Flee, Fly, Flown Read online

  I can’t stop smiling. “This is a grand adventure!”

  “You said it.” Audrey drops down onto the log. “I can die happy now.”

  Rayne is suddenly serious. “Don’t say that, don’t ever say things like that.”

  “You’re superstitious!” I say, “It’s funny; I’m not afraid of dying anymore. I don’t know when that changed for me.”

  “You’re getting closer to the day you’ll—” He stops. “You’ve seen your friends die, and your husband. I guess you’ve had to come to terms with it.”

  “I can’t say I’ve thought it through in that much detail. I’m not planning to fly the coop any time soon, I’m just not afraid to know it will happen.”

  Audrey is quiet, her eyes riveted on the flame and her body swaying slightly from side to side.

  “Audrey, are you okay?”

  I put my arm around her shoulders and we stare at the fire.

  “I need to sleep. I’m dead-tired,” she says.

  Rayne walks with her to the car and clears the back seat so she can lie on it. He places her cane on the floor, sets her glasses carefully in the back window and helps her slide comfortably inside, legs drawn up and head resting on his rolled-up hoodie. He closes the door softly.

  I watch, marveling at his gentle manner. “Why are you here?” I ask on our way back to the fire.

  “Do you mean why did I decide to get back in the car and keep going, or why am I here, existentially speaking?” He flashes a teasing grin. “Honest answer? I don’t know. It goes against all logic, but I have to stay and see this through.”

  I put my arm through his. “Thank you.”

  Rayne spreads his sleeping bag out beside the log and offers it to me to use as my bed for the night. I gladly accept and fall quickly to sleep, rising and falling from consciousness with the soft strumming of a guitar and Rayne’s voice floating in barely audible melodies a few feet away.

  A nurse opens the curtains surrounding my bed and shakes me roughly by the shoulders. My arms just squirm around and her hands make mushy dents in my muscles. I feel it but I can’t respond. I try to tell her to stop, to leave me alone but no words come. She goes away and then Carol comes and says she is moving to Africa—no—Argentina, and that she won’t ever come back. She says she has work to do there, that it’s very important and then she laughs and walks out. Others come too but their faces blur and disappear. My head feels like someone is sitting on it.

  The sharp cawing of crows breaks through my sleep. I open my eyes and see the lake stretching out in front of me, smooth and dark. Rayne is curled up near the firepit, gripping a stick in his hand, sound asleep. Down the beach a deer stands in the shallow water, head tipped forward, quenching its thirst.

  The sleeping bag I’m wrapped in is damp. I slip my arm back inside and feel between my legs. Thank goodness. I have on one of those thick diapers. It’s soggy but at least the sleeping bag isn’t wet from that. I try to move.

  “Lord, help me!” I shout. “I’m paralyzed from the waist down!”

  Rayne wakes and jumps to his feet. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t move. My body’s totally seized up,” I say.

  He sits back in the sand. “Relax. You’re just stiff from sleeping on the ground. Take it slowly. Wiggle your toes, bend your knees. You’re fine.” He folds his arms around bent knees and rests his head on his arms.

  I squirm out of the sleeping bag. A car door slams behind me. Audrey totters on the uneven ground.

  “You’re just stiff, take it slow,” I call to her, repeating Rayne’s advice.

  Rayne stays in the crouched position, head buried.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I can’t believe I’ve lost Shadow. What the hell is wrong with me? Everyone who gets close to me ends up gone.” His shoulders sag even more. “God, that sounds so pathetic. But it’s true: my grandma, my mom, my first dog, my girlfriend, now Shadow. The only one left is my dad and he doesn’t seem too happy about seeing me again, either.”

  “We want you here,” I say quietly. “And Shadow isn’t gone. She’s just missing.”

  He still doesn’t move.

  “Listen, young man, you go find that dog. She’s probably hiding in the cloakroom or a under a desk, or maybe under the back porch. I don’t know, but you’d better find her because I can see that nothing productive is going to get done today until you do.”

  He looks up at me with a strange softness in his eyes.

  “I need to get my dog from the cloakroom now,” he says, and stands to leave.

  Audrey and I wash up with cold water scooped from the lake into a big bowl, in privacy behind a blanket hung over the open car door. It’s tricky. Each movement is challenging, but we hold each other up, help fasten bras and maneuver into clean clothes. By the time we’re finished, we are exhausted.

  We emerge from behind our blanket and Rayne is sitting on the log in his wet undies, looking at the lake. He must have stripped to his boxers and gone for a swim while we were busy.

  “We need to bury something. Could you help us dig a hole?” I ask, blushing unexpectedly.

  He looks at the yellowed wads of padding we hold behind our backs and cringes. “Oh, that is gross. I’m not touching those.” He digs a deep hole away from the water’s edge, then walks across the road and into the woods. He calls Shadow’s name every few seconds, the voice moving farther and farther away and then gone completely.

  Inside the car, doors splayed open, we soak in the fresh air and comfort of soft seats. I pull my notepad out and jot down a few things.

  campfire. no Shadow. sand and water. striped blouse. happy.

  I tuck the pen inside and set the book down on the seat. “What are we gonna do if Rayne doesn’t come out of those roots?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “Rayne.”

  Silence.

  “Your boyfriend,” I say.

  “My boyfriend?” Audrey laughs. “I’m married. What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your boyfriend, Rayne, who is driving us somewhere, except that he isn’t because he’s gone to look for his dog that’s lost in the forest over there.”

  “Do we have anything to eat?”

  “Just dog food.”

  “That’s it? Dog food?” Audrey says. “I’m not eating that. Let’s go find some real food.”

  “I don’t know. Your boyfriend will be upset if we go for food without him. We should wait a bit longer,” I say.

  “Nonsense. We’ll go and buy some food and bring it back here. We’ll be back before he shows up.”

  “Okay.” I move from the backseat to the front and reach for the ignition. “That guy must have the keys,” I say. “We’ll have to wait for him.”

  Audrey asks, “Do we have anything to eat?”

  “No. We have to wait for your boyfriend to get back.”

  “I hope he’s not long. I’m starving.”

  10

  We settle into the cushioned seats until the sound of someone pounding on the hood of the car startles us.

  It’s Rayne. He has Shadow in his arms. “Look who I found tangled in the undergrowth.”

  He walks around to the side of the car and lays Shadow gently down on the blanket that was left in a heap on the sand. The dog just stays there, moving only her head in an effort to keep Rayne in her sight. There are scratches on Shadow’s face and bits of clotted blood stuck to her hair everywhere. Her left hind leg has an open wound, the blood still glistening wet but no longer streaming down, as it clearly must have been. She whimpers and makes a feeble attempt at wagging her tail.

  “Shh. Quiet, Girl. It’s okay.” Rayne holds his hand on the side of her belly to soothe her. “It’s okay now.”

  “Lill
ian,” he says. “Could you just stand here and talk to her? Try to keep her still if you can.”

  I move in beside Shadow. Rayne pulls a T-shirt from his big pack in the trunk and tears it into strips. He pours some water from the jug onto some pieces and cleans the dirt and blood from the wounds. He uses the remaining strips to wrap her back leg securely. Audrey fills the bowl with clean water so Shadow can drink.

  “I don’t know how badly she’s hurt,” Rayne says after watching her lap up the water. “She isn’t even trying to get up. Her collar was caught on a branch and she must have struggled so hard to get loose, that she got all scratched up. Or maybe she had to defend herself. There’s lots of wildlife around here.”

  I shoot him a look of surprise. “We slept outside. What kind of wildlife?”

  “Black bear, moose, deer, fox. That’s why I stayed up and kept the fire going until just before dawn. I had it under control.”

  “I’m glad I slept in the car,” Audrey says.

  I pat Shadow softly. “Do you think she could defend herself against a bear?”

  “No, especially not snagged like that, but she could make a lot of noise and in the dark, that might scare it away.” Rayne says.

  “Can we go?” Audrey asks. “I’m gonna pass out from starvation.”

  “Yeah. We need to get moving,” Rayne agrees.

  We pack everything back into the car, shake out the blanket and shape it into a nest on the seat beside me. Rayne lifts Shadow onto the blanket and she falls asleep before we get back to the highway.

  We stop at the first restaurant we see. It has a huge parking lot, big enough to hold dozens of transport trucks and cars. There is only one truck and ours is the only car.

  Rayne checks the clock on the dash. “Nine-thirty—too late for truckers to be eating breakfast and too early for morning coffee break. Good timing,” he says. “The place isn’t busy.”

  We open the windows a couple of inches and leave Shadow resting in the car. Rayne chooses a table in the corner.

  “Why are we sitting way back here? It’s so dark. We like to sit by the window,” Audrey says.

  I wonder the same thing, but a quick glance at Rayne tells me not to challenge him. He looks around at the empty tables, then jumps up, returning with a newspaper left by an earlier diner. “This is how I kept up with the news when I was on the street,” he says.

  Audrey tries again. “Can we move closer to the window?”

  Rayne still doesn’t answer. He scans the front page then starts through the sports section. A man approaches the table with a damp cloth and a pot of coffee.

  “Morning,” He swipes the cloth once across the table. “Coffee?”

  He pours before anyone answers, reaches into the pocket of his apron and drops a handful of creamers on the table. “I’ll be back to take your orders,” he says as he scuffs to his previous spot behind the counter.

  Audrey looks for a menu. “I’m hungry. Did I mention that?” she says. “I’m hungry and I don’t like sitting here.”

  I reach over to pat her hand. “We need to get you some food. You’re grumpy when you’re hungry.”

  I wave at the man behind the counter, gesturing that we need menus. He ignores me and continues to scratch away at a lottery ticket he has pulled from another pocket of his apron. Rayne stands, picks up three menus from a tray near the door and passes them out as he sits back down. “I guess it’s self-serve.”

  Audrey hollers across the room. “Excuse me, could you hurry over here and take our orders, or do we have to go to the kitchen and make it ourselves?”

  A lone truck driver sitting at another table bursts into loud guffaws. “She’s got your number, Sam. It sure didn’t take her long to figure out how it works around here.”

  Sam’s only response is to continue to scratch all the boxes on his ticket. When he finishes, he tosses it into the garbage and casually shuffles over to the table. “What can I get you?” he mumbles without looking up.

  “I’ll have pancakes and bacon and a bowl of prunes,” Audrey says. “My bowels could use a kick-start. And don’t take all morning with it either. I’m hungry.”

  “No prunes—peaches. Do you want peaches?”

  “Fine. I’ll have more coffee too, if it’s not too much trouble,” she says sarcastically.

  Rayne and I order and the man disappears through a swinging door to what must be the kitchen.

  “You are one tough cookie, Miss Audrey,” I tease.

  Audrey shrugs. “I get a little testy before breakfast.”

  Rayne returns to reading the newspaper. He picks up the City Section and turns to the second page. His eyes open wider and he turns pale. He points to an article and then reads it to us quietly.

  “Police suspect foul play as two elderly women disappear from Tranquil Meadows Nursing Home. Police are widening their search for Lillian Gorsen and Audrey Clark, missing since Wednesday morning from a long-term care facility in Ottawa. These two women suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and were last seen at breakfast on Wednesday. Their families are concerned for their safety, stating the women are unable to function on their own. Gorsen’s family has offered a reward for her safe return. Police are intensifying their province-wide search and ask anyone with information about the whereabouts of Gorsen and Clark to contact the Ontario Provincial Police immediately.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Audrey’s voice is rising and Rayne frowns, nodding toward other customer. Luckily, Audrey catches his drift. “What do they mean we’re unable to function on our own?” she whispers. “We’re doing just fine, thank you very much.”

  Rayne folds the paper and lays it on the table. His hands are shaking, and he looks really stressed.

  “I had an ominous feeling last night when I sat there watching the fire,” he says. “I convinced myself it was just because I was worried about Shadow, but when I found her, the feeling didn’t go away. You have to go to the police and return to the nursing home.”

  “No! I vote no. Audrey, what do you say?”

  “Are you kidding?” Audrey says. “We camped on the beach last night, didn’t we? And we stripped down for a sponge bath in the wide-open spaces. And we’re eating whatever we want—if that devil-waiter ever brings us our breakfast. I don’t want to go back there yet.”

  I smile. “You heard the lady. We can’t go back, at least not yet. I knew I chose the right travel partner.”

  Rayne clenches his jaw tightly and says nothing more.

  Audrey hollers again. “Hey, Sweetheart! Where’s our breakfast?”

  When we’re finished, the waiter tears the bill off his pad and slides it along the table next to Audrey’s hand.

  She looks up at him. “You sure are handsome, but your manners need a little fine-tuning. We could work on that in the car if you want to join us. We’re heading west.”

  “Nineteen dollars and fifty-five cents—that’s what you owe,” he says gruffly and walks back through the door to the kitchen.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go before you get us into some kind of trouble with Romeo over there.” I leave twenty dollars on the table. Rayne slips the newspaper under his arm and we return to the car.

  Shadow tries to stand when she sees us. She is unsteady on her feet, but her tail wags and her eyes look clearer. Rayne lifts her down to the pavement. Wobbly but upright, she makes her way to a patch of weeds off to the side of the lot and pees while Rayne smokes another joint. Shadow slowly limps back to the car, waiting to be hoisted inside.

  As we drive away, Rayne turns to Audrey. “It’s important that you don’t tell people where we’re going. Do you understand? We need a plan, or we might as well turn around right now and drive straight back to the nursing home.”

  Audrey pouts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

&
nbsp; “You told that waiter that we’re going west,” Rayne says. “You can’t do that. The police have ordered a province-wide search and everyone who reads the paper is going to be watching. You don’t need to make it easier by announcing who you are and where you’re going.”

  Her face wrinkles up and she starts to cry.

  “Oh, shit. Stop it. I’m only trying to avoid getting caught. Do you want the police to catch us and send you back?”

  “Leave me alone.” Audrey sniffles through her tears.

  I offer Shadow pieces of dog food one at a time. “Albert’s right, Fraise. We need to be more careful. It’s important we don’t get lost. Albert knows the way. He’ll get us there safely, and then we’ll send for the kids when they’re done school.”

  Albert glances in the rearview mirror. I catch his eye and wink at him.

  “Lillian,” he says, looking ahead at the road and then back in the mirror. “I’m not Albert. Stay with me on this.”

  Why is Albert saying that? He’s always kidding around, but this doesn’t feel like a joke. I watch the rocky scenery whiz past. Albert must be changing to a new job in British Columbia. He always says that the company is looking for good salespeople out west. I’m glad we’re moving, setting out on a new journey. Something behind us has gone awry.

  I strain to remember what has happened, what we’re running from. Maybe later it will come to me.

  “The kids will fly out later to join us, right Albert?” I ask.

  “I think your kids…” He doesn’t finish.

  “What are you saying?” I ask. “And don’t call them my kids, they’re ours, yours and mine. You’re their father.”

  Albert ignores me and talks to Fraise. “We just need to keep a low profile. The less contact you and Lillian have with others, the better. For now, you two need to be invisible.”

  “Like superheroes?” Fraise asks.

  “Yeah, invisible superheroes.”

  I stroke Shadow’s head again and again and watch the world speed by the window. I try again. Maybe this time Albert and Fraise will understand.