Leave No Trace Page 16

  “What about it?”

  “I won’t lead them to him. I told you we had to find my father alone.”

  I’d already explained to him several times that working with the police and the U.S. Forest Service was the only chance of getting Congdon’s approval for the trip. It was the only door we could walk through. The problem was he knew part of the plan, but not the whole thing. I couldn’t share everything, not with staff and patients constantly prowling around our sessions. Here, though, where the wind whipped our words away, where there was no one to overhear, I took a deep breath and told him the rest.

  “You’ll go alone. I have to organize the search party so Congdon will let me get you up there, and then I expect you to disappear, okay? We’ll get the medicine, the supplies, and then it’s up to you to slip into the shadows. Understand?”

  The surprise on his face was almost funny, but he quickly recovered and another emotion flooded his eyes. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.” Then he thought of another obstacle. “The ankle bracelet. How am I supposed to disappear if they’re tracking me?”

  I squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

  “Do you always have a plan?”

  He turned his head, studying me, waiting patiently for my answer, and it struck me how absorbed he was in every single thing I said. I’d revealed my big secret; I’d told him I killed a man and all he wanted to know was whether I’d bashed his head in hard enough. If anyone else had asked me a direct question about myself I’d shrug it off with an easy lie, something to redirect the conversation. With Lucas, though, I wanted to excavate the truth. Right now, sitting here together, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t tell him.

  “I guess the worse things are, the better prepared I am. I started working at Congdon because it felt like home. Sad, I know, but I can’t help it. People are honest about who they are in a psychiatric facility. They don’t pretend things are fine. My job reviews always say I’m good in a crisis, that I’m the first person to jump into a dicey situation.”

  “Like wrestling down a patient who tried to strangle you and escape?” Lucas grinned.

  “Yeah.” I smiled at the stern. “They think I’m brave. The truth is I’m not comfortable unless something’s on fire or someone’s having a meltdown. I don’t know what to do with things that aren’t broken. The quiet times . . . it’s like I’m just waiting for things to go bad.”

  “And they always do?”

  “I’ve never had to wait too long.”

  Moving carefully, a fraction of an inch at a time, Lucas tugged my zipper down to trace my neck with one finger, the faint but still visible line where he’d choked me the first time we met, and his expression filled with regret.

  “Lucas.”

  He tilted his head, leaving his hand on my neck, his touch falling somewhere between penance and petting. “Are you waiting for me to break, too?”

  “You know this is completely inappropriate.” I glanced around us to make sure the deck was still empty, wondering how much longer this privacy could last. “Dr. Mehta will remove me from your case.”

  His answer was entirely nonverbal; he leaned in, pushing my hood back to nuzzle my temple and smell my hair, as though he needed to learn as much about me as quickly as possible.

  “It’s unprofessional. Unethical.” I turned into the bulk of his jacket, trying to make myself get up, to end this now.

  “You just said you’re helping me escape so I can get back to my father.”

  “So you’re saying I’ve already crossed the line? Why stop now?”

  “Yes.” I opened my eyes to see his breathless, wind-slapped smile, but as he said my name and started to lean in, a movement caught the corner of my eye.

  Bryce stood on the deck, watching us.

  19

  * * *

  GETTING OFF WITH Tarzan? Now it makes sense why we’re doing all this crap for him. It’s not therapy, it’s a freaking date.”

  That’s all Bryce got out before Lucas exploded off the bench, aiming his full weight at the center of Bryce’s body. I was half a second behind him but had to duck out of the way as Bryce doubled over, swinging wildly in all directions. He made a grab for Lucas, who twisted to protect his bad shoulder and the two of them flipped around like clashing bulls, ramming into the equipment and railings on the platform.

  Ordering them to stop, I wedged myself between their bodies, trying to push them apart.

  “What the hell?” came a shout from somewhere above us. A door banged open and feet reverberated against metal. Just as I pulled Lucas’s good arm back, an elbow flew into my face and sent me reeling backward into one of the giant steel pulleys. The world went black and someone shouted, then a long guttural scream seemed to be ripped apart by the wind before it cut off.

  A scuffle nearby, flesh on flesh, heaving breathing. I shook my head, desperate to get my sight back. When the stars finally cleared Butch stood in front of me holding Lucas’s arms behind his back. Both of their heads bowed toward something beyond the rail.

  I ran to the railing and saw Bryce sprawled on the main deck, not moving. Shit, oh shit. I climbed down the ladder and reached the deck right as Dr. Mehta came out of the cabin, clinging to the door. Above, I could hear Dad’s voice joining the mix in the sudden silence of the idling engines.

  Before anyone could reach him, Bryce kicked out, looking for a foothold, and rolled over to boost himself up on all fours.

  “Bryce—”

  “Don’t move.” Dr. Mehta ordered, but he didn’t listen. I crouched down next to him and he shoved me back, catching me in the hip and sending me stumbling toward the railing. Holding Dr. Mehta off with a warning hand, he dragged himself to his feet.

  “What happened?” Dr. Mehta asked.

  Dad’s voice came from above and I had to crane my head to see him, standing with his hands on his hips and hair whipping in the wind. “Lucas started fighting that orderly. He attacked him and shoved him off the deck.”

  “Bryce was antagonizing him,” I jumped in.

  Bryce leaned back against the railing and clutched his side, lip curled with equal parts pain and loathing. When he spoke, every word landed like angry spit marks on the deck.

  “Maya was making out with the patient.”

  A horrible silence followed, where everyone on the entire boat looked at me. I stepped instinctively away from the weight of their collective gaze, gripped the freezing railing, and tried to think of any justification for what I’d done, any reason for Dr. Mehta not to fire me on the spot.

  I turned to her. “It’s not—”

  She held a hand up, a look of total disappointment swallowing her face, until it turned into something else, a sickness. Then she ran to the edge of the deck and vomited.

  * * *

  The trip home was short, but the amount of panic I crammed into it could have filled several terrifying weeks. I sat in the captain’s bridge, wedged between two control panels, while the rest of the Congdon staff supervised Lucas on the main deck. Butch threw sympathetic glances my way every now and then, and once even broke the silence to say, “I don’t blame you, Maya. That kid’s hot.”

  “Butch,” Dad barked.

  “What? I’m comfortable with my masculinity. I can say it.”

  I stared at the North Shore, the pine, spruce, and birch trees that began here and stretched hundreds of miles to the north and west, into the Superior National Forest, the Boundary Waters, and beyond. Josiah was out there somewhere, maybe suffering, maybe a murderer like me, maybe just a father, freezing and alone. An hour ago I’d had a plan that would have given him back his son. Now all three of our futures were in jeopardy.

  As soon as we docked, I followed the van with Lucas, Dr. Mehta, and Bryce back up the hill and stood outside Dr. Mehta’s office for a good part of the morning. Wherever she was, she was either too busy or still too nauseous to look at me. When one of my sessions came up on my calendar I went and conducted it, counting each minut
e as closely as I counted speech errors in the oral reading passage, waiting for someone to seize my badge and toss me out of the building. Nothing happened. Afterward I raced back downstairs, feeling as unstable as Dr. Mehta had on the deck of the boat. Up wasn’t up. Down wasn’t down. Before I reached the administrative area, I ran into her in the main corridor and she started talking as soon as she saw me coming.

  “I spoke to the Forest Service this morning. They’ll continue their search without Congdon’s involvement.” She didn’t slow down or even glance in my direction.

  “How? You said yourself they’ve turned up nothing. Without Lucas, we have no path to Josiah.”

  She stared at the floor tiles ahead of us. “I know that, Maya, but he had a serious violent incident on the boat today. I can’t approve Lucas to leave the facility. Josiah Blackthorn has spent ten winters in the wilderness. All we can do now is believe that, if the Forest Service can’t locate him, he can make it eleven.”

  I didn’t believe it. The odds of two healthy men surviving a brutal Minnesota winter were incredible enough. One sick man, by himself, had no chance. Cursing Bryce, cursing myself, I cast around desperately for some way to salvage all the work I’d done. There had to be a way to find Josiah.

  “Maybe,” I shook my head, the words hopeless even before I’d spoken them, “I could get Lucas to point them in the right direction. Narrow down the range. I can ask him.”

  “You won’t be speaking to Lucas Blackthorn again.”

  Even though I’d expected it, my frame jerked like I’d crashed into a wall. We’d reached the administrative offices and Dr. Mehta held the door open to hers, waving me inside. I glanced at two clerks by the copy machine—both staring at the papers in their hands and trying to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping—and woodenly walked into the office. She shut the door behind us.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I blame myself more than anyone else.” She sat heavily in her chair and propped her elbows on the desk, rubbing her temples. “To place such responsibility on your shoulders, against your will, and with little prior clinical experience . . .” She trailed off.

  “I did everything you said.” I could feel my face flushing, my fists clenching. “I reached him. I’ve been acclimating him, preparing him to enter the world. He doesn’t hide from group environments anymore. He can handle noise, stress; he independently initiates relaxation techniques.”

  “You’ll no longer have access to ward two. All your patients in that ward are being redistributed.”

  I should have been relieved that I still had a job, but all I could think about was Big George. The Grinch. I was losing them all because of one stupid mistake. Because for once in my adult life I’d wanted to be close to someone, and this was the result.

  “I screwed up, okay? I admit it. I care more for him than I should because I know what he’s going through.” I smacked a hand over my heart, ready to dig it out and show it to her if it would change her mind. “You have no idea. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a parent.”

  “Really?” She folded her hands and carefully laid them on the desk in front of her. Suddenly the whine of the copy machine outside became the loudest noise in the room. I shrank back, unsure of the depth of the water I’d just splashed into. Dr. Mehta smoothed her face, a masterful veiling of muscle and skin, and looked directly into my eyes.

  “I’m sure you know India is a very traditional culture. In Bollywood, it’s rare to even see a man and woman kiss onscreen. Can you guess, Maya, how most Indians feel about homosexuality?”

  I shook my head, even though the last ten seconds gave me a pretty good idea. Then Dr. Mehta told me, in carefully modulated tones, a past she’d never shared before. Growing up in Mumbai, she’d been exposed to a deep-seated prejudice against gay culture. Same-sex relations were a crime, committed by people with a “genetic flaw” according to her father, and she’d accepted his opinion with a daughter’s deference. She had no idea that when her parents sent her to school in the United States for a Western education, she would meet her future wife. Conflicted and ashamed, she’d kept their love hidden for four years, until her parents announced at graduation that they’d arranged a marriage for her back in India. She had to choose between going home and obeying her family’s wishes or telling them the truth. When she chose honesty, they cut all ties. They refused to meet her girlfriend and stopped answering her phone calls. In the twenty years since her confession they hadn’t spoken to her once, not even when she fulfilled her father’s dream of seeing one of his children become a doctor.

  The longer she talked, the more callous I felt. How had I never wondered about Dr. Mehta’s family before now? She’d been my therapist, my boss, my mentor, and friend. If my mother was the shadow of my life, Dr. Mehta was the light. I ached for her even as I wanted to hide from her unrelenting, quiet gaze.

  “There are many ways to lose one’s parents, Maya,” she said. “In my personal and professional experience, it seems to happen in the manner we least expect. I didn’t know my family wasn’t able to put their daughter before their culture. You could never have known your mother would abandon you when you were ten years old, and I doubt Lucas Blackthorn could have predicted the chain of events that began when he broke into that outfitter’s store.”

  I leaned in, letting her see straight into me. No anger this time. All emotion carefully banked.

  “I promised I would help him. Please. Let me keep that promise.”

  There was a split second where I thought she might change her mind, until she sighed and her eyes filled. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be acting as Lucas’s therapist going forward and you can consider this a disciplinary warning in your employee file. If you’d like to talk about any of this, in a session or simply off the record, I’m here.”

  I pushed myself up and walked out of her office, feeling all the purpose I’d had over the last few weeks draining out of me, taking every good thing with it. When I got to the door, I paused, and some monster inside me roiled up, teeth gnashing.

  “I’m sorry, too. And on the record? You just killed Josiah Blackthorn.”

  * * *

  Jasper was sniffing through the dead grass in the yard when I came home and he immediately ran to the gate, tail wagging, and looked hopefully toward the end of the street. I ran my hands over his rough coat and told him to wait a second, running inside to grab his leash, but Dad called my name from the kitchen.

  “Please don’t.” I paced to the doorway. “It’s none of your business.”

  “You made it my business when you brought him on my boat.” He pointed at the refrigerator, still plastered with all the disappeared families. “You made it my business when you brought him into our house.”

  Grabbing my wallet, I started dumping bills on the table that I couldn’t see as my vision started to blur. “There. Your services are paid in full. The boat, rent, whatever. Go back to hunting for the Bannockburn and pretending that it’s going to bring her back.”

  The mug Dad was holding banged on the counter, sending coffee drips flying. I flinched and blinked the tears away, afraid to look up. When he spoke, the words sounded like they were escaping from a clenched fist.

  “And what do you think you’re doing with that bathroom? You think if you remodel it enough, it won’t be the same room where she tried to kill herself?”

  “No. I don’t know. I can’t do this right now.” Stuffing the wallet back in my pocket, I headed for the door and almost reached it before Dad’s hands clamped down on my shoulders, holding me in place. Breaking away from a man with the strength to fight Superior every day was impossible, and I didn’t even attempt it. Sniffing, I wiped my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the door. “I want you to find the Bannockburn.”

  “I know I worry about you more than you like. You think I don’t see what a strong, capable woman you’ve become, but that’s not it. I see all of you, every version of Maya you’ve ever been and
all the storms you’ve survived to get this far. I just don’t want you to have to weather any more.” His breath hitched and he paused before speaking lower, his voice unsteady. “I didn’t know your mom that long before we got married. I didn’t understand how ill she was, and she really wasn’t bad until . . .” His fingers shrunk away from me and he cleared his throat. “The doctor said postpartum, but it never got better, not really. It was probably there all along and I just didn’t want to see it.”

  He wasn’t touching me at all anymore. He spoke to my back, which began to tremble. “I don’t want you to make the same mistakes, Maya. He’s a mental patient. He’s violent and he’s—”

  It was all I could bear to hear. Grabbing the leash, I nodded and left. I turned my phone off as Jasper and I disappeared into the cold streets, working our way from bad to worse neighborhoods. Street kid territory. It took almost a mile for Dad’s words to recede far enough to notice something was different. The drunks seemed drunker, the dealers bolder. “What are you supposed to be, honey?” one of them asked, and I let Jasper have a little more leash, flash some canines. It wasn’t until I passed two women wearing blood-soaked scrubs with black eye sockets and cracked faces that I realized it was Halloween.

  South of the railroad tracks I passed a group that stopped me in the middle of the street. A man and woman, both dressed in heavy coats and carrying steaming thermoses, followed a pack of kids bubbling over with excitement. Some had plastic pumpkins rattling with candy, others clutched half-full pillowcases. They circled the end of a residential neighborhood, ready to plunder another street with bouncing flashlights, red, dripping noses, and nonstop chatter. The adults were quieter, but enjoying themselves, too. They told the kids to steer clear of Jasper, sipped their drinks, and smiled at me as they passed.

  I watched them go with an ache I could barely contain, gut-punched by the careless laughter of those kids. They had no idea what walked behind them, anchoring them, because they had never been unmoored. And they shouldn’t have to know.