Learning to Swim

THE BOY WAS LOOKING THOUGHTFULLY AT THE SLICE OF old, cold pizza he was holding, as if considering eating it. Time for breakfast.

Even if I had run his clothes through the washer and hung them up to dry last night, they’d still be wet. I searched through my dresser and pulled out my snuggest Lycra sports shorts and tiniest T-shirt, and knotted two bandannas around his waist to hold up the shorts. They came halfway down his legs like baggy pantaloons, making him look like a tiny pirate. I turned him to let him look at himself in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. His mouth twisted with amusement, and for a moment he looked like anyone’s kid, playing dress-up.

I led him by the hand down my narrow stairs into the kitchen, where he seemed to think a picnic table with a plastic-coated checkered tablecloth made a fine dining room table. He emptied his bowl of Cheerios and looked at me wide-eyed, like the hungry orphan in Oliver! I know my Dickens—both movie and novel—and correctly concluded he wanted more. We negotiated: more Cheerios if he would give the half-eaten pizza slice to Tiger.

I watched him munch his cereal, and hoped if he had any food allergies he’d be smart enough to turn down whatever he was allergic to. While he was finishing his second bowl, I retrieved our wet clothes from yesterday and dumped them in the portable washing machine. I wheeled it to the kitchen sink, attached it to the faucet, and switched it on.

What now? I could try to coax Paul into talking or I could do more research to see if I had missed anything. We headed upstairs and were just stepping into my office when my phone rang. I jumped, and Paul scurried into the bedroom.

It was my brother, Simon.

“Hey, kiddo, what’s up?” he asked. I don’t think being eleven months younger warrants being called kiddo, but I let him get away with it. Most of the time. Simon had managed our family much better than I had: he had obediently gone to Vanderbilt, where our father teaches, and majored in pre-law. But when he was supposed to be sowing wild oats on senior spring break he’d slipped off to take the police exam in Orlando, and after graduation had accepted a job there, thereby managing to do exactly what he wanted after being comfortably supported through university. After the initial shock, everyone decided this was a singularly clever way to acquire experience before law school, and Simon lets them think what they want. What they don’t know is that he’s quietly building a second career as an artist, selling a few pieces here and there, and has no intention of going to law school.

But when I landed a scholarship to Oregon State and wanted to skip my last year of high school, it was Simon who calmed our mother and convinced our father to sign the admission papers—although I would have forged them if I’d had to. So if anyone comes close to understanding me, it’s Simon. He’d known I’d had to get away. Just as he knows I need to live in this mountain town more than a thousand long miles from Nashville.

“Not much,” I said. “Work, dog, house. Rode up Keene Valley. Hiked Algonquin.” I’d taken Simon up two of the Adirondack mountains; I hadn’t yet summited all forty-six, but I was marking them off, one by one.

He laughed. “Hey, it’s a tough life you lead up there in the boonies.”

“Yeah, well, have fun down there while you can, before it gets so hot you can barely breathe.”

“At least we don’t have black flies.”

“No, just cockroaches so big they fly.” I hesitated a moment. “Hey, Simon, what do you do at work if you find a lost kid and no parents show up?”

He answered without hesitation—like me, he can switch gears quickly. “Basically it gets publicized until a relative appears or you track them down. Like that kid abandoned in a shopping center out west. Or that little girl in New York found wandering the streets after her mother was killed by her boyfriend. She was in the papers and on TV until she was identified. What’s up, Troy?”

“Mmm.” There was a lump in my throat. “Just an article I’m working on.” This didn’t have to be a lie—I could write an article about missing kids, abandoned kids, kids tossed off ferries. I made noncommittal noises and slid into small talk. Simon told me he had two paintings appearing in a local show; I mentioned an article I’d sold to Triathlete magazine.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Paul was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. I put up a finger—one minute—and told Simon goodbye, and as I hung up I thought of something to try.

I patted the sofa, and Paul climbed up beside me. I pulled a photo album off my bookshelf and opened it. First I showed Paul pictures of me and Tiger, then a photo of Simon. “C’est mon frère,” I said, and asked if he had a brother or sister. He shook his head. A dog? Another shake, with a little frown that made me think he had wanted one but hadn’t been allowed.

I flipped to photos of our parents and the house we grew up in. Paul began to shift uneasily, maybe guessing where I was heading. But instead I asked where he went to school. This he answered.

“Je ne vais pas à l’école.” No school.

Time to ask him where he lived. “Où habites-tu, Paul?” I tried to make the question sound casual. He frowned and shrugged. “Tu habites avec tes parents?” I asked next. At this he became visibly agitated and shook his head. He either didn’t live with his parents, or didn’t want to answer.

I looked at him, clownlike in the baggy T-shirt and shorts. He needed some regular clothes—and maybe being around other kids would help him relax. And although I would never have admitted it, maybe I needed to talk to someone.

I picked up my phone and speed-dialed my friend Baker in Saranac Lake. “C’est mon amie,” I told Paul. “Elle a trois jeunes fils—three sons.” I’d met Baker when she had filled in temporarily at the newspaper during someone’s maternity leave. Her first name was Susan, but she’d been called by her last name ever since working with several women who shared the same first name. Now she remains Baker, despite having acquired a large burly husband, a new last name, and three small sons.

Her husband answered.

“Hey, Mike, it’s Troy. Is Baker around?”

“She’s here somewhere.” He was almost shouting over the background din. “She’s playing Indian chief with the tribe. Hang on a sec.”

Baker was breathless when she got to the phone. If she thought it odd that I needed to borrow some of her oldest son’s clothes, she didn’t say so. “I suppose you’ll explain this when you get here,” she said dryly.

“Yup. I’ll be over within the hour. Do you need anything?”

“Nope, unless you’ve got an Algonquin chief’s outfit. See you.”

Paul was frowning, looking worried. “We’re going to go visit my friends. To borrow clothes,” I told him. “Pour emprunter des vêtements.” He seemed wary, but didn’t protest. I put my driver’s license and cash in my jeans pocket, leaving my still-wet wallet behind. Paul’s sneakers were damp and a bit shrunken, but I pulled them on his bare feet and tied the laces. He and Tiger watched me hang our wet laundry on the line behind the house, and after putting Tiger back in the house we were off.

It was slow driving along Main Street. Lake Placid hosted the Winter Olympics twice, in 1932 and in 1980, and tourists seem to think this is an Olympic theme park and that the townspeople are part of the scenery. Of course they have no idea most locals don’t go anywhere for vacation because they can’t afford it at North Country rock-bottom wages. Or that the 1980 Olympic Village is now a prison camp, and that being a prison guard is considered a great job here because it pays so well.

I do love this area—I’ve lived here nearly five years now. You can walk your kayak to a clear lake for a paddle before breakfast and hike up a mountaintop after lunch. Saranac Lake has a spectacular Winter Carnival, with an amazing ice palace and a parade the whole town turns out to watch no matter how cold it is, and Lake Placid has the best July 4 fireworks I’ve ever seen.

I’d come here as sports editor on the daily newspaper in Saranac Lake, covering three area high schools and two community colleges, plus all the Lake Placid events: horse show competitions, boxing, luge and bobsled, biathlon, ski jumping, and more—and community sports: softball, bowling, dart tournaments, sled dog races, and ice fishing. On a small paper the editor is the editor, writer, photographer, and layout person—you’re it, the whole department. After spending too many nights sleeping on the couch in the newspaper office because I didn’t have either time or energy to drive home, I’d known it was time for a change.

Now I do freelance writing and editing and some computer and website consulting. I write press releases for the area chambers of commerce and theater reviews for the paper, and sell articles about sled dog races, rugby tournaments, three-day canoe races, and ski jumping to magazines like Southwest Spirit and Scholastic Scope. It’s not a huge income, and it’s sporadic. But my expenses are few, and I like the freedom. It had suited me fine.

I had the feeling that was about to change. And maybe it already had.





ONCE OUT OF LAKE PLACID, IT’S ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES to Baker’s house.

Baker is just this side of plump, sort of a heavier, freckled, younger Maura Tierney, with a round friendly face that spells Mom, apple pie, and meat loaf. The corners of her mouth twisted at the sight of Paul’s odd outfit, but she just led us to the stack of clothes she had set aside. Paul shyly picked out a Batman T-shirt and jeans, and I helped him change. The clothes were slightly big, but he seemed to like them, and gave Baker his wistful half smile. She popped a construction-paper headdress on him and pointed him toward the backyard where the kids were playing. He looked at me with a mixture of eagerness and nervousness, and I gave him an encouraging nod. “I’ll just be inside,” I called out as he took a step toward the play set. “Je serai juste là, à l’intérieur … dans la maison de Baker.”

Baker gave me a look.

“Uh, he doesn’t speak English—did I forget to mention that?” I asked as I followed her back into the house.

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Kids all speak the same language.” Through the kitchen window I could see Paul being coaxed up a slide by a pigtailed, overall-clad kid with a dirty smear on her cheek, one of the neighbor’s daughters. “He’ll be fine,” Baker said. “What, are you adopting a French-Canadian kid?”

I shrugged. “I found him. Literally. In Lake Champlain.”

She stared at me for a long second, reading more in my face than I wanted her to. “Okay, you’re staying for lunch. We’ll eat first and then I’ll feed the horde.” As she made sandwiches I watched Paul through the window, going down the slide and then marching around and climbing back up to do it again.

“So tell me,” Baker said as she plopped tuna sandwiches and carrot sticks on the table, with a Coke for her and iced tea for me.

“Mmm. I honest-to-God found him in Lake Champlain. I was on my way to see Thomas yesterday, and I saw him, well, fall in from the other ferry.”

She stared at me. I took a sip of iced tea and made a face. Too strong, as usual. Nobody in the North Country knows how to make iced tea. Most of them think it comes from a jar of powder from the grocery store. I was lucky Baker brewed it for me. I pushed my chair back, the skittering sound loud in the sudden stillness, ran tap water into the glass, and swirled the ice around.

“You just happened to have a portable raft with you, or what?” Baker asked. Sarcasm does not become her.

“No, I swam and got him and then swam to shore.”

More staring. “Troy, you can’t swim worth a damn.”

“I’m not that bad,” I protested as I sat back down. “I don’t like swimming in groups and I sort of veer to one side. But if I concentrate, I do okay.”

She picked up her sandwich and took a bite. “Okay, he fell in the lake. You got him out. So why do you still have him?”

Dead silence. It was difficult to say aloud, and it took a moment to get the words out. “I’m pretty sure someone threw him in.”

Another friend might have exclaimed, but Baker wasn’t made that way, and she knows how tough I like to pretend to be. We chewed our sandwiches.

“Did he say so?” Baker asked.

“No. He won’t talk about it. But no one was at the dock looking for him, and he had … there was …” I cleared my throat. “He had an adult’s sweatshirt tied around him, the sleeves knotted around his arms.”

Baker thought about this. “Did you call the police?”

I nodded. “Etown and Burlington. I didn’t give my name. But Paul wasn’t talking, so he wouldn’t have told them anything. And I’d pulled the sweatshirt off him, so it was at the bottom of the lake.” I clinked my ice around in my glass and took a long drink. “I think he’ll calm down soon and tell me who he is and what happened and where he’s from, and then I can decide what to do. He’s just starting to talk.”

She stared at me a moment longer. North Country people are known for their reticence and staying out of other people’s business, but even Baker couldn’t let this go. When she spoke, her voice was mild.

“Troy, you can’t just keep a child. He has parents somewhere, parents who are bound to be looking for him.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they’re the ones who threw him in the lake.” My voice almost cracked. “And I don’t want him being sent back to them.”

She watched as I drank more tea, and then I spoke again. “When he tells me what happened, then I’ll know what to do.”

For a moment I thought she was going to pull maternal rank and say, “Are you out of your mind?” But I could see her working it out, considering the possibilities and the risks: parents who don’t get their kid back immediately versus child may be sent back to people who tried to kill him. At last she nodded. Paul’s safety was most important.

And I think we both knew that a kid who had simply been scooped up and dumped overboard would have been screaming for his mom and dad. And this kid wasn’t.

“So is he Canadian?” she asked.

“Probably—but he hasn’t spoken enough for me to tell.” To me Canadian French sounds more slurred, but probably that’s the street version. Québécois say theirs is the purer form of French, because after the Revolution everyone in France switched to a more common form of the language. Which makes sense, considering that all the aristocrats had been beheaded.

The back door opened and the herd came thundering in. They were thirsty, they announced, and needed Kool-Aid. Paul separated himself from the group and came to my side. I felt his forehead, damp with sweat. Baker calmly handed out Kool-Aid, and Paul drank deeply, leaving a purple stain around his lips. She set out a stack of cut-up sandwiches and carrot sticks and dumped potato chips into a bowl, and the kids fell on the food. Paul looked at me for permission, and stood next to me as he ate, slowly and with great precision. I put some potato chips on a napkin for him, and he ate them delicately.

“I think I’d better get this guy home. He may need an n-a-p.” I was suddenly worried I’d let him overexert himself.

“Kids are tough,” Baker said, reading my mind. “Listen, be careful, and keep me posted. And if you need me, just shout.”

“Okay.” I stood, picking up the bag with my clothes and some extras Baker was lending us. “Paul, say goodbye and thank you. Dis ‘goodbye and thank you.’ ”

“Goodbye t’ank you,” he said, to my surprise. He glanced longingly at the plate of sandwiches, and when I nodded he took two more pieces, one for each hand.

Baker had reminded me that small children aren’t supposed to ride in the front seat, so I buckled Paul into the back, doing my best to explain why. It felt odd to have him back there, as if I were a chauffeur, and I didn’t like not being able to see him beside me. We drove through town, and just after we turned right onto 86, heading toward Placid, a rattly, rusty station wagon passed, going the opposite direction. What a piece of junk, I thought idly. I noticed its out-of-state plates, and wondered if someone had driven down from Québec just to take that ferry, just to dump a child. If Paul had been living in Vermont, surely he’d be able to speak English.

I looked in the rearview mirror at Paul, his head slumped against the side of the car. He had fallen asleep as soon as we were out of town. Suddenly I had a new worry. He’d had a long dunking, swallowed God knows how much lake water, and walked in wet clothes after an exhausting swim. I hadn’t the vaguest idea how that could affect a child who seemed none too robust to begin with. Water in the lungs? A bacterial infection from the lake water?

I glanced at the clock. My friend Kate is an ER nurse, and soon would be heading to her shift at the Saranac Lake Hospital. I gave her a call. No answer, but I left a message asking if she could stop by. We had scarcely gotten into the house when I heard her lilting tones in the front hallway. “Anybody home?”

Why I end up with friends who look like models, I don’t know. Kate is tall and slender, with flowing auburn hair and a wholesome wide-eyed look that tends to drive men nuts. She’s had more than one stalker, which can be awkward in a small town where everyone knows both stalker and stalkee. Last summer a tuba player from Albuquerque who was here to play in the summer symphony had fallen madly in love with her from across the room. It was quite a nuisance and rather annoying to me, who has yet to be fallen in love with from across the room.

Kate’s also a by-the-book kind of girl who follows regulations, dots every i, and crosses every t. She would have no doubt that a stray boy should be reported to the authorities, and although I might be able to dissuade her, she wouldn’t be happy about it.

So I told her Paul was the son of a Canadian friend and had taken an unexpected fall into the lake. I let her think it was a fall from a canoe into Mirror Lake, two blocks away, and that I would rather avoid the expense of dragging him to an emergency room that wouldn’t honor a Canadian health insurance card. Although I never said any of that, just hinted at it.

She believed it all, so readily that I felt guilty. But while she may be a trifle gullible, Kate is a competent and caring nurse. She put Paul at ease, while peppering me with questions: How long had he been in the water? What had I done for him? Had he been eating and sleeping?

She popped an old-fashioned thermometer into his mouth, thumbed his eyelids back to look at his pupils, peered into his ears, and pulled up his shirt to listen to his heartbeat.

“He seems fine,” she announced. “He’s probably tired. And maybe he hasn’t been eating enough; he’s a little thin.”

Paul, who had sat quietly during the examination, looked at me. “She says you need to eat more,” I said, deadpan. “Il faut que tu manges beaucoup de bonbons et de gâteau.”

He looked confused for a moment and then let loose a short high trill of laughter. A wave of happiness bubbled up in me, so intense it startled me.

As I showed Kate out, I remembered what Baker had murmured as I’d left: “Don’t get too attached to this kid, Troy.” She thinks my boarding house scenario results from sublimated maternal urges, that I love acting as house mom to a brood of roommates, although they’re only a few years younger than me. I tell her, tongue-in-cheek, that I just enjoy having so many hunky guys around. But it’s true that I’m the only one of my sisters unwed and childless, and true, I thought, that I had fallen hard for this kid.

I looked over at the boy, perched on the bottom of the staircase, watching me with those long-lashed dark eyes that had seen things no child should ever see—like maybe the face of the person who had toppled him into the lake. I felt a surge of a fierce emotion I couldn’t put a name to.

“Well, let’s get started on the medical treatment,” I said. “Aimes-tu la glace? You like ice cream?”

His eyes lit up. “Let’s go,” I said, opening the front door. “They’ve got your name on an ice cream cone up at Stewart’s.”





THERE ARE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES TO HAVING a Stewart’s only 144 steps from your front door. It’s handy to dash up for milk or eggs, but too easy to indulge in ice cream, especially when it’s on sale.

After careful deliberation, Paul pointed at the container of strawberry, and I took my usual, chocolate peanut butter cup. He licked his cone tidily, while Tiger looked at us imploringly. But even I draw the line at sharing ice cream with a dog, although I’m pretty sure one of my friends buys Tiger her own cone when I’m not around.

“It’s good, yes?” I said to Paul. “C’est bon, la glace?” He nodded, his tongue chasing melting droplets. In the afternoon sun outside Stewart’s with our cones, it seemed a perfectly normal day with a small boy who just happened to be visiting me.

But if I was going to feed him ice cream, I thought, I should get him a toothbrush.

“Tu veux venir au magasin avec moi?” I asked, gesturing up the street. He nodded again, and we walked the few blocks up to the drugstore on Main Street. Tiger waited outside patiently, earning ooohs and ahhhs from tourists who apparently don’t have dogs where they live. At least not fancy shepherd-retriever mixes.

I bought a toothbrush and a comb for Paul, and then we walked on to Bookstore Plus. There we poked around before selecting a copy of Harold and the Purple Crayon and a pack of Uno cards, which would work even if you didn’t know any English. On the way back to the house I nodded at people I knew. Suddenly the small grip on my hand tightened, and I looked down. Paul’s face had turned white. Belatedly I realized that the group of people we’d just passed was chattering in French—so many tourists from Montreal come here that I hadn’t noticed.

I whisked Paul into a little alcove in front of a collection of tiny stores, Lake Placid’s version of a mall. I knelt and pulled him toward me. “Paul, est-ce que tu connais ces personnes?” I asked.

He was trembling, but shook his head. No, he didn’t know those people.

“What’s wrong? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Qu’est-ce c’est le problème?” I asked.

He mumbled something I couldn’t make out. I looked at the people walking away from us. Everything about them spelled tourist: clothes, gait, how they were talking and laughing.

I looked down at Paul. Instinct said to get him back to the house. I held his hand firmly as we marched past the post office, high school, town hall, through the kitchen and up my stairs. Paul climbed up on the sofa and curled in a tiny knot in the corner. I sat across from him in my captain’s chair.

“Paul,” I said, “c’est important que tu me dises si tu connais ces personnes.” You must tell me if you know those people.

He looked up and shook his head again, eyes glistening. “Non, non, je ne les connais pas, pas du tout.”

He didn’t know them. Okay. Maybe he’d just recognized the Québec French. “Est-ce que tu habites au Québec?”

Silence. A tiny shrug that could mean yes, could mean no. And then he burst into tears. I took him in my arms and held him as he cried.

“Paul,” I whispered, “Paul, où sont tes parents?”

He burrowed deeper into me. After a long pause, he answered.

“Ma mère est décédée,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “Et mon père veux rien savoir de moi.”

His mother was dead, and his father did not want him. In the next instant he was crying, deep wrenching sobs I didn’t know could come from someone so small. I didn’t ask if it had been his father on the ferry with him. I didn’t want to know, at least not yet.

In a moment he lifted his tear-streaked face and began to babble, torrents of French so fast and slurred I could pick out only a few words. I was crying myself by that time, and held him and rocked him. Some tiny presence of mind led me to reach across to my desk and flick on the little tape recorder I use for interviews.

As he calmed, he began to speak more slowly. Gradually the story came out. He had lived in Montreal with his maman and papa, he said, until one day some men had taken him and his maman.

When, he wasn’t sure, because it had gotten fuzzy in his mind. It was before Christmas, because he had been promised a new vélo, a red one, and had never gotten it. He’d woken up in a big car, no, a van, and had been sick, and when he’d awakened again he was in a small room with no windows. He’d heard men in the next room and heard the voice of his maman and a bang, like the gunfire he’d heard on television sometimes. Then the men had told him his mother was dead, and if he didn’t do as they said, they’d kill him, too, and he had cried and cried.

Sometimes he’d sleep very hard, and when he woke up he’d be sick again. Once he woke up in a different room, a smaller one. He had a soft ball and some comic books, and one of the men gave him a bag of little plastic toy figures. If he was quiet and lay near the door, he could hear the television, usually in English but sometimes French. They’d leave food in his room, boxes of cereal or doughnuts, cracker packets and apples, and at night one of those meals on a plastic plate from the freezer or sometimes a box of McDonald’s food with a toy. Most nights he’d get a little carton of milk. If he cried or tried to get out of the room, they would smack him. He had started to dig a hole in the wall beside his bed with one of the little plastic figurines, hiding the hole with his pillow.

Then he had slept hard and remembered being very sleepy, under a blanket, and then being picked up, something wrapped tightly around him, and then falling, falling, falling, unable to move his arms.

“Et puis vous êtes revenue pour moi,” he said, his face brightening. My eyes filled with tears and my chest tightened until it hurt. Yes, I had come for him, and pulled him from the water, and saved him. I hugged him, probably too tightly.

Could he write his name? I asked. Of course, he nodded proudly, of course he could. He was, after all, six years old. I handed him a pad of paper and a pencil and he laboriously wrote, Paul Dumond.

“Et ton papa et ta maman?” I held my breath.

He thought a moment, and then wrote Philipe and, after a few tries, Madline.

Philippe and Madeline Dumond. Montreal.

So I had names, and a place.





I THINK I’D EXPECTED PAUL’S STORY TO TRICKLE OUT IN BITS and pieces, gradually revealing a bit more of the puzzle until it became a neat tidy package and I could calmly decide what to do. I suppose I had hoped he was simply a child no one wanted.

In my wildest imagination I wouldn’t have come up with anything like this.

I was itching to start researching, but Paul needed to be calmed. So I moved to the computer and slid in a simple two-player game I’d found in the five-dollar bin at Staples, one with funny little characters that scurry down halls and up and down stairs, grabbing prizes and avoiding traps. Paul snuffled and blew his nose with the tissue I handed him, then climbed onto my lap. He began to tap at the keys, and we chased down bad guys as if our lives depended on it. After his tears dried I got out a coloring book and crayons, plus markers and old computer paper, the kind with the punched-out sides made for a tractor feed.

“Il faut que je travaille maintenant.” I nodded toward the computer. “Je dois écrire à l’ordinateur.” He seemed to understand that I needed to work, and began pulling crayons out of the box. I guess if you’ve been kept locked up in a room for weeks on end, coloring seems like a blast.

It took only seconds to locate a Canadian online phone directory. I found plenty of people named Dumond in Montreal and suburbs, including three Philippes, with addresses and phone numbers. Then I checked Montreal newspapers for Philippe Dumond, Madeline Dumond, and a few alternative spellings of each. I knew that women can’t automatically change their last name in Québec when they marry, but can use their husband’s name socially.

I found nothing in the archives for the Montreal Gazette. I began searching archives of Montreal’s French-language newspaper, Le Journal de Montréal, from last fall.

Then I found something: Madeleine Dumond mentioned in a brief article on a social page. I couldn’t translate the whole article, but it said she had chaired the event the previous year. The words that jumped out were “Mme Dumond est l’épouse de Philippe Dumond, président de l’Agence Dumond.” Wife of Philippe Dumond, president of the Dumond Agency.

I glanced over at Paul, busily crayoning. I searched other Montreal-area publications, including a glossy monthly magazine, Montreal Monthly, and in less than a minute got a hit—a photo.

It appeared first as a ghostly image, then the pixels filled in until three people were smiling out at me, a frozen moment in an apparently gala evening.

Madeleine was the central figure: head thrown back, smiling gracefully. She had gently waving honey-colored hair, high elegant cheekbones, dark eyes, and a wide Julia Roberts mouth. She was dressed chicly, a trifle daringly compared to the other woman in the picture, in a silvery snug dress cut across one bare shoulder. The caption read, “Yves and Geneviève Bédard and Madeleine Dumond at the Spring Festival of Arts dinner.”

I looked at the photo. I looked for any resemblance to Paul, with his dark hair and thin face. I tried to imagine this woman holding Paul, combing his hair, hugging him, tying his shoes, walking him to school. I couldn’t. But neither could I imagine her kidnapped and dead.

I saved the photo, and moved on to searching the Gazette’s archives. I found a few mentions on the business page about companies whose marketing was handled by the Dumond Agency. Then I hit the jackpot: a tiny blurb in the business section that said the agency was moving to Ottawa.

Back to the Ottawa Citizen, where I found two small articles, one on the company’s move and another mentioning an account it had just landed. In years past people might have assumed Dumond was moving out of Québec because of the risk of it seceding from Canada, which would be somewhat like Florida or California pulling out of the United States. Once the vote for separation had been razor close—49.4 to 50.6 percent—but since then the separatist movement seemed to have died down.

I found nothing about a kidnapping, missing wife, missing child. How could this have been kept out of the news? The police could keep it quiet in response to kidnappers’ threats, I suppose. And picking up and moving 125 miles would certainly let you dodge unpleasant questions about absent wife and child. I glanced at Paul, still busy coloring.

My brain was going down a path I didn’t want it to. Most people don’t make such major life changes a few short months after a tragedy. I supposed Paul’s father had given up hope of wife and child returning; I supposed the walls of the home they’d shared would haunt him. But that little voice in my head asked, How could you abandon it so quickly? Wouldn’t you want to stay in the home you’d shared, on the tiny chance they would return someday?

Unless, of course, you knew they wouldn’t.

In Nashville in the late 1990s, a lawyer named Perry March had killed his wife, apparently after she threatened to divorce him and take their two small children. He got away with it for a decade, until his father confessed to helping him dump the body. And in a notorious Washington, D.C., case I’d read about, a former Motown recording engineer had his ex-wife and disabled son killed, along with the son’s nurse, so he would get the child’s huge trust fund. The killer apparently consulted a how-to book called Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors. The surviving family sued the publishers, who lost.

Paul had turned to a new page in the coloring book and begun filling in the characters in bright colors. He was a neat crayoner, staying carefully inside the lines.

I couldn’t locate a home address for Philippe Dumond in Ottawa or suburbs, but found an address for the downtown business, with phone and fax numbers. For one insane moment I thought of sending a fax: Dear Mr. Dumond: Are you missing someone?

I flicked off the computer and moved to the sofa. I admired the pages Paul had colored, and read Harold and the Purple Crayon to him. Which he liked so much we did it twice more. Fortunately, it’s a short book.

I’d almost forgotten about the play I was due to review that evening for the newspaper. I usually ask Baker or Kate along, but tonight I’d take Paul.

I ran a bath for him, setting out clean clothes from the ones Baker had loaned us. His own had dried, but they were too small, and I didn’t want to put him back in them, anyway. When he emerged from the tub, his wet hair was hanging down past his eyes, several inches too long.

Time for a trim, I thought. I draped a towel around Paul’s shoulders and perched him on the edge of my desk, explaining with a combination of French, English, and gestures that I wanted to couper his cheveux with my ciseaux. I’ve been cutting friends’ hair since high school—nothing fancy, but I can do a decent simple cut. He seemed agreeable, so I got out scissors and comb.

His hair was full and straight, but long and uneven. I combed and snipped and layered, and when I finished, his face didn’t seem as thin and he didn’t quite have that abandoned, neglected look. “Very nice. C’est beau,” I told him, and he smiled shyly. He hopped down and without prompting held the dustpan as I swept up the hair. Someone had trained him to do this, which didn’t seem to fit with being a child someone would throw away, a child wearing too-small clothes that were gray from wear.

On the way to Saranac Lake we zoomed through the McDonald’s drive-through, which I disapprove of on several counts. Fast food and drive-throughs seem to represent a lot that’s wrong with this country: fatty, salty, cheap food delivered while you sit in your fossil-fuel-wasting, pollutant-spewing vehicle. But it wouldn’t kill me to do it once. I hesitated before ordering a Happy Meal for Paul, not wanting to remind him of the ones he’d gotten in captivity. But he seemed pleased with the brightly colored carton and cheap toy, and not at all traumatized.

Damn. Damn damn damn. Time to shut off my brain.

Going to the theater that evening was probably the best thing we could have done. It was a Larry Shue play called The Foreigner, by a local theater group founded by a couple who had left Off-Broadway. The play features a timid Englishman stuck in a lodge in Georgia for three days, introduced as a foreigner who knows no English. I wouldn’t have thought we could have laughed so hard. I’m not sure how much Paul understood, but the exaggerated dialects and facial expressions required no translation. Or maybe it was just emotional release. He nodded off in the car on the way home, and I walked him upstairs, steered him into the bathroom, pulled off his sneakers and jeans, and rolled him under the covers. He was instantly asleep.

I was yawning, so I detoured down to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, using the paper-towel-as-filter drip method. Then I sat down and started typing: What can you say about a play that has you laughing out loud minutes after it starts? I hammered out a thousand words, printed it, edited it, then emailed it to the editor at the Enterprise. Then lay awake long into the night, thinking.



I woke early, plans made. Before Paul stirred, I slipped out of bed and fired up my computer to print some business cards. I packed a few things and made a quick call to Baker before waking Paul. Then a trip to the corner with Tiger, Cheerios at the kitchen picnic table, a note asking Zach to watch Tiger, and we were off to Saranac Lake.





THIS IS CRAZY, TROY,” BAKER SAID FLATLY. “YOU’RE GOING to go up to Ottawa to find Paul’s father, and then what?”

I didn’t say anything.

She turned from the kitchen sink and faced me. “Okay, you kept Paul until he was comfortable talking. Probably you found out a whole lot more than the police would have by now. But now you know who he is. You know he was kidnapped. You know his mother was murdered. You know he has a father. Troy, you have to report this.”

I could hear the tunk, tunk of her quartz-powered wall clock. The house was quiet. Her two oldest boys had left for school, and we’d stashed her youngest son and Paul at Holly’s, across the street.

I was trying to formulate words, figuring out how to explain something that wasn’t entirely clear even to me. Finally I started to speak and, God help me, my voice cracked and a tear slipped down my cheek. Baker stared at me in something approaching horror, as I’d put my head in my hands and narrowly avoided outright sobbing. She’d never seen me cry. She’d never even known I could cry, she told me later.

I finally got it out, more or less lucidly. I’d thought about it long into the night. Maybe Paul’s father had nothing to do with this kidnapping or his wife’s death. Maybe there was an innocent reason for his moving to Ottawa and for the lack of news coverage. But maybe he had everything to do with it.

Maybe he had wanted to get rid of wife and child without the expense of a divorce. No muss, no fuss, no alimony or child support. If he had arranged all this but it couldn’t be proved, Paul would be turned over to him. Just like the children of the Nashville lawyer, Paul would grow up with the man responsible for his mother’s death.

Baker listened. She’d not only made a whole pot of Earl Grey, but was drinking some, too. Apparently emotional crises merited hot expensive tea instead of the Red Rose brand she used for my iced tea.

“I can’t let that happen,” I said. “I’m not having him go back to someone who could harm him, or who killed his mother.” I took a deep breath. “But I think if I see him, if I look him in the eye when I tell him, I’ll know if he had anything to do with this.”

What I couldn’t say was that something had made me see Paul plummet off the ferry; something had led me to him in Lake Champlain and had let me swim long enough and hard enough to save him. Surely when I saw his father, I would know if he had been responsible for any of this.

“And if you think he was involved?” Baker prompted.

“Then I’ll show him a photo I’m taking along of one of my nephews when he was that age, and say that was who I found.” Paul’s father would tell me I was mistaken; I’d express regret and leave and come back to Paul.

“And then I’ll keep him,” I said. My voice seemed to echo in the kitchen. The quartz clock was clicking away the seconds. “If I can get away with raising him here, I will, but if not, I’ll move somewhere and start over with a new name.” Never mind that I would be acting as judge and jury; never mind that the culprits would never pay for what they had done. This child would be safe.

I was showing Baker more of myself than she’d ever seen and admitting to things I didn’t want to admit. But a tiny part of me was aware that opening up like this was the only thing that could sway her into watching Paul while I went to Canada. There’s a fine line between sharing and manipulating, and part of me knew I was dancing close to that line—like a kid deliberately crying hard over a broken window so Mom won’t get mad. But I didn’t tell her about Janey, the little blond girl at the children’s shelter who had begged me to adopt her, and who one day was just gone.

Maybe I was manipulating her, maybe not. Sometimes I think Baker sees into my skull, past the bones and into my brain. She probably had a pretty good idea what was going on.

She looked at the clock and then at me. “If you’re going, go.”

If I were a hugging kind of person, I would have hugged her. I brought in the bag I’d packed for Paul, and we walked over to Holly’s so I could tell Paul I was leaving for a day or two and that he would stay with Baker and Mike.

He clung to me, his eyes glistening. “Ne partez pas,” he whispered. “Ne partez pas, je vous en prie.” Please don’t leave.

“I have to, Paul. C’est nécessaire.” And maybe my eyes were glistening, too. “Ce n’est pas pour longtemps. Seulement un jour ou deux. One or two days. No longer.”

But I had to go, and I couldn’t take him with me. He’d be fine here.





NOW I WAS DRIVING NORTH TO OTTAWA, TRYING HARD NOT to think about Paul’s face as I’d left.

It was a crisp spring day, the sky clear and a more vivid blue than I’ve ever seen anywhere. Trees were coming alive after the long winter, shooting out sheaves of green. You could see gaps in the tree line where acid rain had killed off trees, but the air still seems fresh and clean.

Did I know that what I was doing was risky? Of course I did. But so was jumping off the ferry, which had saved one small boy’s life.

I had built a comfortable world for myself here in the Adirondacks: rental house, rotating roommates, freelance work, family a thousand miles away, a sort-of boyfriend, friends but none I really confided in. Baker was the closest, and I’d let her see more of me today than I ever had. It was a simple and safe existence: no mortgage, no lease, no steady job, no committed relationship. Not a whole lot at risk.

It had seemed like a pretty good life to me, and I thought I’d been content.

But from the moment I sat on the rock at the edge of the lake with Paul on my lap, I’d felt a bond I’d never experienced. Something had changed for me, as if a switch had been thrown. I had taken responsibility for this small person, and now life from before the ferry seemed in the distant past.

I had distilled it down to two things: If Paul had a father who loved and deserved him, I would turn him over. If he didn’t, I was keeping him.

I’d brought along my voice-activated tape recorder and business cards I’d printed this morning with a fake name and fake address. Baker would most likely tell her husband, Mike, a slimmed-down version of the truth, that Paul was an abandoned Canadian boy and I’d gone to try to find his father because it was simpler than involving the authorities.

I’d dressed with care, assuming the closest I could to a businesswoman persona: cord slacks, pullover, Eastland leather shoes, and black linen blazer on the seat beside me. I’d braided my hair into one long neat plait down my back. Not precisely the image of corporate success, but I figured the blazer would make it work.

I hadn’t figured out how I would get in to see Dumond, but I had plenty of time to think on the drive. It’s about eighty miles to the Canadian border, and the route meanders through small towns so undeveloped that if it weren’t for modern cars and a few scattered Subways and Burger Kings, you could imagine it was decades ago.

When I spotted a FedEx drop box, I had my plan. I doubled back and opened the bin at the top of the box where labels and envelopes are stored. I was in luck: it held international labels as well as U.S. ones. I grabbed a label and envelope and addressed a label to Dumond, scribbling to obscure the first name and inventing a Boston address for the return. I slipped a note inside the envelope, sealed it, and inserted the label in the plastic flap. And drove on.

Now I was at the St. Regis reservation and passing the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino. The parking lot was nearly full, and I could see a bevy of plump white women wearing fanny packs making their way inside, heading for the slot machines. To me gambling on reservations is Native Americans’ joke on white Americans. We pushed them onto the least desirable land possible, and now flock to their casinos to gamble our dollars away.

Payback.

Gas is always cheaper on the reservation, so I stopped at the Bear’s Den to tank up. While a tall jean-clad Mohawk man with dark close-cropped hair pumped the gas, I headed for the restroom.

The border crossing at Cornwall was a brief stop while an inspector glanced at my passport and asked a few rote questions. Apparently I fit no profile, because as often as I’ve crossed this border, I’ve never had my car searched or been asked more than the perfunctory questions: Where are you going? How long are you staying? What is your citizenship? Are you carrying any liquor or cigarettes? Once in a while they’d throw in Are you carrying more than $10,000? and I’d have to work hard not to retort, “Do I look like I’m carrying more than $10,000?” Apparently you can import ten grand without reporting it, but not a penny more.

Up highway 138, onto the Trans-Canada Highway, into Ottawa, exit into downtown. Traffic was smooth. My heart was thumping, my mouth dry.

It was comfortably before lunchtime. First step: Check to see if Dumond was in. If not, try in the afternoon, then maybe crash with people I knew in Perth and try again tomorrow. I found a parking space and then a pay phone. I thumbed in some of the Canadian change I keep in my car console.

“Dumond Agency, Colette speaking,” a pleasant voice said.

“Hello,” I said. “This is Doris Felton calling for Philippe Dumond.” I expected the stilted or bored May I ask what this is concerning? that you get from most businesses in the States, but Canadians are friendlier and less suspicious than their American counterparts. Or maybe I’d succeeded at sounding confident enough to be convincing.

She replied, “Certainly, just one moment,” and as she clicked off, I hung up, figuring they’d think the call had gotten disconnected. I’d found out what I wanted: Dumond was in his office. It was possible she had been shuffling me off to an assistant, but that was a risk I’d take.

I’d tucked the FedEx envelope into the black canvas Lands’ End satchel I use as a briefcase. As an afterthought, I ripped it open. Dumond would be more likely to glance inside if the envelope was open, and I didn’t want it sitting in a pile for hours. On the paper inside I’d written: I may know something about your son, Paul.

I breathed deeply, hitched the satchel up on my shoulder, and walked briskly toward his office building. If the entrance was keypad- or entry-card-operated, I’d slip in behind someone on their way in.

No keypad, no problem. The directory listed the Dumond Agency on the third floor. I stepped into the elevator. Deep breaths. I leaned against the brass railing and switched on the voice-activated tape recorder in my pocket. A drop of sweat trickled down my side.

I would, I thought, be facing one of two possibilities. Either Dumond would be clearly innocent, ecstatic with the news that his son had been found, and we would alert the police and arrange a happy reunion.

Or—and this was trickier—he would give off guilty vibrations, be evasive or insincere, or not admit his son had been kidnapped. Then I’d say I must be mistaken, show a photo of boy-who-is-not-Paul, offer apologies and leave, giving the fake business card if pressed. And make sure no one followed me to my car.

All too soon the elevator doors opened. And I was facing the glass doors of the office, with their heavy black raised lettering.

I learned a long time ago that if you can’t be confident, pretend that you are. I whisked in to greet the woman at the receptionist’s desk, and went into my spiel, sliding into the Canadian accent I automatically use when I’m up there. I’m no Meryl Streep, but Canadian English is easy. You enunciate a little more clearly, flatten your a’s, pronounce your o’s a bit differently. And say things like zed instead of z, runners instead of sneakers, laneway instead of driveway.

We’d gotten this FedEx envelope delivered to our office, I explained, where we had a Phyllis Dumond, and she’d accidentally signed for it and even opened it before seeing that it wasn’t hers. My boss was worried that we’d accepted someone else’s delivery, so she’d sent me over with it, and could she possibly check with Mr. Dumond to see if it was his?

“Of course.” She smiled in sympathy at my rolled eyes about my demanding and completely imaginary boss. “I’ll take it in to Mr. Dumond right away.” She disappeared with the envelope, returned, and within a ten-count—look up, accept envelope, open envelope, read note—there he was.

Even I could tell he was wearing Armani, which on some people looks like a baggy suit, but on him looked like, well, Armani. He was tall and lean, his face sharply angled and his hair thick and dark, worn longer than most businessmen—a perfect match for the elegant woman I’d seen in the photo. Only a slightly crooked nose kept him from being impossibly handsome. He spoke to the receptionist, and his gaze locked on me as she motioned toward me. A nearly imperceptible hesitation, a moment of indecision so slight I nearly didn’t see it, and so brief I didn’t have time to think what it could mean. Then he was the consummate businessman, moving smoothly toward me.

“You brought this envelope for me?” he asked pleasantly, in smooth, cultured tones, without a trace of French accent. “May I ask when it was delivered?”

I cleared my throat. “Actually, it’s from me. It’s not from FedEx.”

For a fraction of a second the scene seemed to freeze, him with half smile and envelope in hand.

“Then I’d like to speak to you,” he said, eyebrows slightly raised. “In my office?”

I nodded dumbly. My heart was thumping so fast he had to be able to hear it. Where was the intuition I’d been so sure would tell me if he was guilty? Surely an innocent man would be more emotional, not cool and collected, as dispassionate as if inquiring about a dry cleaner’s bill.

I followed him into his office, passing offices where I could see people working, and registering the thick carpet underfoot. His office was exactly as I would have imagined it: rich cherry furniture, champagne-colored carpet, shelves heavy with books, brown leather armchairs.

I never saw him move. I heard the door close and suddenly I was flattened with my back against the wall, almost lifted off the ground, his hand hard up against my throat, gripping firmly, his hip pressing lightly against mine. His face was so close I could smell the crispness of his aftershave, see the small pores on his face, feel the palpable fury that shimmered between us. His words were slow and harsh, almost whispered into my ear: “Tell me where my son is.”