I went back downstairs, opened the door to the deck, and called her name. There was no answer and I could feel the edge of panic. I tried to cling to logic. Two hours ago, Taylor had been safe in her bed. She was still wearing her pyjamas. When she was making art, she was oblivious to everything else. If I went to her studio, I would find her content and at work.
Unless I was there by invitation, Taylor’s studio was off limits, but at that moment, I was beyond respecting her privacy. The temperature had plummeted the night before, and as Willie and I walked across the lawn, the frost crunched beneath our feet.
Taylor’s studio had been built when she came to live with us. She was four years old, but she was already an artist – a prodigy who had inherited her mother, Sally Love’s, talent and a great deal of money. It seemed sensible to use some of that money to build Taylor a place where she could really make art. The studio was not a Sunday painter’s shack. It was about the size of a modest one-car garage, but the architect had designed it with an awareness of an artist’s need for light and space. The north window was large, and even from a distance, I could see that the room was empty. Hoping against hope, I knocked at the door, then opened it.
Taylor and I had long since agreed to disagree about the chaos that was her bedroom, but her workroom was always ordered: canvases, canvas stretchers, palettes, oils, acrylic paints, turpentine, brushes, rags for cleaning, rags for wiping paint into a canvas – everything had its place. The order Taylor brought to making her art was tonic, and I always felt happy in her studio. The “little painting” Taylor was working on was on her easel, and as it always did, Taylor’s art took my breath away.
For much of my life, I had been around people who prided themselves on their intellect, but Taylor’s gift came from a different well – one that was deep and mysterious. The painting before me had a languorous beauty. It was of our swimming pool. When Zack and I had lunch beside it on the Friday before Thanksgiving, the water had shimmered with a magic that I thought grew out of a golden afternoon and passion. But the brilliant turquoise of our forty-year-old pool had been magic for Taylor too.
As always in her paintings, Taylor herself was front and centre. A white diving board was suspended over the pool, and Taylor was sitting cross-legged on its end with her cats in the hollow of her lap. Our pool didn’t have a diving board, and Bruce and Benny regarded the water as the devil’s territory, but Taylor had created a place where boundaries were transcended. Despite everything, I found myself experiencing the wonder and peace of that idyllic world. Then, as quickly as it came, the spirit that flowed when I gazed at Taylor’s painting contracted into the cold focus of a vanishing point. Where was the girl who had painted this picture? Where was my daughter?
I closed the door to the studio, called Willie who had been racing in circles on the lawn, and walked back to the house. When I bent to take off my runners, it hit me. If Taylor had been in her studio that morning, her footprints would be visible in the frosty grass. I went back out to check the lawn, but I saw at once that it was too late. Willie and I had obliterated whatever tracks might have been there.
I was making mistakes that I couldn’t afford to make. I needed to take a deep breath and use common sense. Attached to the refrigerator door by a starfish-shaped magnet was a list of the names and phone numbers of Taylor’s friends. She had written it out at my request, and the sight of the familiar names in her small neat hand brought a pang. I picked up the phone and began. It was a holiday, and my call awakened more than a few parents. Groggy but obliging, they woke up their children. No one knew where Taylor was. Everyone was reassuring. She was a good girl, responsible, not the kind to get in trouble. When at last I reached the end of the list, I was close to tears. There was only one more call to make.
For three years I had been involved with an inspector on the Regina Police Force, and I still remembered the number for headquarters. I dialed and waited. The officer who answered was gruff. When I gave her my name and address, told her Taylor’s age, and revealed that she had only been missing for three hours, the officer could barely contain her impatience.
We lived in the south end of the city, an area of geographical privilege where children were shepherded from school to lessons to play-dates by attentive parents who were only a cellphone call away. Taylor was the only child in her circle who didn’t own a cell. It had been a sore spot between us, but despite her imprecations, I hadn’t caved. When she argued that if she had a cell, I would always know where she was, I countered with my trump. Cellphones worked both ways, and at eleven, she should be learning to make independent decisions. I told her I trusted her, and I didn’t need to be checking on her every fifteen minutes. Reluctantly, Taylor had accepted my logic.
As I stared at the unopened presents heaped at her place at the table, I knew I would give anything if Taylor had pummelled me into submission, and there was a number I could dial to hear her voice.
When my husband died, I had collapsed. We had, in theory, been all in all to each other, and it had taken me years to become a woman who didn’t need another person to help her face a crisis. But that morning I needed Zack. I tried his cell, and immediately got his voice mail. If his cell was off, the meeting with the man from Vancouver must have been important. I dialed Norine MacDonald’s number.
Her voice was warm. “Zack told me to expect a call,” she said. “How many new best friends have been added to Taylor’s guest list?”
For a beat I couldn’t take in her words. Norine was a citizen of the old world of safety and certainty, and I had moved on.
“Norine, it’s not about the party. I … I can’t find Taylor.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. In my mind, I could see Norine’s face, impassive, intelligent, assessing the information, and deciding what to do next. “Zack’s meeting is at the Delta,” she said finally. “They only had a couple of hours, so they’ve sealed themselves off, but I can get a message to him. He’ll call you.”
“Thanks.”
“Joanne, if there’s anything I can do …”
“I’ll let you know,” I said. When I hung up, my hands were shaking. Fear and low blood sugar. I knew I should eat a piece of fruit or pour myself a glass of juice. These were sensible actions, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen. When the phone rang, I leapt.
“Zack, I’m sorry to drag you out of your meeting,” I said.
The man on the other end of the line cut me off. “Is this Joanne Kilbourn?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Douglas Thorpe. I’m calling about my son.”
When I didn’t respond immediately, Douglas Thorpe felt the need to explain. “My son is Ethan Thorpe. He’s a
