the closet often enough to know that it just wasn’t possible, things thrown from the room hit the wall or the closet door, even if the closet door happened to be open, ergo, the tie was obviously planted. He was a detective, for God’s sake. He knew he was being baited and that he should say something, that he was meant to say something and that saying something might even help, but the tie made everything seem foreign and unsalvageable and impossible again. On the way to work he talked to himself, trying to summon something—sadness? anger?—alarmed by a soft but unmistakable sense of relief. At least, he thought, things were becoming clearer. Much later he sat at his desk in the dwindling evening, looking at the cufflink and lost in the past.
He’d met his wife when they were children in a traveling circus. Strange upbringing by most standards, but it had seemed normal at the time: his father was a lion tamer, and her parents walked on tightropes. A childhood played out across a thousand dusty towns between Vancouver and Halifax, in the bright perilous years when most people still took their kids to circuses and everyone was waiting for the atomic bomb to drop and the Soviet Union was still the dark empire far away across the sea, and Elaine had permanently skinned knees and ribbons in her hair and ferocious arguments with her parents. She came from a long line of tightrope walkers; her parents didn’t understand why their daughter hated the profession so much, and were somewhat inclined to take it personally. There were winters spent waiting for the season to start, staring out the classroom window at the winter sunlight thinking about leaving again, meeting Elaine in the hallways and counting down the days with her—“Twenty-eight days,” she’d say mysteriously, as she passed, and the other kids around them pretended not to be envious because everyone wants to travel away with a circus, “Fifteen days,” “Four,” until finally she could whisper “Tomorrow,” with her eyes all alight, because even if she didn’t want to be a tightrope walker, the thought of going to school for longer than a semester at a time seemed unbearably stultifying to both of them; and then in the very early morning, the long caravan of transport trucks moving east out of Calgary while he lay on the floor of their moving house reading Spiderman comics. Elaine, his best and only friend, sometimes traveled in his family’s trailer with him between stops. He kissed her for the first time between Ottawa and Toronto.
Decades later in Montreal he closed his eyes, his fist clenched over the cufflink, rested his elbows on his desk and his forehead on his fists. He remained that way for several minutes, unmoving, and then straightened very slowly, placed the cufflink in the drawer that held Michaela’s school picture, and reached for the stack of files on the edge of his desk. He opened the top folder and unfolded a map with Lilia’s name written twenty-eight times in the margin. He was beginning to neglect his other cases.
He followed her quietly over the mountains, tracing lines on maps of the North American continent, making phone calls, talking to far-off police departments, picking up sightings, rumors, tips. He followed her out of his life and into a hinterland composed of folders and documents, each holding the keys to her missing life, his path through the wilderness marked by coffee rings. He worked late into the night. There were over a hundred pages of documents relating to the case: photographs, police reports, possible sightings. Memory reduced to manila envelopes and typed documents, stills from surveillance videos, early-childhood photographs. There was one photograph in particular that haunted him: it was used by the Quebec press shortly after her disappearance and depicted two unsmiling dark-haired children, Lilia and her half-brother Simon, in front of their beaming mother on the steps of a distant porch. The small
He’d met his wife when they were children in a traveling circus. Strange upbringing by most standards, but it had seemed normal at the time: his father was a lion tamer, and her parents walked on tightropes. A childhood played out across a thousand dusty towns between Vancouver and Halifax, in the bright perilous years when most people still took their kids to circuses and everyone was waiting for the atomic bomb to drop and the Soviet Union was still the dark empire far away across the sea, and Elaine had permanently skinned knees and ribbons in her hair and ferocious arguments with her parents. She came from a long line of tightrope walkers; her parents didn’t understand why their daughter hated the profession so much, and were somewhat inclined to take it personally. There were winters spent waiting for the season to start, staring out the classroom window at the winter sunlight thinking about leaving again, meeting Elaine in the hallways and counting down the days with her—“Twenty-eight days,” she’d say mysteriously, as she passed, and the other kids around them pretended not to be envious because everyone wants to travel away with a circus, “Fifteen days,” “Four,” until finally she could whisper “Tomorrow,” with her eyes all alight, because even if she didn’t want to be a tightrope walker, the thought of going to school for longer than a semester at a time seemed unbearably stultifying to both of them; and then in the very early morning, the long caravan of transport trucks moving east out of Calgary while he lay on the floor of their moving house reading Spiderman comics. Elaine, his best and only friend, sometimes traveled in his family’s trailer with him between stops. He kissed her for the first time between Ottawa and Toronto.
Decades later in Montreal he closed his eyes, his fist clenched over the cufflink, rested his elbows on his desk and his forehead on his fists. He remained that way for several minutes, unmoving, and then straightened very slowly, placed the cufflink in the drawer that held Michaela’s school picture, and reached for the stack of files on the edge of his desk. He opened the top folder and unfolded a map with Lilia’s name written twenty-eight times in the margin. He was beginning to neglect his other cases.
He followed her quietly over the mountains, tracing lines on maps of the North American continent, making phone calls, talking to far-off police departments, picking up sightings, rumors, tips. He followed her out of his life and into a hinterland composed of folders and documents, each holding the keys to her missing life, his path through the wilderness marked by coffee rings. He worked late into the night. There were over a hundred pages of documents relating to the case: photographs, police reports, possible sightings. Memory reduced to manila envelopes and typed documents, stills from surveillance videos, early-childhood photographs. There was one photograph in particular that haunted him: it was used by the Quebec press shortly after her disappearance and depicted two unsmiling dark-haired children, Lilia and her half-brother Simon, in front of their beaming mother on the steps of a distant porch. The small
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