“You would have figured it out.”
“That’s not true. You know it’s not true. You’ve seen what the Walkers wanted me to sign. Ten years of service. And they wouldn’t even take Kayla because of her goddamn ex-boyfriend.”
“You never mentioned that―”
“I guess there was that stranded work crew near the airport, but they’d only take us girls, and only if we didn’t mind spending most of the time on our backs in trade.”
“Those idiots didn’t last long…”
“And I’m sure the Tremblays and the Porters would have tried their luck on the highway if we hadn’t have helped them.”
“Now that’s sad.”
“Yeah, yeah… but what about Fiona? If you hadn’t taken her on, where would she be? She was fourteen years old, Baptiste… no parents, no friends. She wouldn’t have had a chance.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t bother arguing with me,” she said. “I know you don’t agree with me right now. But all I want you to know is that I’ve always believed in you, and that doesn’t go away even when you’ve lost faith in yourself. You’re our best chance by far, Baptiste. I’d say that’s obvious to everyone but you, apparently.”
I knew she meant it.
I leaned in and gave her a kiss.
“We should get back,” she said.
By the time we’d come back to the cottage the dishes were done and everyone had gone about their evening routines. It was like nothing had been said.
Lisa glared at me, though, so I knew that Graham had already talked to her. Lisa doesn’t believe in hiding her feelings. That’s something I’ve learned to respect.
Neither of them said anything to me.
Matt and Kayla seemed to be avoiding me, too, while Fiona seemed oblivious to all of it as she sketched in her notebook.
It was all for the best. I was still upset, and I knew that the anger would come out either in tears or in blind rage. Crying in front of everyone was not something I was willing to do, and I couldn’t afford the other.
But at the same time I know that I need to make Graham understand. He needs to know that there’s no room for discussion when it comes to our safety.
It’s my responsibility… it’s my decision to make.
I went upstairs with Sara. The two of us laid together in bed, Sara with her reader and me with my tablet, writing an entry in my journal that I’m not sure how I should end.
At least I have Sara.
Having her beside me makes this bearable.
6
Today is Thursday, December 27th.
Ant wrote this last August:
It’s hard for a guy like me to talk about love; I’ve spent my time on this earth in pursuit of a full variety of the storied Canadian beaver, and truthfully, falling in love gets in the way of that.
But love is something that sticks with you, like a bad cold or genital herpes, and sometimes it gets even worse as time goes on. Sometimes it won’t go away no matter how much you want it to, no matter how much time you spend fapping to other girls.
I miss Natalie. It was impossible being with her, after being with her sister for so long, but that doesn’t really change anything for me. I think she misses me, too, not that we can send each other texts or try to run into each other at the grocery store. We might as well be a thousand kilometers away.
I left the Girards without any time to pack or really say goodbye; all I had time for was to tell Natalie that I loved her. She smiled in that way she always did when she heard my normal bullshit; I don’t think she understood what kind of love I was talking about.
One day I’ll get up the nerve to go back and explain it to her.
The night I dropped off Natalie and Tabitha, I took that little Honda back to McCartney Lake and parked it at a cottage up the road. It still had just over half a tank, but I didn’t really have any plans for how to use the gas that was left.
Last night after Sara had gone to sleep, I decided to drive back to the Girards’ in that little car. I brought along a vest and a helmet, but I didn’t feel like putting them on. I even took off my belt, stuffing it on the passenger seat beside me. It all felt like too much to carry.
I almost got stuck a few times in the snow, and at those moments I felt pretty stupid that I hadn’t brought along a snow shovel or any sand. But luckily that little car had more guts than I expected, and I made it all the way to Bondy Lake.
I’d forgotten to bring the tarps, too.
I went back into the empty house and gathered up the bed sheets. Then I brought them down to the car and spread about half of them in the back; I folded down the passenger seat as well to get a little more room.
Then I took the rest of the bed sheets and I went to the root cellar. I strapped on my headlamp, which felt strange strapped directly against my scalp and not onto my helmet, and I lowered myself down to where the bodies lay.
I’d been worried about coyotes finding the frozen bodies, not that I was sure if they’d be able to do much with them. But most of the dead Girards looked just as they did before; there might have been some rodents down there, but I didn’t look that carefully.
Natalie and Tabitha probably looked exactly like they did the day they died.
I knew it wasn’t fair to leave Tabitha there, away from her family and then away from her best friend, so I wrapped the two of them up with the sheets.
I carried Natalie first, and I didn’t know how to feel as I balanced her over my shoulder like a surfboard, her body rigid and cold. I placed her in the car and then I went back for Tabitha.
I felt a little guilty leaving the rest of them there, but I knew it would be hard enough with two.
I drove them back to McCartney Lake to the place near Wright Creek that we’d chosen when we lost Ant. I laid them both out in the snow, Tabitha wrapped in a sheet of yellow and green flowers, and Natalie covered with pink unicorns.
I decided that one day I would go back to the root cellar, for the children at least.
I gathered some logs from our firewood pile, along with two bottles of lighter fluid, since I didn’t have any kindling. I lit the fire and I waited a few minutes for the flames to grow hot. Then I grabbed my steel shovel and shoved it into the fire.
It took much longer to dig those two graves than it did to bury Ant, and the sun had already risen before I had finished filling them back in.
I was just glad that my heart had kept up with the digging.
Kayla found me there.
“Sara’s looking for you,” she said.
I tried to give her a smile; I’m not sure it worked. “Thanks for letting me know. You’re not going to ask me what I’m doing?”
She gave me a look that surprised me, like she understood exactly how I was feeling. She wrapped her arm around me. “I know what you’re doing… and I know that he’d appreciate it, Baptiste. Ant really did love her.”
“That’s what he wrote.”
“He told me once. One night when we were out together by the lake. I asked him if he wanted to kiss me, and then he just blurted it out like he was confessing to murdering someone. ‘I’m in love with Natalie Girard,’ he’d said. And then he gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and said that a blowjob would be perfectly acceptable, however.” She started to laugh. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in love with someone like Ant. It must have been so frustrating most of the time.”