Page 23 of Leave No Trace
‘What do you know about her?’
I told him the little I’d read about Heather Price’s life and death, careful to omit any mention of his father. Each detail seemed new to him, adding color and depth to the image I’d left on his bedside table. He began swaying slightly and stared at the face long after I’d finished. Then he crumpled the paper, driving the heel of his hand into his temple.
‘She used to watch him. She smoked cigarettes and stared out the window while he mowed the lawn, but she wouldn’t come out of the house. Dad always said that buildings smothered people and I remember thinking she was suffocating in there. I can still see her hazy face in the window.’
His swaying got worse until I made myself get up and hobble over to him. ‘Come on, lie down.’
I brought him to the couch, checked his pupils, and gingerly felt along his shoulder to see how swollen it was. He gave one tight nod, looking a little pale, so I retrieved the ice pack and wished for the first time since my mom had overdosed that we kept some aspirin in the house.
He relaxed into the couch cushions as I held the ice to his shoulder and while the condensation dripped over my hand he began telling me about his childhood. The memories were fragments, scattered over a dozen different houses, apartments, and RVs in the wake of his mother’s death. He hadn’t made many friends at any of the schools he’d rotated through, although he liked the science and gym classes. They’d visited a sour smelling building full of old people where a man in a wheelchair faced the wall. And the woods. He had countless memories of camping, canoeing, hiking, learning about all the plants and life cycles teeming around them. Lucas loved the woods best in the summer, but his father preferred winter, the silent, white days insulated from fair-weather nature lovers.
I stared at the ice pack, afraid to look up, afraid that if I made eye contact he’d stop talking, but Lucas barely even paused. The floodgates had opened. Something had shifted and all the words he’d held back came pouring out in the faded intimacy of my living room.
They’d been camping one summer on a remote lake somewhere near Canada when Lucas got sick.
‘I was fine the first night. We caught fish and toasted s’mores, but I woke up the next morning with my skin on fire and everything hurt. I couldn’t even get out of the sleeping bag. Dad thought it was a cold and told me I’d feel better within a day or so. Then I started seeing bugs everywhere. Bugs crawling over the tent, bugs marching on my arms. I don’t remember a lot of what happened, but somehow Dad brought me back out of the woods. The next thing I knew I was in a bedroom. A woman was giving me something to swallow, a woman with long, brown hair and flat eyes, like she’d been inside too long.’
He shifted his gaze from the ceiling to me.
‘I thought it was you. When I got to Congdon – I don’t know – there was something different about you, familiar. I thought you were the woman who’d taken care of me when I was sick and somehow’ – he shook his head, as if trying to clear it – ‘that’s how the doctors were trying to get me to talk.’
‘That’s why you said you knew me, why you were afraid of me?’
He nodded, lifting the picture of Heather Price again. ‘It was her. When I woke up in the hospital today and saw her face, I recognized it immediately. I remember her shouting at my dad and his fists, balled tight into his sides. I don’t know what they were arguing about. I don’t know what happened between them. It felt like I was in that strange bed twisted up with fever forever, until one night – when all the lights were out – I finally felt good enough to get up on my own.’
His breathing picked up speed and his eyes darted around the living room, seeing nothing.
‘Someone was moving on the stairs, bumping into the wall, walking slowly. I crept to the door of the room and peeked out, waiting for the noise to appear. Then it did. I saw my father’s profile moving across the house and I almost went to him, but he was carrying something big, something draped over his shoulder.’
‘A body,’ I murmured.
‘I watched him haul it out the front door and then a few minutes later the lights of his car turned on and he drove away. I went back to bed and waited. I remember feeling weak and sweaty and scared, but not of my father – I’ve never been afraid of my dad in my entire life. I was scared of the body, the way the hair swayed each time he took a step and the arm that hung along his back skimming the walls, the furniture. I was afraid the arm would reach out and find me, even though I knew my father was making it go away. He was taking care of it. The sun was up by the time he got back and he made us breakfast and told me we were going to camp for a while as soon as I felt better. I didn’t hesitate; I wanted out of that place. I told him I was ready and later that day we canoed into the Boundary Waters and never came out.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Lucas said, ‘but he didn’t do it. I can’t explain it, I just know. Have you ever known something about your parents, like the knowledge is in your blood?’
I had a mother who’d abandoned me and a father who chased ghost ships, trying to salvage the impossible. I looked away, as if Lucas could read the legacy in my eyes.
‘My dad spent the last ten years protecting me, providing for me. He hiked out a few times a year and came back with fresh supplies, boots when I outgrew my old ones, books and science experiments for us to try. He taught me everything he knew, including what the world was like and what they’d do to us if we ever left the Boundary Waters. He didn’t tell me why. He didn’t need to, because I was protecting him, too.’
‘But you left anyway. Why did you raid the outfitter’s store?’
He covered his face with a hand. ‘In the last few months dad became sick, weak. He could hardly stand up, let alone hike out of our camp. When he started mumbling and sweating through his blanket I made him take the emergency medicine and went to get more, but I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I waited until it was night and tried to be quick, to not get caught.
‘That was three weeks ago.’
Without warning Lucas sat upright and grabbed my arm, almost bruising it with the sudden force. The movement brought Jasper to his feet, but Lucas paid no attention. ‘If he’s dead, it’s my fault for leaving him. There’s no one else to blame. And if he’s alive I’ve still abandoned him. I have to get back there, Maya. Now. We need to leave today.’
Jasper advanced with his ears standing straight up, a nervous growl working up his throat, the rumble of it filling the room. I could feel Lucas’s heart racing through the ice pack caught between us. He was too close; I couldn’t breathe.
I broke away and tugged Jasper’s collar, processing everything as I pulled a hundred pounds of anxious muscle across the room on one good leg. ‘You want me to help you—’ I broke off as Jasper whined in frustration.
‘Find my father. We have to go alone.’
Was he joking? We barely had one working body between us. ‘Lucas, you’re not the only person who wants to find your father. The entire world is asking what happened to him. Do you have any idea how much attention your story has gotten? And there’s Dr Mehta, Officer Miller, and everyone working the missing persons case. US Forest Service rangers are searching for him rightnow.’
‘They won’t find him.’
‘He’s not wanted for any crime. No matter what really happened with Heather Price, her case is closed. They won’t take you away from each other.’
