Grandpère (10 page)

I am surprised that she has burned up her new toque, but Grandpère nods in approval, and we climb back on the bike to ride back down the hill. When she gets off the bike, she goes around and helps him off.

“Thank you, Grandpère. I don’t know how you did it, but I feel better than I have for a long time.”

He nods and says, “Do not speak of it anymore. It is done.”

On the weekend Darcy and Faith come in the pickup as I hoped. They don’t bring the girls, who Faith says are dying to meet their cousin, because they’ve promised to babysit for some friends. Faith and Angel hit it off right away, and I feel comfortable leaving them while Darcy and I take the garbage to the dump and make a run into town. I want to go to the store and buy a few groceries, and I stop at the clothing store and pick up another hat for Angel. This time it’s black, the only colour they have left in that style. I buy her another pair of jeans and two new summer tops that have just arrived.

Darcy quizzes me about her during the trip, and I tell him what a lovely girl she is and what a rotten time she had before. He says that I shouldn’t worry about her, that Faith is figuring out how to make sure she never has to go back to that life again.

We stop at the feed store to get dog food, and in the window a poster of missing children catches my eye. I step closer to look at it, and my heart drops. Angel’s photo is right in the centre. I catch Darcy’s eye and motion him over. He looks at it, then grabs my elbow and steers me away. He gives my arm a little shake, which reminds me to gather up my scattered wits and carry on. I barely make it back to the truck before I dissolve into tears. He drives around for a while till I’m composed enough to go home. It’s a good thing that I’ve got myself back together, for when we got back home, Bella drives in behind us for a visit.

Of all the people I want to see right now, Bella is at the end of the list. I shoot a look of panic at Darcy, but all he says is, “Easy, Mother, take it easy.”

When we get into the house, I put the groceries away but don’t give Angel her new stuff. I tuck the bag in my room, wondering how I’m going to explain Angel to Bella. Darcy takes that worry out of my hands, introducing Angel to her as his niece who came along for the ride to visit her cousins’ grandmother. I think it’s a little thin, and both Faith and Angel look confused. Darcy asks them to come out to the shop with him to give him a hand for a minute, and out they go.

I’m not able to give Bella my full attention, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She doesn’t need a conversation, mostly just an audience to listen to her, and I’m relieved when she only stays for a short time and leaves.

After she’s gone, I tell them about the poster and how worried I am that someone will recognize Angel from our trips to town. Grandpère says that old busybody is probably the worst danger, meaning Bella, and after some talk we decide it would be best if Darcy and Faith take her home for a while. Faith says it might be boring, as the girls are in school, and Darcy and she both work, but Angel says she’s well used to staying alone and it won’t bother her.

“But I want to stay here.” She looks as though she’s going to cry.

“It will only be for a couple of weeks,” Faith soothes her. “Your cousins are just a little bit older than you, and they’ll be so happy if you visit us. We need to get going on the custody. It’s the only way you’ll be safe. I have a friend who will help us, and you can phone here whenever you want to.”

I remember the things I bought her and go to get them. “These are for you. I hope you like them.”

Now she does start crying in earnest, and none of us is dry-eyed.

“There’s no need for any of us to worry. We’ll have this straightened out in no time. Now is anyone around here going to make some supper?” Darcy asks.

“How about a cup of tea for mother?” Faith seems to know that a cup of tea usually makes everything right in my world.

I give her a grateful smile, and sure enough, after a cup of tea I put myself back together and help get dinner ready. After the meal we pack Angel’s meagre belongings into my good suitcase so they can get going early in the morning. I notice that her arrow point is packed in the suitcase along with her Pooky. Somehow this makes me feel better about the whole thing.

Darcy, Faith and Angel leave after breakfast the next morning so they can make it home to the Peace River before supper. They say they will call every day. The house seems empty and quiet again with just the two of us there. Grandpère and I are both out of sorts. He is whittling as though he’s angry, and I can’t get up any enthusiasm for doing anything. Finally I take a book, curl up on the couch and read the day away.

At night I lie awake and toss and turn, trying to let sleep overtake me, but weary as I feel, it’s early morning before I finally get to sleep. In my dream I am astride a huge warhorse. I am fighting a battle, and there is noise and confusion everywhere. I have a battleaxe that I swing with rage, cleaving heads. My horse rears up and smashes my enemies before I can reach them. Then suddenly I am at a lake in the mountains, washing the blood off myself and my horse. My two dogs that I have in real life are there, and it is calm and quiet. Someone I know walks across the water toward me, and I run to meet her. When I almost get to her, we both sink under the water, and then I am swimming hard for the shore.

I wake up more tired than when I went to bed. Grandpère is still sleeping, so I make a pot of coffee and drink most of the pot before he gets up.

“Sleep well?” he asks.

“No. I hardly slept at all.”

“Me neither. I was wishing that girl was here safe in her bed.”

“Oh Grandpère, what if they find her and send her back to her mother?”

“We’ll have to hope that won’t happen. She has good protection now. You have to imagine everything will work out right, because that will make it happen. The more you worry, the worse you make it,” he tells me.

It’s the power of positive thinking, I well know. The more bad things a person imagines, the more they draw unfavourable circumstances toward themselves. However, it’s easier to apply that theory to someone else’s worries than to your own. I decide I will try to imagine it all working out. Each time a worry thought comes into my head today, I will make a positive statement. What should it be?

“Angel is safe now and she will continue to be safe.” I say it out loud once, then repeat it in my head a bunch more, trying to convince my skeptical mind that it’s true.

“Atta girl, that’s more like it.” He smiles, and I begin to feel better already. I give him a hug.

The day is bright and sunny, and the dogs are wanting to play. I check the trap when I go out to feed the chickens. It’s still empty. There was probably only one rat there, but I leave the trap set just in case there are more. I check the shop for sign, but there are no little droppings anywhere. We’ve kept mouse poison under the bench ever since the little vermin chewed all the wires off the battery charger, so there haven’t been mice in the shop for a long time. Grandpère doesn’t approve of poisoning the mice, but I don’t approve of them living in my space, so I quietly bait them all to death. I figure what he doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him.

I decide to go for a walk in the woods with the dogs, so I strap on the snowshoes and walk around the perimeter of the property, checking to make sure all the wire is up on the fence line. We live in an open range area where the cows from the ranch down the road can freely go anywhere that isn’t fenced. It has always been open range here; if you don’t want cows in your garden and your yard, you have to fence them out. New people who move in are always outraged that they have to fence the cows out at their own expense. They’ve formed a committee and are trying to make the government or the rancher build or at least maintain the fences. They’ve tried to get the range permit taken away from the rancher, but the department of forests and range didn’t co-operate, and one fellow who shot a cow right in his carport got charged for doing it.

I can see both sides of the argument. Raising cows doesn’t make much economic sense, and the ranchers need all the help they can get. On the other hand, having to fence cows out of private property is expensive, and maintaining a fence is a chore. So I stay away from their committee and look after my own fence. Lorne and I built the fence to keep our cows in. We had one milk cow and always raised her calf for beef as well as two or three calves each year that the ranchers would sell us when they were born. They would seldom keep both calves if the mother had twins, and if there was no cow they could graft the unwanted twin onto, they sold it to us, knowing we would bottle-feed it. Our kids always liked to look after the baby calves, and many a summer they would have calves following them around outside.

Today the fence is in perfect shape, with no trees down or staples pulled out anywhere. The dogs are delighted to go for such a long walk, bounding through the snow and investigating every rabbit trail and track we come across. A chipmunk scolds us from his perch on a tree branch, likely telling us that we are not welcome in his domain. There are a lot of rabbit tracks everywhere, and I think this summer we’ll have to make sure the garden fence has good two-inch-mesh page wire around the bottom.

By the time I get back to the house, I’m in a great mood. There’s a message to phone Faith, and I call her right away. She has good news. She has taken Angel to see her friend who works in the child services branch, and her friend has gotten a really good lawyer to get the custody case moving. I tell her that I will pay for the lawyer, but she says, “No need. Every good lawyer takes a few cases of this kind every year for free. It’s called a pro bono service.” She explains that it is an ethical responsibility of lawyers to help those who can’t help themselves in cases like this, and he will do a far better job than a legal aid lawyer. Best of all, he will do it for free.

“What about her mother? She’s reported her as a missing person. Won’t the police take Angel back to her as soon as they know where she is?” I ask her.

“No, child protection now knows that her mother is part of the problem, and they can protect her from having to go back into that situation. That’s why I took her there, to make sure that won’t happen. We don’t know what her mother has told the authorities, but Angel’s side of the story is on record now. They told me the police will contact us but won’t remove her from our home. We have temporary custody.”

“Is it safe for her to come back here?”

“Just leave her here till this all shakes down. Don’t worry, Mother, she is safe and happy here, and she’s already friends with her cousins. They were so happy when she came home with us, and there are lots of things they want to do. I could hardly convince them to go to school today, and I have taken the week off work so I can deal with all this.”

I thank her. I am so relieved that Faith has taken over the reins on this. I trust the system far less than she does, and in my distrust, I would have been hesitant to do the things that she has already done. When we hang up, I’m feeling quite good about the whole thing, and when I tell Grandpère, he is also pleased.

We keep grinning at each other, and our funk from the previous day is quite forgotten. Not for long, though. In the late afternoon a police cruiser pulls into the yard, and two officers get out and come to the door. They ask if I am Anzel O’Flaherty.

“Hi, Todd,” I say, for the younger one is well aware of who I am; he is one of Jesse’s friends. “Have you forgotten what I look like?”

“I have to ask for the record,” he says, and sure enough, the other one has a notebook and is writing down what we say. I don’t like the other one. When Lorne was still alive, we had a run-in with him over Lorne’s unregistered gun lying in the back seat of the car when he was stopped for a speeding ticket. They confiscated it and still haven’t given it back.

“Did you come here to return my husband’s gun?” I ask him. He doesn’t look up at me and pretends he doesn’t even hear me.

Todd answers, “No, Mrs. O’Flaherty, we have a report of a missing girl who might have been seen here.”

“There’s no girl here. You can look around if you want,” I tell him.

“Who was the girl you were in town with last week?” says the other one.

“That was my granddaughter who was visiting me.” A half truth is better than a lie, I believe. “Why would you think a missing girl would be here?”

“A taxi driver told us he brought a girl out here last month. If you don’t mind, I think we’ll have a look around,” Todd says.

I look at him with my eyebrows raised, make a little bow and wave my hand in a “help yourself” gesture. They make a half-hearted search by looking in the bedrooms and bathroom.

Todd comes back and says, “Sorry, but we have to follow up on all reports. If you did know where she was, you would tell us, wouldn’t you? Her mother is very worried about her, and we are using up time we don’t have in following leads.”

“Who was the girl the taxi driver brought out here?” the other one asks.

“It was my same granddaughter who was visiting me last week,” I answer.