Missing (17 page)

Marion takes the locket from my hand. She studies it for a moment and then lays it back in the box. “I went to see Esta in the hospital. She's the only family I have left. I asked her if there was anything I could do. She wanted me to go to her house, a flat in a poorer part of London, and pick up a few things. That's when I found the locket, in the back of a drawer, behind a wooly shawl that Esta had asked me to look for. I knew what it meant right away.”

I feel sick. “So Livia
was
wearing the necklace when she disappeared.”

Marion nods.

My head reels. “It's proof,” I whisper. “It means that Esta was there when Livia died. She must have taken the locket from Livia's body.”

“Deep inside I think I always knew it was Esta,” says Marion. “I just didn't remember what happened. Until I came back here.”

“That's why you've been going out in the boat every day,” I say. “To look for Livia. But how…?”

I stare at Marion. I can't imagine how she could possibly think she might find Livia's body now.

“It's not as impossible as it sounds,” says Marion. “I have an idea where to look. I told you I don't remember much about our holidays on the ranch, but there is one thing I do remember. It terrified me. Esta was always out in the boat. She was allowed to go out by herself, and sometimes she made me go with her. She found a cave somewhere on the lake, I don't remember where. She took me there. It wasn't very big. Esta made me go in by myself. She made me stay in there until she said I could come out. I remember being petrified. It was so dark. I kept calling out to see if she was still there, but she didn't answer. I finally crawled out after what seemed like forever. Esta was sitting on a boulder, laughing at me. I've never ever forgotten it.”

“Livia—”

“I think Esta took Livia's body to the cave,” says Marion. “I've looked and looked for it. I know we had to go in a boat to get there. There was a boat at the old cabin. Esta could have used that.”

“Do you remember anything else?” I ask.

“There were red rocks everywhere. Big boulders. Maybe the red color was from iron or something. It's the only clue I have.”

I feel myself go still inside.

Van will know.

T
wenty-
T
wo

“I've never seen a cave there,” says Van. “But it's the only place on the lake with red rocks.”

We're in Van's boat, heading across the lake to the secret inlet he took me to before. The rain is slanting like fine needles into the flat gray lake, and it's cold.

Marion sits in the bow, her back very straight, the hood of her raincoat pulled up over her head.

When we get to the bay, Van lifts the propeller out. We trade places and he rows. His hands are red with the cold, and water drips off the brim of his baseball cap. The rain rattles on the lily pads. Van noses the boat through the narrow opening in the cliff wall, into the hidden pool.

Steep banks loom on either side of us and there's a dank smell of wet rotten leaves. It's so dark it feels like evening, but it's only early afternoon. My jacket isn't waterproof and it's plastered to my back. Rain drips down my neck.

“Could this be it?” says Van.

“I don't know,” says Marion. “I just don't remember.”

We stare up at the slope at the far end. Reddish boulders are strewn across it, some covered with patches of lime green moss.

“The rocks could have moved,” says Van. “Like a slide. Enough to cover up the opening of a cave.”

There's only one place to land. It's a tiny strip of rocky beach at the bottom of the slope, not much wider than the boat. Van and I get out but Marion stays in the boat. She looks ill, her face like chalk.

Van and I scramble across the boulders, working our way along the bottom of the slope. The boulders are slick in the rain, and I use my hands to try and get a grip.

“I don't know,” says Van. He gazes up. “It could have been anywhere.”

“I don't think Esta would have been able to carry Livia very far,” I say.

Van sighs. “It's hopeless. There's no way we can move any of these rocks.”

I don't want to give up, not yet. A gust of wind drives the rain into my eyes. I reach out for the next boulder and my foot slips. I grab onto a mound of moss. It breaks off in my fingers in a sodden clump.

I stare at the expanse of rock underneath, speckled with bits of soil. Something has been scratched into the surface. It looks like the end of a rectangle. My fingernails dig into the moss and I pull back another clump. I brush away the dirt.

Icy needles slide down my back and I start to shiver.

I know what I am looking at now, gouged crudely into the red boulder.

A cross.

Van and I come back in the afternoon, when the rain has stopped. Dad, Tully and Van's dad, Martin, follow us in one of the ranch boats. They have crowbars, shovels and a flashlight. Van's mother, Jane, is at the lodge with Marion, drinking strong hot tea and talking. Heb and May are at home, waiting.

Van and I stand around and watch while the men use the crowbars to try and shift the boulders beside the cross. At first nothing will move. They work for fifteen, twenty minutes, straining with the effort. Finally a huge boulder comes loose and rolls down into the water, landing with a great splash.

Tully grunts. “There's something behind here. A bit of a space.”

My heart is pounding. Martin pries another boulder loose. There's a lot of rubble now, smaller rocks that the men dig out of the way with the shovels.

And then we all see it. The mouth of a small dark cave.

Dad squats down on his knees and peers into the opening. “It's too dark,” he says. “I can't see.”

Tully gets the flashlight from the boat and passes it to Dad. Dad shines it into the cave. Time seems to stand still for a moment. I can hear water dripping somewhere. I hug my arms to my chest.

Dad's breath goes in sharply. “I see something,” he says.

There is a long pause. He stands up. His face is white. “It looks like it could be bones.”

Tully, Van and Martin look inside the cave, one by one, silently, but I don't want to.

We have found Livia. I knew when I saw the cross, but it is still a shock.

“I think we should pray,” says Martin quietly. We bow our heads.

“
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me
…”

While he speaks, I stare at the cross gouged into the rock. It blurs over with my tears. I can't concentrate on the words. I don't remember anything Martin says afterward, but his steady voice is comforting. When he is finished, we all say, “Amen.”

I can't stop shivering. Van takes my freezing hand in his and slips it into his pocket.

T
wenty-
T
hree

Tully contacts the police and they come out the next day and retrieve Livia's bones. Marion is still here. She has changed her plans. She'll stay until tomorrow and then she's going to Vancouver, where she is making arrangements to have Livia buried beside her father and mother.

In the afternoon, I take Marion in the boat to Van's place to meet May and Heb. May is waiting for her, watching from the porch.

Marion has tea with May and Heb in their sitting room, surrounded by the beautiful birds. Van and I stay outside, throwing sticks for Prince. When it's time for Marion to leave, May walks down to the boat and hugs her. They are so different: May big and strong, and Marion like one of Heb's birds. But they are both crying.

For once, Dad and I are eating breakfast together. We're hunched over bowls of cereal. He's usually up way earlier than me, but today he has slept in. Lines of exhaustion crease his face.

“Marion is leaving today,” I say. It takes all my courage to say the next part. “I'm going to ride Renegade. Before she goes.”

Dad stares at me.

I feel myself falter, but this is the most important thing in the world to me right now. “Will you come and watch?”

He hesitates and then says, “I've got too much work to do.”

“Marion says I have a gift with horses,” I say desperately. Somehow I think that this might make him hear me. “I told her it was because of you, that you taught me to ride.”

Pain flickers through Dad's eyes. “Thea, your mother gave you your gift,” he says tersely. “Not me.”

What's Dad talking about? I'd had hundreds of lessons from him, usually in a group with four or five other kids who came to our stable. He'd cheered for me at all my horse shows. A memory pushes in— trotting around the show ring on Monty, searching the stands for Mom's face and then spotting her on the sidelines, not watching me at all but talking to a client instead.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“Mom was the one who put you on your first horse. I thought you were too little—you were only four—but she was determined. She spent months walking you on a lead rope. She never got tired of it.”

“Dixie,” I say slowly. “The horse was called Dixie. She was really a pony, wasn't she?”

“That's right. It took your mother ages to find her. She searched all over the Valley. She said it had to be the perfect pony.”

“The photograph of you and me on Skipper,” I say. “I thought—”

“Your mother popped you up and took that photo,” says Dad. “You and I never moved out of the driveway. You'd been out riding with Mom; you'd just got off Dixie. I didn't take over the lessons until you were six and started going in shows. I taught all the lessons at our stable.”

I feel like I have been kicked in the stomach. Memories flood back, memories that must have always been there. Mom, standing in the round pen, circling me around and around on the end of a lunge line. Mom picking me up when I fell and putting me back on. Mom promising me that one day I would have my own horse to train. How could I have forgotten?

“And Monty,” says Dad. “Mom found Monty for you too. Same thing. He had to be perfect. It wasn't that she didn't care about you, Thea. She was just always so tied up with the business side of the stable.”

I swallow. I don't trust my voice.

“It's those early years with Mom that gave you your passion for horses,” says Dad. “She gave you your gift.”

Passion
. I know I will hold on to that word, like something precious.

“I didn't know,” I say.

“It's your mother you should thank,” says Dad.

We push away our bowls of cereal. I guess neither of us is hungry now.

Dad stands up. “I'm sorry,” he says, and I think that he means much more than not coming to see me ride Renegade. And then he is gone.