When he turned around to check on Anna, she’d already closed her eyes and gone back to sleep. Her reaction gave him confidence in her, but also in himself. Back then he believed that together they could handle almost anything.
TED WAKES UP WITH a headache, a pain starting in the tightness along his shoulder blades and working its way up to his temples. He pulls on his sweatpants and laces up his old sneakers with the hope that an early-morning bike ride along the logging road will clear his head. The girls are still in bed, content in slack-mouthed sleep, their faces younger somehow. He half-expected Anna to be gone, though he’s not sure why. There would be nowhere for her to go. Her restful presence in the bed makes him question last night’s events, whether or not he dreamt the entire thing.
Ted stops at the bay window in the living room to look out over the backyard and down its steep slope to the lake. The clouds remain dense, the day never breaking through the morning light’s first struggle. On the edge of the property, a deer noses in the salmonberry bushes, its gait twitchy as though it’s ready for a getaway at the slightest breeze through the treetops. He steps closer to the glass and the deer vanishes into the bushes, its soft brown flanks camouflaged by the branches. Ted realizes he would be a terrible hunter, and this makes him neither happy nor sad.
Outside the air is still damp from a heavy morning rain. Ted opens the garage door and steps inside. It’s mostly empty, with dusty shelves at the back and milk crates stacked in one corner. He goes over to the spot where Anna was sitting the night before and gets down on his knees, scanning the dirt floor for any sign, a bit of tinfoil, a butt, ashes, anything to give him a clue as to what she’s been doing, but there’s nothing. There’s no sign of Anna in this garage. He picks up some of the dirt and sniffs it — ordinary dirt, not drug-laced junkie dirt. He brushes off his hands and goes to pick up the bike in the grass.
Ted follows the logging road in the direction of Jim’s real estate property. He can’t remember the last time he went for a bike ride, but judging by the tension building in his shoulders and chest it’s been a while. His calf muscles tighten. He should’ve stretched before, but he’s too stubborn to stop now — he digs his feet into the pedals and pushes on, whizzing past undergrowth thick with dewy ferns. Birds call out from somewhere deep in the trees.
He should have checked the garage last night or searched through Anna’s pockets for that tinfoil, figured out what she was smoking. Heather would have done it differently; she would have grabbed Anna by the shoulders and demanded an answer. She would have pulled her into her arms, held her tightly, smelled her hair, slapped her. She would have tried to get a sense of what was going on.
The road in front of Ted winds down a long hill. He picks up the pace, focusing on his loud, uneven breath. Suspicions flash through his brain, but they come too quickly and then disappear: Anna’s long absences, her vanishing hunger, her vanishing body, her chewed lips. Everything is wrong somehow; he sees it now like a doll built from mismatched parts, the limbs too thin, the head too large. Her eyes are wrong. The wheels pick up momentum, flying as he surrenders control, his hands braced on the rattling handlebars. He can hear a rumbling behind him and he pumps the brakes, moving over to the side of the road. As he stops and catches his breath, a logging truck roars by, coming so close he can smell the freshly cut lumber. He clutches his hand to his chest and takes in deep ragged gulps of air. He has a sudden urge to reach out and grab onto one of the chains keeping the logs together, to go off flying with the truck through the forest, though common sense tells him what would actually happen: his arm ripped out of its socket, the rest of him left on the bike alone on the road. The truck’s momentum catches him off balance and his foot slips into the ditch, tipping him over into the tall weeds.
He pushes the bike out first and then clamours up, wiping the dirt off his legs and arms. The truck has already clattered down the rest of the hill and takes a sharp curve at the bottom of the road. It looks unstable enough to go hurtling right through the forest, but somehow stays on course, keeping its load in position. Ted bangs his fist on his chest, trying to ignore the pain shooting through his shoulder: a sure sign of a heart attack. He lets his vision blur with the throb of blood rushing through his head. He could die here on this logging road. Someone would find him. Wrap him in a blanket. Put him in the back of a pickup and tie him down with rope for the long ride back to the mainland.
Behind him he can hear laughter and the whistling spokes of a bicycle wheel. “Are you going to keel over?” Leslie shouts, braking beside him with a spray of dirt. He can feel the muscles around his heart slacken and, with his daughter as a distraction, the pain in his shoulder disappears.
“I didn’t know you were following me,” Ted says, embarrassed, hoping Leslie didn’t see him fall into the ditch.
“Why didn’t you wake me up? I thought we were all going together?” She gets off the bike and pulls her ankle behind her, stretching first one leg and then the other. “I tried to get Anna up, but she was bitchy.”
“Don’t say ‘bitchy.’” Ted wipes the sweat off his forehead. “You both looked tired. You girls had a late night.”
“I’m not tired.” She smiles shyly at him, completely different from the tipsy, belligerent girl last night.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Ted says, starting down the road. Without discussion they both decide to walk their bikes. After several minutes of silence Leslie asks, “Do you know where we’re going?”
“I think this is it, up ahead.” Ted veers and climbs up a steep dirt driveway that disappears into the forest.
The site is barren, cleared of all vegetation, with huge mounds of earth along the edge of the lot. Tall firs stand around the perimeter of the property like mourners at a burial. There are still stumps to be dug up, and rusted machines — forklifts and backhoes — are parked along the driveway, looking as though they’ve been there for years. Ted sits on a stump to catch his breath. He’s still sweating. He watches Leslie walk slowly along the edges of the property. “We could put a pool here.” Leslie stands at the back of the lot in the middle of an empty square of mud.
“So, what do you think?” He follows her gaze to the tops of the trees and watches her eyes focus on something distant, maybe the possible view of Cortes Island and the water. He is having trouble visualizing anything different, anything beyond the trucks, stumps, machinery, and porta-potties. He can’t picture his Adirondack chair, or rather he can’t picture himself in the chair. He had it drawn out in his mind, but now he sees nothing but the bare trees, the stripped branches, the mud and sky.