterwards. They sat in the car in the hospital parkade, the engine on for heat.

‘Not as difficult as it is the other side of the desk.'

♦ ♦ ♦

She had not told Vik and Lesley about Scott, but the Sunday before the last appointment, she called and told Lesley that she'd be in town on Tuesday, and would like to bring someone to meet them.

Tuesday was a bright, cold day. Juliette met them in the lobby, shook hands, checked that Anna still wished to be given her result, and then called up to the doctor's office. Dr Persaud would open the letter now, she said as they went up in the elevator. He used to do it in front of the patient, but it was unnecessarily stressful. With a soft clatter, the elevator doors opened; Juliette waited for them to step out first.

Even now, she could turn back. Anna's heart thudded in her chest. There was a roaring in her ears.

Why Persaud? Scott remembered the way he had watched Anna walk down the corridor, which now they had to walk again together, following Juliette past door after door, on each a name and its string of letters. But did it matter? Perhaps, even, it was better that the person on the other side of the desk was someone you didn't care for.

The door was ajar.

Dr Persaud invited them to sit. Juliette took a chair by the window. Anna withdrew her hand from Scott's; he reached and took it back. Had their journey over gone smoothly? Dr Persaud wanted to know. Good. Well. He had just a few moments ago opened the letter, he said, glancing down at it and then up again.

He was sorry, but it was bad news.

‘Are you sure?' Scott asked, leaning forward to see the paper.

‘I'm very sorry, but yes.' Dr Persaud turned the paper round, and pointed with his finger. ‘There are forty-three repeats.'