Small Town Cinderella

Now Emily was even more worried. She quickly checked the main floor and the two small bedrooms under the eaves. Upstairs and down, dust had settled on surfaces, but there was no sign of Daniel and nothing to suggest he had run into any kind of problem.

“Some milk and fruit in the fridge were going off, and there was moldy bread in the box,” Mrs. Bowen said when Emily returned to the kitchen. “I’ve got rid of those and watered the plants. You know, Daniel usually is quite responsible about them when he’s away. He rigs trays of water so they can drink as much as they need. He must have been in a hurry this time.”

She paused when Emily opened the basement door. “His cameras and so on are down there, all that police paraphernalia of his.”

“I won’t touch anything.” She flicked on the light. A staircase with narrow steps and steep risers came into view. It was hardly better than a ladder. If Daniel had fallen anywhere, this would be the most likely place, but there was no huddled shape at the foot of the stairs. She sidestepped down, keeping one hand on the rail and the other on the wall.

Rows of metal shelves filled the room. They were stacked with sealed cardboard boxes, coiled wires and stainless steel equipment Emily didn’t recognize. All she knew was it helped ranchers guard against poachers and small businesses ward off the occasional thief. She tried a door in the middle of one wall. It was locked.

Mrs. Bowen’s voice came from the head of the stairs. “That must be the furnace room. At least that’s where my furnace and water heater are, but they’re not walled off like that.”

“Why would he lock the furnace room door?” Emily felt over the top of the frame for a key. It didn’t seem likely that an ex-Mountie who ran a security business would stash a key so close to the lock it opened, and of course, he hadn’t. She rattled the knob. “Daniel?”

“He’s not in there. I really think he’s gone off the way he does sometimes. You worry too much about people, dear.”

Emily started back upstairs. She didn’t think she worried too much. Just a sensible amount, about sensible things…her grandmother’s health and her mother’s absent-mindedness. And now Daniel’s unexplained absence.

The telephone sat on a recessed ledge near the kitchen table. She opened the yellow pages and made a series of calls. The RCMP in Pine Point told her a ’77 Cutlass hadn’t been involved in any accidents. Daniel hadn’t been admitted to the local hospital, or any of the hospitals in Winnipeg.

“I don’t know what else you can do, Emily.”

“There’s still the garden to check.”

They went out together, Mrs. Bowen unlocking the gate and recounting all the times her neighbor had disappeared for a day or two, or even a week, and returned without explanation. If you didn’t have ties at home, why not travel whenever the urge hit you?

She broke off when they rounded the corner.

The soil was cracked and gray. Lettuce leaves wilted, tissue-paper dry against the ground. Tomato plants drooped despite the wire frames around them. Green beans shriveled on the stem. Muttering that it was too late now, and what was wrong with her not to have thought of it before, Mrs. Bowen hurried to the back of the house and began uncoiling a green hose from a metal bracket.

Daniel loved his garden. Digging in it, choosing seeds, watching daffodils come up in May and roses open in June, harvesting vegetables at exactly the right moment. If that wasn’t a tie, Emily didn’t know what was.

EMILY PARKED OUTSIDE the general store and post office. It was a Saturday morning, so the store was full of people getting groceries, picking up mail and helping themselves to fifty-cent cups of coffee at the lunch counter. Everyone stopped to comment on Liz and Jack’s wedding and Emily began to wonder if she would ever reach Mrs. Marsh, who worked slowly and calmly, her ashtray and cigarette at her side. She belonged to the same generation as Mrs. Bowen, but seemed to want to disprove it. Her hair, a deep rust-red, was cut short, with bangs brushed flat against her forehead and a sculpted point of gelled hair in front of each ear.

When Emily finally had her turn at the counter, buying a bunch of bananas to be polite, Mrs. Marsh said, “Didn’t think you’d be out this morning. No rest for the wicked, eh?”

“This from a woman who works seven days a week.”

“Got me there.”

“I wanted to ask you about Daniel Rutherford’s mail—”

“You can ask, but I can’t answer.”

Emily paused, then tried again. “He seems to be away—at least he wasn’t at the wedding yesterday and he isn’t home right now. I wondered if he made arrangements with you to hold his mail or forward it somewhere.”

Mrs. Marsh picked up her cigarette. She took a deep, appreciative drag, then inhaled the surrounding smoke for good measure. Smoking wasn’t allowed in enclosed public places anymore—a sign staring right at them said so—but no one liked to mention that to the postmistress. “I’m not supposed to discuss customers’ mail. Can’t walk without banging into a rule these days.” She went to the post office section of the counter. “Couple of things came for you and your mom yesterday. The hydro bill and another one of those book catalogs.”

Emily put the mail in the bag with the bananas. “Is there anything the rules will let you tell me?”

“I guess you heard John Ramsey’s coming to visit.”

“No, I didn’t.” She considered leaving it at that, but ended up asking, “When is he expected?”

“Don’t know exactly. In a couple of weeks. Going to take a little trip, like you did last time?”

“That was an in-service for people working in school libraries.”

“Can’t hope for that now, eh? Not in the summer.”

Emily smiled. “I don’t want to avoid John. I’ll be glad to see him.”

She thanked Mrs. Marsh for the mail and the bananas and went out into the hot sunlight, glad to get the door between her and the curiosity she felt coming from her neighbors. It wasn’t a lie. After all this time she would be glad to see John, if they happened to run into each other.

Halfway down the road was the Legion Hall. Inside, five of Daniel’s friends sat at a table with a pitcher of Guinness in front of them and mugs at varying degrees of emptiness in hand. They waved her over, mentioned how good the food had been at the wedding and told her how pretty she’d looked in her bridesmaid’s dress. None of them had any idea where Daniel had gone.

“He does what he wants, Emily. Things like weddings and gardens don’t stop him.”

“Even if it’s Liz’s wedding?”

“Even if it’s his own.”

They all laughed at that. Five tolerant smiles came her way, along with a pat on the arm that felt more like a dismissive pat on an anxious child’s head.

WHERE THE CREEK ROAD CURVED and narrowed, becoming Robbs’ Road, Emily slowed the car. Manitoba maples and purple clover filled the ditches and hidden by trees on her right, one of the three creeks flowed. The road wasn’t much of a barrier between woodland and water. Deer and rabbits went across to drink; sometimes at night she saw foxes and raccoons. She often lurched the last mile home, starting and stopping, weaving around toads and garter snakes.

Yesterday had been tough on them, with all the cars crunching along from town for the reception. Most wedding dinners were held in the church basement or at the hotel in Pine Point, but Liz had wanted to celebrate at their grandmother’s place. It was the house their great-great-grandparents had built, where she and Jack had met, and where she had finally made peace with the ghosts of her first, short marriage.

When they came back in the fall, Jack would move in with Liz and Eleanor. They had already started working on the house, replacing windows, reshingling the roof and repainting inside and out. With so much work taken off her hands and someone to talk to whenever she wanted company, Eleanor had begun to look healthier and more rested.

It had been a hectic week, though, and today her fatigue was apparent. Emily found her at the kitchen table, shelling peas. The dogs, Bella and Dora, watched intently, as if every hard green kernel hitting the bowl was a slice of roast beef.

“On your own today?” Emily took a handful of pods and began to snap them open. The rest of the family had gone to the lake, a half-hour’s drive away.

“A cool kitchen sounded better to me than a hot beach.”

“To Mom, too.”

“And you?”

“I don’t mind a chance to catch my breath.” Since the beginning of June she’d been going full tilt, helping with wedding plans at home, Field Day and Awards Day at school and doing inventory for the library. She’d closed it the previous week, around the time dress fittings and dainty making had mutated from cousinly togetherness to near panic.

She reached for more pea pods and began to tell her grandmother about her concern for Daniel.

“There couldn’t have been anyone missing,” Eleanor said at first. “The church was bursting.” She looked out the window as if trying to visualize the crowd of guests. “Come to think of it, I didn’t speak to Daniel at all yesterday. He must have been here. He left a gift.”

Emily had seen the package on the gift table, too. Even without his signature on the card she would have recognized the sometimes ornate, always measured letters that reminded her of his age when nothing else did. “Maybe someone dropped it off for him.”

“Wouldn’t that suggest he made plans to be away?”