They are dangerous now.
Pedaling hard, tears streaming my cheeks, watching a car swallowed by fog on the causeway. Gone? No warning? No good-bye? No “I’ll write”? Don’t come back? Forget?
My friend and her sister never summered on Pawleys again.
Though I returned over and over to the small house on the marsh, begging for information, I was always rebuffed. Tante Euphemie and Oncle Fidele never spoke to me except to repeat “You must go. They are not here.”
I wrote letter after letter. Some came back undelivered, others did not, but there was no response from Evangeline. I asked Gran what I could do. “Nothing,” she said. “Events can alter lives. Remember, you left Chicago.”
Distraught, I swore to find her. Nancy Drew could do it, I told myself. And I tried, as much as a twelve-year- old was able in the days before cell phones and the Internet. For the rest of that summer and into the next, Harry and I spied on Tante Euphemie and Oncle Fidele. We learned nothing.
Back in Charlotte, we persisted. Though the libraries within our small orbit kept no phone directories for New Brunswick, Canada, we managed to obtain an area code for Tracadie-Sheila. There were more Landrys in the region than the operator could sort without a first name.
Laurette.
No listing. Thirty-two L. Landrys.
Neither Harry nor I could recall mention of Evangeline’s father’s name.
Realization. Through all those long days and nights, Evangeline and I had talked of boys, sex, Longfellow, Green Gables, Vietnam. By some unspoken agreement, we’d never ventured into the subject of fathers.
Using a pay phone and coins from our banks, Harry and I phoned every L. Landry in Tracadie. Later we tried the surrounding towns. No one knew of Evangeline or her family. Or so they said.
My sister lost interest in sleuthing long before I did. Evangeline had been my friend, five years Harry’s senior. And Obeline had been too young, half a lifetime Harry’s junior.
In the end, I, too, gave up searching. But I never stopped wondering. Where? Why? How could a fourteen- year-old girl be a threat? Eventually, I grew to doubt my recall of Tante Euphemie’s words. Had she really said “dangerous”?
The emptiness left by Evangeline was a void in my life until high school crowded out reflection and regret.
Kevin. Daddy. Evangeline. The ache of that triple whammy has faded, dulled by the passage of time and displaced by the press of daily living.
But, now and then, a trigger. Then memory rears up in ambush.
3
I’ D BEEN IN MONTREAL A FULL HOUR WHEN LAMANCHE PHONED. Until then, my June rotation to the recently thawed tundra on the St. Lawrence had gone swimmingly.
The flight from Charlotte and the connection from Philadelphia had both operated on time. Birdie had given me minimal grief, protest-meowing only during takeoffs and landings. My luggage had touched down with me. Arriving home, I’d found my condo in reasonably good shape. My Mazda had started on the very first try. Life was good.
Then LaManche rang my mobile.
“Temperance?” He, alone, rejected the more user-friendly “Tempe” employed by the rest of the world. My name rolled off LaManche’s tongue as a high Parisian “Temperonce.”
“Where are you?”
“Montreal.”
“So I thought. Your trip was good?”
“As good as it gets.”
“Air travel is not what it was.”
“No.”
“You will come early tomorrow?” I sensed tension in the old man’s voice.
“Of course.”
“A case has arrived that is…” Slight hitch. “…complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“I think it best to explain personally.”
“Eight o’clock?”
Disconnecting, I felt a vague sense of trepidation. LaManche rarely phoned me. When he did, it was never good news. Five bikers torched in a Blazer. A woman facedown in a senator’s pool. Four bodies in a crawl
