The Guardians

'No. But that hasn't stopped it from freaking me out.' 'Heather Langham.'

My fingers spasm open. The belt they were holding clatters to the hardwood. 'I don't suppose I'm the only one who's thinking about her right now.'

'You'd be surprised. Even in a town this smal, people forget, or half forget.'

'Maybe I'm just not as good at forgetting.' 'It's not that. It's that you've been away.' 'It doesn't feel that way.'

'That's sort of my point. You left after Grimshaw's last big tragedy, and now you're here for its latest one. It's like the time in between got squished together. It was another life. But for the rest of us, we've just got the one, and there's been twenty years in the same place to muddle through.' 'I've done my share of muddling.'

'You told me. Preoccupations. But in your mind, Grimshaw is frozen in time. It's a museum.'

'And I remember every inch of it.'

'You feel it more than you remember it.'

'Wait a second. How do you know al this better than I do?'

'I always knew it better than you did.'

I bend to pick up my belt. Surprise myself by threading it through the loops on the first try.

Here's the problem. Here's why I walk through the wakening streets of Grimshaw hearing the birdsong as the nervous chatter of bad news: despite anything I might tel myself, there is a line that runs through the past, the secret history of Heather and the coach and the boy, right up to the more current events of Ben's death and Tracey Flanagan puled out of the world. I don't know where the line started, or where it might find its end, but it's there, understandable to itself, refusing to let common sense break its hold.

Stil, as I walk into the Queen's Hotel and struggle up the stairs to knock on Randy's door, I don't expect him to see this as I do. Indeed, part of me is hoping he doesn't.

'Look at you,' he says, wearing only boxers and a threadbare Just Do It T-shirt. 'Mr. I Got Lucky.'

'You could at least make an attempt to hide your jealousy.'

'Why bother?'

'Come to think of it, you always had a thing for Sarah, didn't you?'

'Of course. But I was the horniest teenager in Perth County. I had a thing for Minnie Mouse and Natalie from Facts of Life and the lady who did the weather on Channel 12.'

Randy digs the sleep from his eyes. Steps closer.

'What's happened?'

'Nothing,' I say.

'So what are you doing here when you should be bringing Sarah breakfast in bed?'

'Does the coffee machine in your room work?'

'It spits out brown stuff, if that's what you're asking.'

A moment later I'm staring out the window, listening to the water hiss and dribble into the glass pot.

'I told you,' Randy says behind me, and I turn to accept his congratulatory handshake. 'I told you she was into you.'

'You're acting like I just made out with somebody in a parked car.'

'You did it in Sarah's car? '

'How old are you, Randy?'

'Hey now. Let's not be cruel.'

Randy hands me a mug of coffee. 'Did they find her?' he asks, slumping into the room's only chair. 'That's it, isn't it? They found Tracey?'

'I haven't heard anything about that.'

'But this has to do with her, doesn't it?'

'Yes.'

'So?'

'I think she's in the house.'

Randy returns the pot to the warmer, where it sizzles off the coffee that had spiled when he puled it out. He watches it bubble for a moment as though recording the observations of a science experiment.

'What makes you say that, Trev?'

'A feeling. I've thought I've seen some things, too.'

'Like what?'

'It doesn't matter.'

'You're relying on your feeling, then.'

'And the way there seems to be some kind of pattern. Heather and Tracey.'