Fire in the Stars. Barbara Fradkin
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I love Phil. He’s Tyler’s father. Tyler needs him, not some hockey coach! But the Phil who came home was a stranger. He pushed us both away. Tyler didn’t understand why my friend no longer did things with him and why his own father ignored him. This cold, brooding, Mr. Unreliable was hurting my son.”
Don’t pretend you did this for Tyler, Amanda wanted to say, but she held her tongue. “Our work is brutal on relationships,” she managed, strangling on her self-control.
“You can’t imagine how helpless I felt,” Sheri said. Then she paused, as if she heard herself. Flushed. “I’m sorry, I guess you can.”
“Yes.”
“And I know my problems sound trivial compared to Phil’s and yours. They are trivial! But … but …” She raised her hands in futile defeat.
“Okay, so what happened? You started seeing the guy and Phil found out?”
Sheri thrust her chin out. She had always been a fighter and hated to be cornered. Amanda’s challenge was enough to energize her. “No. I finally realized I couldn’t help Phil if he wouldn’t let me, but I could help my son. So I told Phil I was leaving him.”
“When?”
“A week ago. I told him I’d met someone. I thought maybe it would be the jolt he needed. He wanted to know who, but I wouldn’t tell him.”
“And how did he …?” Amanda let the silence hang, too upset to trust herself with more words. The image of Phil in Nigeria, haunted and hollow, rose before her.
“He took off into the bush for four days, and when he came back, he said I was right. He’d been a bastard and he was glad I’d found someone who treated me better. But he still wanted to be a good father to Tyler, so he hoped the father-son camping trip was still on.”
Amanda felt a sliver of fear slip through her gut. Tyler had never been part of the plan. She and Phil couldn’t predict what demons would be dredged up, what drunken rages and howling tears, what cathartic challenges the wind and the cliffs and the surf would hurl at them. It was not an adventure for a child.
But now Phil had cut her out and had taken off with his son, after feeding Sheri a pile of lies about forgiveness, understanding, and fatherly concern. Amanda knew Phil. He had always loved Sheri, but during the deepest darkness of Nigeria, he had clung to her memory like a drowning man. Afterward, he had ignored the advice of counsellors and debriefers in his headlong rush to get back to her.
Five days to put all that behind him, to master his rage and despair, and to reach a state of calm forgiveness?
Not a chance.
Instinctively she snapped her fingers to call her dog to her, so that she could sink her fingers into her soft, warm fur. Reading her distress, Kaylee nuzzled her and licked her hand. Amanda took a deep breath, stepped back from her fear, and rallied her common sense.
“What gear did he pack?”
“Camping stuff — tent, sleeping bags, cooking gear, life jackets.”
“Boat? Kayaks?”
Sheri shook her head. “Those are still out back. He said you guys would rent what you need.”
“Navigational gear? Sat phone, personal-locator beacons, GPS?”
“You know Phil. He likes the old-fashioned way.”
“Didn’t he at least take his cellphone? I’ve been texting him and he’s not answering.”
Sheri shrugged. “I haven’t seen it. He may have it on him, but it could be turned off. He does that when he doesn’t want to talk to people.”
Amanda pulled out her own phone. “We should check in the house. If it’s turned on, we’ll hear it. We might find some clues too.” She punched in Phil’s number. She listened for ringing as she walked through the kitchen and dining area into the small den. The house was neat and full of local art from their travels, but no maps or guidebooks had been left on the tables to provide clues. When Phil’s cheerful voicemail message came on, she dialled again.
“Do you mind if I check upstairs in your bedroom? It’s ringing, so it’s turned on. He may have left it there.”
Sheri waved her hand in permission. “Since you called this morning, I’ve pretty much torn the place apart, but be my guest. Phil’s been staying in the spare room since he came back from Nigeria. He has trouble sleeping so he’s often up reading or watching TV. He says he feels better not disturbing me.”
Amanda nodded. The depths of night were always the worst, when the wakeful mind filled the darkness with fiery images, screams, and the incessant yammer of self-doubt. She mounted the stairs, listening for a phone. Kaylee bounded ahead of her as Amanda had taught her, providing comforting reassurance that no danger lay ahead. Phil’s little room was a mess; bedding was flung back, drawers opened, and clothing strewn about. Papers were spilled all over the desk, and Phil’s laptop was open.
Sheri came up behind her. “I tried it,” she said. “But he must have changed his password. It used to be ‘password.’”
They both shared a spontaneous grin. How like impatient, cavalier Phil.
“Do you mind if I take it?” Amanda asked. “I’ll try to figure it out later.”
When Sheri shrugged her acceptance, Amanda closed the laptop and picked it up. She scanned the room, but there were no telltale maps or brochures, and the only books in the bookcase were dog-eared thrillers and university texts from his global development studies.
No sound of a cellphone ringing, either.
Tucking the laptop under her arm, she went back downstairs, with Sheri at her heels. “Let’s check the shed.”
Like their house, their backyard was neatly kept. The grass was lush and mowed, the perennials trimmed and mulched. Gladioli were swollen with buds, and purple asters and nasturtiums spilled over their beds. Phil’s kayaks and small aluminum fishing boat were stacked on racks beside the shed.
As unreliable as Phil was with people, he had always taken excellent care of his physical space, as if it at least was under his control. Amanda opened the shed door. Inside, garden tools and bicycles hung on walls, and supplies and equipment were stored on shelves. Hockey and ski equipment was suspended on the beams overhead for next winter. A mower and snow blower took up one corner, a stack of winter tires another.
All the usual equipment of a middle-class homeowner. Nothing unusual struck her. He had an entire cabinet of fishing paraphernalia, but no guns or hunting gear. Phil had grown up in rural Manitoba with an annual family tradition of duck and deer hunting, but since his first encounter with tribal violence overseas, he had rejected all guns.
But that was before Nigeria.
Amanda turned to Sheri, who was examining his supply of fishing rods. “Did he have a gun?”
Sheri whipped her head back and forth. “He hates them now more than ever. My … my friend wanted to take Tyler moose-hunting last fall — that’s almost a Newfoundland rite of passage — but Phil blew a fuse.” She paused, fingering the long, slim rods. “He’s taken two of his salmon rods and his wading gear. That’s not much help, since salmon brooks and rivers are everywhere.”
“That’s good, though,” Amanda said. “It shows he’s still following a plan.”
Her cellphone had gone to Phil’s voicemail again so Amanda dialled a third time. From deep in the farthest corner of the shed came the muted sounds of a trumpet call. Both women rushed over. The sound was coming from somewhere in a pile of equipment beside the fishing cabinet. They tossed aside a folded tarp, dug out a bag of fertilizer, and began to shove aside the stack of tires. The trumpet trill grew louder. Finally, half hidden beneath the tires, Amanda found the phone.
The front screen was completely filled with notifications, most of them text and phone messages from Sheri and