Learning to Swim

THE NEXT MORNING THE CALL CAME—THE ONE EVERYONE had been dreading. Elise brought the phone to the breakfast table, and Philippe’s face turned white as he listened. He stood and turned, as if to shield us. When he clicked off the phone and faced us, he was working hard to appear normal.

“Troy,” he said, too casually. “There’s something I need to ask you about on my computer.”

I winked at Paul and said, “Back in a flash, cowboy,” and followed Philippe upstairs. In his office he turned and leaned against the desk.

He spoke immediately. “They found a woman’s body, Troy, just outside Montreal. They think it’s Madeleine.”

My breath caught, and I made a sound.

He went on. “It was in her car, in the woods, and matches Madeleine’s description. They’re checking dental records now.”

I found my voice. “But, Philippe, it couldn’t be her, not in Montreal. Paul said he heard her shot, after they’d been moved.” My throat was dry.

He shook his head. “He must have been wrong.” He tapped his ring, and cleared his throat. “Wedding ring. We had them engraved.” His face crumpled, and he sat in his desk chair, his back to me.

He sat for a long moment, face in hands, and then straightened, back in control. “I have to go to Montreal to identify the body and meet with the Montreal police. Jameson will go with me.”

“What are you going to tell Paul?”

Philippe shook his head, picking up the phone on his desk and punching in numbers. “I’m not going to tell him that it’s her, not until I’m sure, but I’ll have to tell him something because Jameson will be here soon.” He spoke into the phone, telling his receptionist he wouldn’t be in. I wondered if he’d tell Claude or wait until the identity was confirmed. Or if the police had already called Claude.

I went downstairs and gulped coffee, almost burning my mouth. I smiled at Paul and nibbled at a muffin. Philippe followed moments later, and Paul looked up curiously.

“Paul, Papa is going to go off today with the police, to help them,” Philippe told him.

“To look for the bad men?” Paul asked, putting a blueberry from his muffin into his mouth.

“Well, yes.” Philippe shifted in his chair. “And perhaps to find out what happened to your mother.”

Paul looked at him calmly. “I heard the bad men shoot her.”

We both froze. It was the first time we had heard Paul voluntarily say anything about the kidnapping.

“Yes, I know, Paul,” Philippe said. “But we would like to try to find her and if … if we can, bring her back and have a funeral.”

“When you die, your inside … votre esprit … goes away.” Paul waved one hand as if it were a small bird in flight.

Philippe couldn’t speak. I answered gently. “Yes, your spirit, your soul, goes away and your body is left behind, like a shell.”

“And you put the shell in the ground?”

“Yes. And then you put up a marker, or a stone, with the person’s name, to respect and remember them.” Paul nodded, and took a bite of the muffin he’d been picking the blueberries from.

The doorbell rang. Elise ushered in Jameson, and he stopped in the doorway. “Would you like coffee?” asked Elise, her eyes worried. She knew something was very wrong.

“No,” said Jameson, shaking his head. His eyes moved around the room, taking in the breakfast remains, moving past Philippe and Paul, stopping on me. He nodded brusquely. I nodded back, a tight knot in my throat. “We need to go,” he said to Philippe.

Philippe nodded, and set down his coffee. He gave Paul a hug, telling him that I would drive him to school today. “I’ll call when I can,” he told me.



The body was Madeleine’s, Philippe told me when he called a few hours later, but it would be much later before he could tell me more. Jameson got on the phone and told me to be at the Ottawa police station with Elise by two thirty.

“But I have to pick Paul up from school.”

“Monsieur Dumond will be able to pick his son up,” he said.

“Okay.” As I hung up I met Elise’s eyes. “They found Mrs. Dumond’s body,” I told her. “They want us at the police station at two thirty.”

She muttered something in French I didn’t understand, and switched back to English. “Why do they want to talk to us?” Twin strands of gray hair had escaped from her hair and were framing her worried brow.

“To find out if we know anything, I guess. Maybe if you remember anything from before, about people Madeleine knew, maybe.”

We busied ourselves, her scrubbing kitchen cupboards, me taking Tiger for a walk, and when it was time I drove us to the police station. A police officer took Elise somewhere, and a few minutes later Jameson appeared and waved me back into his cluttered office. I sat.

“Do you own a gun?” he asked, shuffling some papers at his desk.

“No.”

“Have you ever owned a gun?”

“No.”

“Have you ever fired a gun?”

“No. Well, not since I was a kid—a shotgun, at a target. Just once.” I had been about eight, and the recoil had nearly thrown me to the ground.

He watched me closely. “Did you ever meet Madeleine Dumond?”

“No. I mean, no, I don’t think I ever did, if I did, I didn’t know it.” I was babbling, and couldn’t help it.

“Were you aware of the manner of her death?”

“Paul said he heard her shot.”

“Were you aware of the whereabouts of Madame Dumond’s body?”

“No. From what Paul told me, I’d thought she was shot in Vermont, or wherever he was kept.”

He scribbled some notes on his paper, ignoring me, and then looked up blandly. “All right, thank you, Miss Chance.”

I hesitated. This was it? I met his stare, and knew he was baiting me. I stood up. “So I can go?”

“Yes,” he said, and I left without looking back.

Elise’s questioning had been along the same lines, I supposed, but with more specific questions, as her interview took longer. She didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. I caught sight of Claude in the waiting area, face ashen, looking as if he had crumpled in on himself. I hesitated, wanting to say something to him, but I didn’t think anything I could say would bring him any comfort. But I couldn’t not try.

I walked over to him. “I’m so sorry,” I said. He lifted his head, and it shocked me; I’ve never seen a face so ravaged with pain. He tried to sneer at me but couldn’t manage it, and somehow the attempt—and maybe the failure as well—made me like him more than I would have thought possible. “I’m so very sorry,” I said again, and he nodded. I left him alone.

Philippe was questioned extensively, he told me that evening. The body had been in Madeleine’s car in a ravine in a deeply wooded area outside Montreal. It wore the wedding ring and a leather coat and a pair of boots Philippe recognized. Apparently she had been strangled or garroted, not shot.

It took me a moment to digest all this, and to work out that Madeleine had been killed before Paul was taken to wherever he was kept captive—so what he had thought was his mother being shot must have been a horrible charade to get him to cooperate. And Jameson questioning me about a gun apparently had been to see if I’d slip and say something revealing like But she wasn’t killed with a gun.

Philippe told Paul that evening that his mother’s body had been found and would eventually be put into a grave. Paul seemed to take the news calmly, and my eyes met Philippe’s. Surely this can’t be a normal reaction, we were both thinking. But what did we know? Yet another question for the psychologist.

The police had asked Philippe if he had owned a watch like one they had found near the car with a broken pin (yes, it looked like one he’d once had, but hadn’t worn for years). They’d asked him a lot more, I could tell, but he, like Elise, didn’t want to talk about it.

I called Simon.

“Do they have any clues, any suspects?” he asked.

“They … I think they’re suspecting Philippe,” I whispered, sounding as miserable as I felt. “They found a man’s watch near the car they seem to think was his.”

“Have they traced it to him?” Simon’s voice was sharp.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, never mind that he couldn’t see me. “At least not that I know of. But he says it does look like one he used to have.”

Simon was quiet for a long moment. “Even if it is his watch, Troy, this was his wife, it was her car. She could have had the watch with her for some reason; she could have been taking it to be repaired.”

“I know.” I was crying quietly by now, and I think he knew it.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” he said, and his matter-of-factness calmed me. “The killer could be anybody who knew Philippe had money. It could be a complete stranger; it could be someone he used to work with. It could be Madeleine’s brother. It could be someone trying to frame him.”

It hurt even to get the words out: “What do you think?”

“I think you should trust your instincts, Troy. The one thing I can tell you is that I don’t think that Philippe would ever hurt Paul, or do anything that could hurt him.”

Philippe knew the police considered him a suspect, but having his wife’s body found apparently provided him some closure. He seemed calmer. Paul seemed no different, but Claude took several days off work, and stopped coming for dinner.

Claude, I realized, must have been clinging to the hope that his sister would be found alive. Which I suppose hadn’t been much more unlikely than Paul’s coming home as he had.

They held a funeral service in Montreal. I didn’t know if the body would be buried or if the police had to keep it until the case was closed, and didn’t ask. After some thought, Philippe decided Paul should attend, and we took him out to buy a tiny suit. Elise and Claude went to the service. I didn’t. I hoped Jameson had notified Gina—it seemed that Madeleine should have at least one personal friend there.

It was a long day for me in Ottawa. I took a bike ride. I worked. I cleaned my bike. I walked Tiger for an hour. I emailed Baker. I thought. And then I called Thomas. It was a short and pained conversation. I told him I didn’t see a future ahead for us. He thanked me for calling, and that was that. I hung up, and then I cried.





IN SOME WAYS I CAN BE DENSE. VERY DENSE.

I knew Philippe liked me. I knew he had found me attractive those two evenings we’d gone out. But I had thought it was attractive in a distant sense, like a cousin or sister or someone you’re fond of who happens to be devoted to your child. And except that one night on the sofa, we’d been living together for weeks with nothing more between us than if he had been Zach or one of my other housemates. I’d tamped down the attraction I’d felt for him because, one, it wasn’t appropriate, and, two, I’d learned long ago how painful it is to want someone you can’t have. But somewhere along the line things had changed, and I had been too stupid to see it. It hadn’t occurred to me that the discovery of Madeleine’s body had set Philippe free in some ways. Although I had noticed he’d stopped wearing his wedding ring.

We were in the library after dinner, as usual, with Paul asleep and Elise off in her apartment, and Philippe was showing me an old photo in a book about Montreal. I leaned in close to see it, never mind that I was pretty damned close to him, because we had been playing this platonic thing so long that in my brain that’s just the way it was. And then suddenly he turned my face toward his and the touch of his hand on my face was like fire. And then his lips were on mine and his tongue in my mouth, and I was feeling things I’d only ever dreamed of. It was nothing like kissing Thomas, or anyone else I’d kissed, for that matter.

At a certain point you have to come up for air, and we did, and I became aware he was speaking.

“Troy, we have to talk,” he was saying. “There are things I need to tell you, things about Madeleine.”

I was shaking my head without realizing it. For weeks I’d wanted to know more about Madeleine, but not now. She was dead, in the past, gone. I wanted to let her and everything about her stay buried. “I don’t want to know,” I said, and the words were thick and awkward.

He shook his head. “No, I need to tell you. You need to know.”

If I could have stopped him I would have. I had thought I was all for truth and straightforwardness, which shows just what a hypocrite I can be. “Okay,” I said, and shifted a few inches away from him. And he told me.

Most of it I could have predicted, from the emails I’d found, from talking to Gina, from the dates of Paul’s birth and their marriage, from what Elise had said and not said about Madeleine—but mostly from Paul’s and Philippe’s reactions. Yes, people deal differently with loss, but who doesn’t occasionally say, Mama used to … or When Madeleine and I …

Madeleine had, it seemed, targeted Philippe, although he didn’t say that. Maybe he didn’t even realize it. He had met her at a party; she was gorgeous and charming and by the end of the night they were together. Three months later she was pregnant, by accident, he thought (yeah, right). So they got married, and things seemed fine until Paul was born. Madeleine had no interest in the baby. Philippe thought at first it was postpartum depression, but her attitude toward Paul never changed, and Elise had taken over Paul’s care. Madeleine had played the corporate wife, hosting parties and chaired community events, but in the last couple of years she’d gradually done less and less and had seemed increasingly discontent. She spent a lot of time shopping and lunching with people he never met; she suggested selling the house and buying one in a fancier neighborhood. She spent more time in Florida and began to go on trips with friends or alone. She started spending hours in internet chat rooms. They argued frequently; she refused marriage counseling.

“She couldn’t bond with Paul,” he said. “But I knew she’d had a terrible childhood, and she’d done her best to look out for Claude. I knew she’d lost a baby when she was very young. I thought she would work it out.”

And then one day she was gone.

“I didn’t want her to come back,” Philippe said, his voice toneless, staring at the floor. “I was relieved she was gone. I thought she’d gone off to make a point, so I’d give in to whatever she wanted next. I thought she’d taken Paul just to annoy me, and that she’d send him back as soon as she got tired of him—which I thought would be very quickly. And that she wanted to embarrass me by having me raise a fuss. So I didn’t report her missing. And we lost the time when they could have been found.”

I could have pointed out that Madeleine was almost certainly dead by the time the police would have investigated. I could have cited the statistics I’d found, that three-fourths of kidnap victims are killed within three hours. I could have pointed out that the kidnappers clearly never had any intention of returning Paul.

But none of it would have helped. Philippe was carrying an enormous amount of guilt, which he’d have to work through at his own pace.

We held each other. I rubbed his back, as I had that night in the kitchen, and tried to ignore the painful knot in my throat. As much as I would have loved to have believed in a fairy-tale ending, Philippe and me together—the computer-loving bicycle-riding girl happily ever after with the handsome executive, raising the child they loved—it was just that, a fairy tale. At least for now. We both had things to deal with. Philippe blamed himself for his wife’s death. I had kept his son when he may have been able to help the police find the kidnappers, and I had dabbled with those emails, which Philippe still didn’t know.

And there were kidnappers and murderers out there who knew that Paul could identify them.



The next morning, while Paul was playing in his room, I went up to Philippe’s study.

“Philippe, I need to go back to Lake Placid.” My eyes were hot. I hadn’t slept much.

He nodded, as if he had been expecting this. His eyes held so much pain that I almost tried to convince myself that we could keep on. But I knew we couldn’t. We couldn’t ignore the attraction between us, but neither could we act on it.

I would stay through the weekend, and Philippe would bring Paul to Lake Placid to visit the weekend after next. It was heartrending to tell Paul, and he cried as I’d expected and threw his arms around me, but I remained determinedly, falsely cheerful. That afternoon we carried out the other part of our plan—surprising Paul with a black Lab mix puppy from the Humane Society. Child and puppy both were ecstatic. “You must take good care of your dog,” I told him, and he promised. He named the puppy Bear, following the logic, I suppose, that had led me to name my dog Tiger. We made a trek to PetSmart, and selected a collar and leash, dog bed, and toys we thought a puppy named Bear would enjoy.

I knew I had to tell Jameson I was leaving, but I waited until the last minute. I left a message at the police station after what I supposed were his normal work hours, but he called back an hour later.

“You’re going back to Lake Placid.”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“I want to take you to lunch.”

I laughed harshly. I couldn’t help it. “I don’t like going to lunch with you. In fact, I don’t like being around you.” My nerves were raw. I couldn’t stop myself.

Silence. “Can you stop by on your way out of town?”

“Is this an official request?” I asked.

“Can you stop by on your way out of town? Eleven thirty.”

I took a deep breath. “Eleven,” I said, and hung up.

My leave-taking with Philippe was deliberately brief, and then he went off to work and I drove Paul to school. Paul clung to me before getting in the car, but I didn’t let myself break down. “Hey, I’ll see you soon,” I said, tweaking his nose gently, smearing his tears away with my thumb. “Less than two weeks. And then you and Bear and Papa will come see me, and I will see how much Bear has grown and how much you have taught him.” I drove him to school, and he snuffled most of the way. As he got out and ran in the school door, I tried not to think, This is the last time. But the pain I felt was so intense it took my breath away. When I took the booster seat out of my backseat and set it in the back of the garage, tears ran down my face.

It didn’t take long to finish packing and load everything in my car. I lingered over coffee with Elise, and then it was time to go. She hugged me hard, as she had the day I had met her, and like that day, could not speak. This time I couldn’t either. She handed me a large bag of pastries, her parting gift.

Jameson was waiting for me in the station’s parking lot. “Why not just meet in your office?” I said. He shook his head. I wasn’t up to arguing, so I followed him to the restaurant. Tiger likes hanging out in the car, and it was cool enough that she’d be comfortable with the windows partly opened. We sat in silence at an outdoor table until our food arrived.

“So is there a problem with me going home?” I asked, bluntly.

“No. No problem.” Jameson buttered a bit of bread and popped it in his mouth.

I began mechanically to eat my salad. “There’s nothing I haven’t told you.”

“Isn’t there?” he asked.

“No. I’ve told you everything. And I wish you would say what you mean. Is it me you suspect? Or Philippe?”

A cool level gaze. “I suspect everyone. I can’t afford not to.”

I turned my attention back to my salad. It was good, with different types of greens, bits of nuts and rich cheese, and a tangy dressing.

“So why did you decide to leave?” he asked.

I looked off at the skyline. He didn’t need to know that Philippe and I had stepped close to the romantic involvement he’d always suspected. “Paul is settled in school; he needs to make the break from me. Philippe and Elise can take care of everything he needs. I need to get back to my life.”

“Your work, your house, your friends.”

“Yes.” I speared another forkful of salad.

“It’s not over yet, you know,” he said. I narrowed my eyes as he spoke. “It won’t be over until we catch the kidnappers.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t want them caught?” I dropped my fork and stood without realizing I was going to do it. My voice was shrill. “Of course I do. I think about it all the time. I think about what they did to Paul. I think about how they almost drowned him. I think about the fact that they are still out there and someday I may turn around and there they’ll be. Every face I see I wonder: Is that one of them? I dream about them, for God’s sake.”

Tears were blinding me, and I groped behind me to move my chair, but Jameson was faster. He pulled my chair out and threw money on the table, and took my arm and guided me out onto the sidewalk. We walked several blocks. I blinked tears away and sucked in enough air to calm myself. When we stopped we were at a fenced corner overlooking a park below.

“I’m sorry,” I said, without looking at him.

“Don’t be,” he said. Surprised, I turned toward him. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and, instead of handing it to me as I expected, stepped forward and quickly, gently wiped the tears from my cheeks. Then he tucked the handkerchief in my hand and stepped back, so swiftly I could have thought I’d imagined it.

I was staring at him. “You’ve always acted … you’ve always treated me like a criminal. Or an idiot.”

A crooked smile. “A child had been kidnapped, a woman killed. You were a suspect, Troy. You were a suspect living with the victim and another suspect. What I thought personally didn’t and couldn’t enter into it.”

He had never used my first name before. He leaned forward against the fence, looking sideways at me. His shirt was rumpled as usual. He was just an inch or two taller than me, his hair disheveled. As usual.

He had used the past tense. “So now I’m not a suspect.”

“Unofficially, no. Not now.”

“Mmm.”

“We’re still looking. We’ll keep looking.”

“What was she like—Madeleine?” I asked suddenly.

He didn’t ask why I wanted to know. “You’ve read the emails. You talked to her friend. She was exactly like what you think she was like.”

After a moment I spoke into the silence, saying what I hadn’t been able to say to Philippe. “I’ve always thought if I’d taken Paul to the police right away, maybe you would have caught them by now. But I didn’t … didn’t think that he could handle the police or foster care at that point. Or maybe I just didn’t want to give him up. So I didn’t. And now I think that was a really awful mistake.”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” he said. “You’ll never know.”

We stood there a full minute longer, leaning on the fence, looking at the view, feeling the breeze on our faces. He hadn’t said anything I didn’t already know and hadn’t tried to comfort me. But I felt better. I pushed away from the fence.

“You know where to find me,” I said. He looked at me. I had disliked this man; he’d been rude and accusatory. But his eyes held a compassion I hadn’t expected, and something else I couldn’t read.

We both seemed to be waiting for something, and in the end I was the one who moved. I stepped forward, almost without volition, and brushed his cheek with my lips, and then I was gone, heading down the street toward my car. If I walked away quickly enough, we could both pretend it hadn’t happened.



By the time I reached Lake Placid, I knew what I was going to do. I cleaned the house thoroughly—the guys either hadn’t noticed or cared how grungy it had gotten. I found a roommate to replace Ben, who had moved in with his new girlfriend; produced a special summer section for the newspaper; and wrote a batch of press releases for some quick cash. Paul and Philippe came down with Bear for their weekend, and we picnicked with Baker and her family and Holly and John and their kids.

Parting was only slightly awkward. Paul was sleepy from playing and didn’t protest, although he clung to me after I settled him in his seat. Philippe kissed me lightly, just before he got in the car. “See you soon,” he said in my ear.

Three nights later the phone rang, when I was almost asleep.

“Hello, it’s Alan,” a voice said. At my long pause, he added, “Jameson, Alan Jameson.”

“God, I’m sorry.” Now I was completely awake. “I didn’t know your name.”

He gave a short laugh. “You thought my first name was Detective, right?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“How are you doing?”

“Okay.” I sat up in bed. My heart was thumping audibly. “Paul and Philippe came down this weekend; Paul seems to be doing fine.” Silence. I went on: “Do you … I mean, how are things?”

“Things are fine. I wanted to check on you.”

“I’m fine.” This was awkward. I plunged on. “Look—”

“Troy,” he said, cutting me off. “I just wanted to see if you were all right. And to remind you that you can call me. You have my numbers?”

“Yes.” The card was in my wallet, where I’d put it the day he’d given it to me.

“All right, then. Good night.”

“Good night,” I whispered, and hung up.

Jesus. I wasn’t sure if I was praying or cursing. Every encounter I had with this man confused me in one way or another.

The next day I left for Burlington.





I HAD DELAYED THE SEARCH FOR PAUL’S KIDNAPPERS. I HAD kept Madeleine’s emails to myself. And it was possible that I had somehow led the kidnappers back to Ottawa.

I had to do what I could to make things right.

What could I do? Baker asked me. All I had were some details from Paul, the sketches, and a Craigslist response suggesting the men had lived in Burlington. All of which the police had as well.

“I can try,” I said. The police couldn’t devote full time to this case, and they couldn’t be as motivated as I was. How much investigating would the Montreal or Ottawa police do in Vermont? How hard would the Burlington police work to solve a crime from Québec, with one victim recovered and the other dead?

Baker didn’t try to talk me out of it. She knew it was something I had to do.

Philippe and I emailed daily and talked often. Paul chattered about his puppy and what had happened at school, speaking English except when he got excited. Philippe had found discrepancies in several work files compared to older hard copies, and had brought in an outside firm to do an audit and, as promised, a computer firm to set up company-wide security. No more incidents had occurred, so whoever had tried to run me over and made the phone call to the school was presumably gone. It seemed to have been a one-time thing—maybe to scare me off. In a way it had.

I didn’t tell Philippe I was going to Burlington. Or Simon.

Thomas, surprisingly, was supportive. We hadn’t spoken since I returned from Ottawa, but he called one evening and asked how things were going. When I told him I was coming to Burlington, he said, “You should stay here.”

“Tommy—” I started.

“It’s okay,” he said, cutting me off. Since we had broken things off we hadn’t talked, and staying at his place seemed strange even for me. But it would be easier and cheaper than anything else, and I could bring Tiger. We could talk about it when I got there. If nothing else, he could keep Tiger and I could find a cheap room to rent.

I drove up on a Wednesday, late in the afternoon. The bright sun and crisp air seemed incongruous with thoughts of kidnapping and murder. I drove south and took the bridge across, because the ferry was expensive if you drove on—more than thirty bucks round-trip. I tried not to think about the what-ifs: What if I hadn’t had that play to review back in May? Then I would have planned to stay in Burlington the entire weekend, would have taken my dog, wouldn’t have taken the ferry. And Paul would have drowned.

I was there almost too quickly, pulling up to Thomas’s apartment. He must have heard my car, and came out to meet me. Tiger greeted him eagerly, and he petted her absentmindedly before reaching in the back of the Subaru for my bags.

I made a halfhearted attempt to stop him. But I was tired, and didn’t want to start a discussion on the street, so I let him take the bags and followed him in.

“You can use my study,” he said, pushing the door open with his foot. “I’ve set up the futon for you.” Thomas lived in the front half of a spacious old home that had been divided into two, like many of the old homes near the university that had been carved into apartments. He had the best part of the house, with a big front porch. I stowed my bags in a corner of the study, where the futon couch was already unfolded into a bed, and in the living room sank into an easy chair.

“Would you like some tea?” Thomas asked. I nodded, and started to get up. “No, no,” he said. “I’ll get it.” He disappeared, and Tiger ambled after him.

It felt good just to sit, and I shut my eyes. I felt drained. In a few minutes Thomas was back with a steaming pot of tea, two mugs, and a plate of cheese and crackers and apple slices. “I thought you might be hungry,” he said.

I hadn’t thought about eating, but I drank the tea and ate most of the food. Thomas turned the television to what seemed to be the second part of some Jane Austen adaptation. The English accents were heavy, and I had trouble following it.

I became aware that Thomas was speaking. “Troy,” he was saying. “Troy!” I opened my eyes. “You’re falling asleep. I’ve taken Tiger out. Why don’t you go to bed?”

I looked at the clock on his mantel: only 9:10, but I didn’t protest. So much for having a heart-to-heart. I crawled between the sheets on the futon. They were crisp, and smelled new. I slept hard, with no dreams for the first time in a long time.



I awoke feeling logy; it was tough to drag myself out of bed. The apartment was still. Thomas had left for work, and had left a note and spare key on the kitchen table. I ate some crunchy earthy type of cereal I found on the shelf, putting the box back exactly as I’d found it, because Thomas liked things just so. Then I walked Tiger briskly around the block and took a quick shower.

Time to get started.

What did I know? That there were two men, French Canadian, and roughly what they looked like. The Craigslist email suggested they had been seen in a bar near the university and that one of them might be named Jock, or more likely Jacques. They had stayed in two different apartments, at least one a basement apartment. And had kept a small boy no one knew about.

I drove to the post office on Elmwood Street and rented a post office box for the minimum six months, in my real name but also listing “Terry Charles” so I could get mail in both names. Next I headed for RadioShack, where I bought a prepaid TracFone, feeling like a kid playing spy.

At Thomas’s kitchen table I wrote out an ad:

WANTED: info on 2 French-speaking Canadian men, dark hair, 1 w/ mole on rt cheek, 1 maybe named Jock or Jacques, maybe w/ small boy.





I added the box number, TracFone number, and my alter ego’s email address. Presto, a new identity. I called the Burlington Free Press and placed the ad for two weeks. The bored woman on the phone didn’t react—I supposed she had heard far stranger. Then I posted a longer version on Vermont’s Craigslist. I wrestled with my conscience only slightly before digging out the Craigslist response I’d forwarded to Jameson and answering it, asking for details. But I didn’t sign onto Madeleine’s account to check emails; that I was done with.

It took less than ten minutes to design a full-page poster with the two sketches, a brief description, and contact information. I printed a color copy on Thomas’s printer, made adjustments, and printed two more before I was happy with it.

My stomach was growling. I had peanut butter on a slice of bread with a glass of milk, and ate an apple in the car on the way to Kinko’s. Less than half an hour later I was leaving with two hundred copies, a fat roll of masking tape, and a container of thumbtacks. By six that evening I’d stuck my poster up on bulletin boards, in grocery stores, and on telephone and light poles.

I knocked lightly on the door of Thomas’s apartment. No answer, so I let myself in with the key he’d left me. A neatly folded index card sat on the kitchen table: Having dinner at the Pacific Rim Café on Church Street with friends at 7:00. You can meet us there or help yourself to anything here.

I wasn’t up to meeting anyone, let alone going out, so I rooted around in the fridge and heated some leftover spaghetti, then had a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie. Like any good Vermonter, Thomas always had a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s in his freezer, with at least one variety of chocolate, I suspected for my benefit.

While I ate, I scanned the classified ads in the Free Press, looking for basement apartments. If the men had left town after they’d dumped Paul, the apartment could still be unrented, because of the high rate of summer vacancies in university towns. I marked down a few that seemed like possibilities.



I went to bed early and was only vaguely aware of hearing Thomas come in, and didn’t see him in the morning.

The public library on College Street opened at 8:30, and I was there at 8:34. The reference librarian steered me to the reading room, where the older back issues of newspapers were stored on microfilm. I selected reels dating back to four weeks before Paul was kidnapped, and began to search classified ads, feeding the filmstrips through the machine, cranking away at the handle, peering at the grainy print. Then I switched to reels from the following months.

It took the entire day to make a list of addresses and phone numbers of apartments that might fit. I’d eaten a Clif Bar, but my head was aching by the time I headed back to the apartment.

Thomas’s car was out front, and I could smell something cooking when I let myself in. In the kitchen a pot was steaming on the stove and he was sliding bread into the oven.

“This should be ready soon,” he said without looking up.

“Tommy, you don’t have to cook for me.”

He peered at me through glasses that had steamed up from the oven. “I know,” he said pleasantly. “But we both have to eat.”

So we ate pasta, salad, and garlic bread, and had a glass of Merlot each. I looked at Thomas and his sandy hair, wire-framed glasses, neat pullover and slacks, and thought, How much simpler life would be if I could love him.

“Thomas, we should talk. About us.”

He blinked, and sipped his wine. His face was blank, although he never showed much expression. He spoke deliberately. “I think what’s happening with us is that we dated for a while, and we’ve moved away from that and are, I think, becoming friends.”

He was watching me, levelly. I did care for him, but there was no flicker of desire, nothing pulling me toward him. A pain grew in my throat, sharp and palpable. “I don’t …” I said, almost choking.

He put his hand over mine on the table, scarcely touching me. “It’s okay, Troy. I know you’ve been balancing a lot of things.”

I made a sound, half laugh, half sob. “You could say that. But I’m not … nothing happened, you know, with Philippe.”

He nodded, sitting back. “It doesn’t matter. I already knew we were going in a different direction than I had hoped.”

A tear fell down my cheek. If I could have changed how I felt about Thomas at that moment, I would have. But you can’t create emotions. You can fake them or pretend they don’t matter. But I’ve tried both, and it never works.

We quietly cleaned up the kitchen, and he turned on the television. I went off to bed, leaving him in front of it. I couldn’t tell if he was watching or just staring at the screen.





IN THE MORNING WE WENT FOR A RUN, EASILY MATCHING EACH other’s pace. On the way back we picked up bagels at a bakery on Church Street, and ate them with peach preserves. While Thomas read the New York Times on the front porch, I sat at the kitchen table with my list of apartments, marking locations on a map, and began to make phone calls.

First I made appointments to view basement apartments available for rent. Then I called the number for an older ad for a basement apartment listed before Paul was kidnapped.

“Hi,” I said blithely. “I understand that you have an apartment that you rent out.”

“Yeah, it’s rented now.”

“Well, I was trying to track down some friends of mine, but I’ve been out of town for a long time, and they were moving and I know they were going to look at your apartment. They’re two guys, Canadians from Québec, and they speak French.”

“Nope,” the man replied. “Not here. Never had no Canucks here.”

I kept this up until nearly lunchtime. I was amazed that not one person I reached refused to answer, asked the names of the guys I was looking for, or wondered where I had gotten their phone number. People are amazingly trusting, and love to talk. One lady kept me on the phone for ten minutes telling me about the time she had gone to Niagara Falls and how nice the Canadians were and how much she and her husband Harry had enjoyed seeing the Falls and how they were always going to go back, but never did, and now it was too late because he died last year, cancer, you know, because he smoked for so long.

But none of them had rented to dark-haired French-Canadian men.

I packed a sandwich and banana to head off to the first of my apartment-viewing appointments. On the front porch, Thomas looked up. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Nope. I’ll be fine.” Better to slog through this alone. “But would you look after Tiger?” He nodded.

I thought the first apartment I saw was bad, but they got worse. Maybe my time living in Philippe’s house had spoiled me, but basement apartment seemed to be a synonym for dark and dingy—and often musty as well. I scribbled notes in my little spiral notebook and drew sketches of the layouts as if trying to figure out where my furniture could go, and promised I’d call back if I decided to take it.

None of the places fit Paul’s description. Paul had said the first room had one of those grainy cubed windows that let some light in but didn’t let you really see out, and a small attached half bath. His second room had been tiny, not much more than twice the size of his single mattress, with no windows.

It was dark when I got back to Thomas’s apartment. On the way back I’d called to tell him I’d grab something to eat on the way home, and had gotten a tuna sandwich at Subway. He had been going out to a movie, something more complex and artistic than I could handle right now. I dialed my phone in Lake Placid to see if I had any messages.

Philippe had called. I called him back on my cell phone; I’d kept the Canadian cell plan. He answered on the first ring.

“Hey,” he said.

The sound of his voice was hugely comforting. I could picture myself in Ottawa, finishing off one of Elise’s dinners.

“How are things?” he asked.

“Good. I’m in Burlington for a few days.” A pause. I could tell he was framing a question, so I answered before he could ask. “I’m … I’m doing some looking around, Philippe.”

A pause, then he asked, “What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure I could explain this. “I’m looking around to see if I can locate one of the apartments Paul was kept in. Or if I can find out anything about the men themselves.”

A longer pause. He was considering if he could talk me out of this and how to phrase it. “Troy, that could be dangerous. And I’m sure the police have checked all that out.”

“Yes, but it’s not going to be the highest priority,” I argued, “especially with Paul home.”

“Look, I could send a private investigator down there, or hire someone there if you feel it has to be done. I don’t want to worry about you. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice almost cracking. “Yes, I do.”

He was quiet. Maybe he did understand—he was struggling with his own guilt. “Why don’t you come back up here for a visit?”

“No, no, I can’t, not now.” My voice rose, and he changed the subject. He told me how Paul was doing in summer school, that Bear was now housebroken. I promised I’d increase my allotment of cell phone minutes, and gave him Thomas’s number. I agreed to email and call regularly, to be careful, and to alert him if I even thought I’d found out anything.

If Philippe were free, I thought, he’d be doing this. But he had Paul, his job, his employees. Me, I had nothing to hold me down.

All Sunday I called about apartments and went to look at ones for rent. Thomas offered to put up some posters around campus, and took a stack of them to work Monday. I continued to look at apartments. By dinner Wednesday, Thomas looked at me with concern. “Troy, you have to slow down.”

I grinned. “I look pretty bad, huh?”

“Well, tired, anyway.”

Making phone call after phone call was dreary, but looking at the apartments was worse. If so many of the owners hadn’t been happy to have someone to talk to, I would have felt bad about wasting their time. I’d hear in detail how grandson Johnny had been such a sweet boy until he started taking that cocaine. How daughter Martha had breast cancer and the doctors thought it was too late to stop it even after they’d taken both off, poor thing. How dear Lillian died in bed, just like she was sleeping, and she looked as sweet as she had the day they got married. And how all the kids were too busy to come visit and how taxes kept going up and how medicine was so expensive sometimes they only took half as many pills as they were supposed to and wondered if they should try to buy it from Canada like they’d heard some people do.

It made me want to go find the grown kids who didn’t come visit and bang their heads together, and go buy the damned medicine myself.

Seeing these apartments made me think of Paul stuck in rooms like these for so long—nearly half a year, one-twelfth of his life. No parents, no nanny, no school, no home. Alone and lying near the door so he could hear the television. Washing his clothes in the sink. Happy to get a plastic McDonald’s toy. Trying to dig a hole in the wall to freedom.

Thomas spoke up. “One of the professors at work, Vince Thibault, saw your poster and asked me about it. You’ve met him once or twice, I think.”

I searched my memory bank, and then I could picture him: a friendly man, on the short side, almost stocky, with a tennis club tan and wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled. I’d met him when I’d stopped by Thomas’s office.

Thomas went on. “He told me about a French club he runs, a group of people who speak French and who meet every few weeks.”

“A French club?” My tone must have suggested what I was thinking: that these guys wouldn’t have joined a French club, or any club for that matter.

“Yes, he was thinking that maybe someone French-speaking could have run into these men or noticed them somewhere.”

A long shot, but it couldn’t hurt. And it was nice of Vince to have thought of it. “Sure. It’s worth a try.”

“There’s a get-together Friday night at six, a wine-and-cheese thing. I can introduce you and then sit quietly in a corner and drink wine while you talk French.” For Thomas, this qualified as outright humor, which meant he was trying to cheer me up.

“Sure,” I said.

On the futon that night, I felt desperately lonely, with an ache deeper than I’d ever experienced. This was, I supposed, what happened when you let people into your life—when they were no longer there you felt an aching, grating loneliness. I reached out and stroked Tiger, who obligingly rolled over for a belly rub. I wished I could be back in Ottawa, with Paul and Philippe and Elise. I wished I could pretend everything was okay, that the kidnappers had gone far away and would never come back. I wished I could convince myself that this was all best left to other people, that it was foolhardy to be meddling here, that I should back off.

But I couldn’t.

I had to try to right things. I had to do my best to ensure that Paul wouldn’t be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. I had to finish what I’d started when I dived into Lake Champlain after him. You can’t just do one thing to save a child and then walk away—you have to stick with it.

Or you may as well not have started.





THE FRENCH CLUB GATHERING WAS AT A MEETING ROOM IN a church near the university, and when I arrived, Thomas was waiting for me near the door. He looked good in his professor clothes: crisply pressed slacks, neat blue shirt, tie, sport coat. I’d worn my trusty cord slacks and pullover.

A table in the corner held bottles of wine, plastic cups, and grocery store platters of cheese, crackers, veggies, and dip. A half dozen or so people were chatting. Most looked like university personnel, but some seemed to be students. Across the room, a compact man looked up as we entered, and I recognized him as Vince. He smiled broadly, excused himself, and walked toward us.

“Thomas,” he said, pumping Thomas’s arm and smiling at me. “So glad you could make it. Troy, so nice to see you again.” Then he shook my hand.

I don’t usually like people this hearty, but his friendliness was engaging. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled made him look like a genial older businessman, like Robert Loggia, the head of the toy company in the movie Big, who danced across the giant piano keyboard with Tom Hanks.

“So how are you enjoying your stay in Vermont?” His accent was more British than French.

“Fine,” I said. Because you could hardly say, Awful, I’m frustrated trying to track down murdering kidnappers who dumped a small boy into Lake Champlain.

Thibault continued. “I saw your poster and Thomas told me of your little problem. You are trying to locate some people, correct?”

I had just opened my mouth to reply when a woman grasped his arm lightly. “Vincent, mon cheri, tu parles anglais, mais c’est le club français ici!” she said, in lilting French so precise it almost sounded affected. The woman was slender, with a slightly upturned nose and short auburn hair in a stylish cut I suspected was quite expensive. She made a tsk-tsk sound.

“Ah, Marguerite,” he said in delight. “Yes, yes, you are so right, I should not be speaking English, but my poor colleague Thomas here unfortunately cannot comprehend a word of French, and I don’t want to leave him out of the conversation.”

She smiled at me with a touch of curiosity, but none of the rancor sometimes evident when wives find their husbands talking to other women.

“Troy, this is my wife, Marguerite. Maggie, dear, this is Thomas’s friend Mademoiselle Troy Chance, from Lake Placid, and you remember Thomas Rouse from the history department.”

She nodded and smiled and we shook hands, hers slender and elegant with silvery nail polish and several sparkly rings. I knew I hadn’t met her, but I tried to remember if I’d seen her around campus. I didn’t think so.

Thibault turned to his wife. “Dear, Troy is the one who is looking for the men from the poster, the ones who are French-speaking, Canadian, I believe, who have been living in this area.” I nodded, and he continued speaking to Marguerite. “If you don’t mind, perhaps, keeping Thomas company while Troy and I circulate?”

She raised her eyebrows, in apparent good humor. “Of course. I’d be happy to keep Mr. Rouse company.” She somehow made it sound ever so slightly risqué. She took Thomas’s arm and led him to a set of chairs in the corner of the room.

So I went off with Thibault to meet the club members and fumble with my French. The number of people in the room swelled to perhaps two dozen, people coming and going, with more arriving who weren’t affiliated with the university. No one showed a glimmer of recognition of the drawings of the men, but all were friendly and willing to help. Most were American, a few from France, and only one was Canadian, from British Columbia. From time to time I glanced over to check on Thomas, who seemed delighted by Marguerite’s company, which somehow amused me.

“Any luck?” Thomas asked when I rejoined them.

“No, but it was worth trying.”

“Who are these men you are looking for?” Marguerite asked.

I told her the half-lie I’d decided on. “They tried to abduct a friend’s child, and we had heard a rumor they were living up here.” At her half gasp, I added, “Oh, the child is fine, but of course they’d like to find the men.”

“But surely the police …”

I shrugged. “They do what they can.”

Thibault had rejoined us. Some unspoken communication passed between him and his wife, and he said, “Thomas, my friend, we haven’t had much time to visit. Would you and Troy join us and some people for dinner this Monday at our house? I know it’s short notice, but we would love to have you. We will speak English, I assure you.” He chuckled.

Thomas looked at me, and when I nodded slightly, replied, “Certainly, we’d love to.”

“It’s casual,” Marguerite added. “Just a few other couples, some friends I think you’ll like. We’ll be dining around seven, but do come earlier. Do you know where we live?”

Thomas shook his head. Thibault pulled a card from his pocket, wrote an address on it, and handed it to him. “It’s easy to find. We’ll look forward to having you.”

We thanked them as we headed out the door. “I hope that’s okay with you,” Thomas said as we climbed into his Toyota.

“It’s fine; they seem nice. And, hey, a free dinner, right?”

He laughed. I wondered if the Thibaults thought we were dating, and if that would be awkward. But if Thomas wanted to set them straight, I figured he would. I found it curious that he seemed enchanted by Marguerite, who was so different from me. But maybe he was branching out. Maybe his next girlfriend would be elegant, with precise makeup and carefully lacquered nails. I closed my eyes. It had been wearying to try to think and talk in French for nearly two hours.