The House on Creek Road

Liz’s 4-H leader, her grade nine English teacher and the ex-Mountie who had helped them solve all their horse problems. “I doubt there’ll be time.”

“If you can’t visit everyone individually, they’ll understand. You’ll be able to see most of them tomorrow, in one fell swoop.”

Liz stared at her grandmother. She had been sure she could slip into town, lend a hand for a while and go. “What’s happening tomorrow?”

“Your Aunt Edith has arranged a barbecue. You and I are to take a salad. Any salad we choose, she said. I always wonder what’s to stop everyone from bringing the same kind. It never happens, though. Now up you go, Elizabeth. Jack’s right, you need to take care of yourself, or you’ll catch something. You’ve got the back bedroom—there’s a hot water bottle tucked at the bottom of the bed. I hope you’ll be warm enough.” The upstairs rooms were heated by small, square metal grills that let air rise from the first floor.

“I’ll be fine.” Liz kissed her grandmother’s flannel-soft cheek. “Good night. Sleep tight.”

The back bedroom was her favorite, the room where she and her cousins had played house and dress-up when the weather kept them indoors. Flower-sprigged wallpaper covered the sloping ceiling and short walls, the same wallpaper she had watched her grandfather apply twenty years before. The bed was soft with a thick feather quilt. The Robb women used to make them, visiting around a table and ignoring sore fingers while they pulled the quills from bags and bags of goose feathers.

Liz unpacked her pencil case and sketchbook. Sitting on the side of the bed, she flipped to a new page and began to draw. She needed to get the deer out of her mind and safely onto paper before she slept.

Quick lines caught the animal’s terrified immobility. Panicked eyes bright in the headlights, body tensed to spring away, muscles bunched and twitching. Long thin legs bent as if it wanted to run in three or four directions at once. Hooves polished, tiny, sharp. Coat heavy for winter, velvet under coarse surface hairs. Eyes huge and liquid brown, ears surprisingly large and held to the side.

After she had filled several pages with full and partial sketches of the deer, her hand began to draw a face. Jack McKinnon’s face, but longer and thinner than it really was, with silver eyes full of secrets. Leaning away from her sketchbook, she studied the drawing and felt a familiar stirring of anticipation. This would be her next hero. He didn’t belong in the real world. The story would have to be a fantasy. Whether he belonged to the hills of Tara or the rings of Saturn, she didn’t yet know.

THE DOGS FOLLOWED JACK through the woods, moving silently along the path narrowly lit by his flashlight. They were alert, aware of sounds and smells that passed him by entirely. At the edge of the clearing, he stopped. He’d like to keep Bella and Dora with him—they were large enough to give intruders second thoughts—but he’d made a promise to Eleanor.

“Go home, girls.” They stood at his feet and waited expectantly, eyes glowing, tails wagging slowly. He would have to say it as if he meant it. He pointed to the northwest. “Home.” Their heads sagged, then they turned and disappeared into the night.

Unable to shake the feeling that caution was needed, Jack kept to the edge of the woods, studying the house and its surroundings as thoroughly as the yard light allowed. The car that had nearly hit Elizabeth Robb was long gone. There was no sign anyone had stayed behind, no sign of trouble.

Except the light. When he’d left for Eleanor’s, he’d switched on the light over the back door. Now, it was off. He crossed the yard to the back stoop and reached up to check the uncovered bulb. Not burned out. Twisted loose.

He tried the door. It was still locked. People tended to be casual about security around here—the Ramseys’ locks would have sprung open if you’d frowned at them, so he’d installed deadbolts as soon as he moved in. Edging his way around the house, he checked each ground-floor window. All shut and intact. The front door was locked.

Someone had come into his yard, loosened the light over the back door, then left in a hurry, headlights off to avoid being seen. Someone expecting easy access to a TV and VCR in the trusting countryside? It didn’t look as if they’d found a way in, so why was the back of his neck still so tight it burned?

He let himself into the house and stood quietly, listening. The lights he’d left on still glowed. He moved from room to room, upstairs and down. The few things of value—his espresso and cappuccino maker, his laptop, the CD player, his guitar—all sat where he’d left them.

Could have been kids, just as Eleanor said. Halloween was only a couple of weeks away. He’d likely be spending Saturday washing spattered egg off the outside walls.

What was bugging him? Jack began another circuit of the house. Was something out of place, something that had only registered at the back of his mind? Faint scratches beside the lock on the door? Dirt tracked in on someone else’s shoes?

Finally he found what had been nagging at him. A small thing…smudges in the dust on the coffee table. The books, magazines and sheet music he’d piled there had been moved, then returned to their places.

So, someone had come into his yard, loosened the light over the back door, searched for something, then left in a hurry, headlights off to avoid being seen. It didn’t make sense. Nothing was stolen, nothing was vandalized.

The tension in his neck eased. Reid. They hadn’t talked for a couple of years. It would be his style to get back in touch in some convoluted way. Leaving a few hardly noticeable clues was how they used to signal the start of a new round of their favorite game, a sort of puzzle-solving treasure hunt they’d played all through high school and university. The guy must be bored out of his mind to have gone to all this trouble, driving an hour and a half from Winnipeg…

Moving quickly, Jack lifted the trapdoor near the kitchen table. He bent his head to avoid bumping into rafters and creaked down the stairs into the dirt cellar. Deep shelves where the Ramseys had kept canned goods over the winter lined one wall. Along another were bins for root vegetables. He’d filled most of them with pumpkins waiting for their Halloween trip to the city. Stepping over more pumpkins lined up on the ground, he dug one hand to the bottom of the potato bin and brought out a resealable sandwich bag. Inside the bag was a plain black diskette.

He returned to the kitchen and switched on his laptop. When the menu appeared, he checked the security logs. Sure enough, an attempt had been made to get into his files, today at 2018 hours. Not unexpected under the circumstances, but it still made his heart beat a little faster. He slipped the diskette into its slot, then rebooted the computer and waited for the prompt. As soon as it flashed onto the screen, he relaxed. Reid hadn’t tried to open the hidden Linux partition. He had no reason to suspect it was there, no reason to look for it.

Jack popped the small black square out of the machine and into his hand, curling his fingers around it. He could throw it into the Franklin stove right now. Probably should. He could delete the partition and its contents. Absolutely should.

He slipped the diskette back into the sandwich bag, and started down the cellar stairs.

CHAPTER TWO

LIZ BUMPED HER HEAD on the sloping ceiling over the bed when she sat up. It made her think of her grandfather, solemnly checking every door frame, table and chair she’d bumped into as a child and assuring her it was undamaged. Even if her eyes were full of tears from the collision, she couldn’t help laughing at his concern for those sharp edges. Couldn’t help being just a little bit mad, either.

At night, when she’d made a quick trip down the hall to the bathroom, the bare floor had been icy cold. Now there was a warm path where pale sunlight streamed in. Liz followed it to the window, then stood back from the draft of cool air seeping through the glass.

The yard was huge, reaching to the poplar woods at the back, and to the garden and hip roof barn at one side. Her grandfather’s small orchard, hardy crab apple, plum and cherry trees, grew at one end of the garden, and her grandmother’s raspberry patch at the other. Her arms stung just looking at it. She and Susannah used to wade right in to find the ripest berries. They didn’t notice all the long red scratches on their skin until they were done. Tiny green worms wriggling inside the berries didn’t bother them, either.

Maybe in a day or two the Twilight Zone feeling would wear off, and she could look outside without seeing twenty different scenes at once, her life passing before her eyes. In little pantomimes all over the yard she saw herself playing with her cousins and her brother. Had they spent any time at their own houses, or were they always here, rolling in this grass, climbing these trees, raiding this garden?

Their swing still hung from the oak tree. Strange to see it empty. Someone had always been on it, leaning way back with arms stretched and legs pumping, trying to go high enough to look at the world through the tree’s lower branches. Once, they’d all tried to fit on at the same time—they’d made it to seven, with Liz and Susannah and Tom dangling from the ropes, before someone’s mother had called that they’d break the tree if they didn’t watch out. They were always tanned and laughing…at least it seemed that way. Untouchable.

It was going to be a ghost-filled visit. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. She might manage to scare a few of them away. How, she had no idea. Threaten to draw them? Or ignore them, like bullies? That would be best. Ignore them, and keep her mind on why she was here—to help her grandmother and to say her goodbyes to the old house. Then she’d go back to Vancouver and stay there. Back home.

She hurried into a pair of jeans and a sand-colored sweatshirt, then made her way downstairs, holding the banister as she went. Very little light turned the corner from the living room windows. She could hardly see where to put her feet. It was a dangerous staircase for her grandmother, narrow and steep, and a dark house for her to live in alone all these years. Liz had to think and count…nine years.

Eleanor was in the kitchen, leaning over a steaming waffle iron. “Good morning, Elizabeth! I put the kettle on when I heard the floor squeak. It won’t be a minute.”

“Great, I could do with a cup. Don’t tell me you’re making waffles.”

“How could your first morning home go by without them?”

Liz hovered, wondering if she should offer to help. She had tried to make waffles once and had ended up yelling at the supposedly nonstick pan and going out for breakfast. When the kettle whistled, she hurried to the stove and poured the boiling water over tea bags waiting in a warmed Brown Betty, glad of something useful to do. The dogs looked at her with mild interest, but didn’t move out of her way or wag their tails.

She pulled a tea cosy over the pot. “This is pretty. Is it new?” It was leaf green, with a pattern of pink geraniums. There wasn’t a single tea stain on it.

“Isn’t it nice? Jack saw it at a craft sale and thought of me.”

“He goes to craft sales?”

“It was in Pine Point. He wants to experience every aspect of country life.”

“I hope you told him farmers don’t go to craft sales unless women drag them.”

Eleanor looked amused. “I doubt I could influence him. Besides, he likes to support work that’s done locally.”

Liz felt an uncomfortable twist of distrust. Jack McKinnon seemed to be going out of his way to please her grandmother. “He’s awfully friendly.”

“For a stranger, you mean?” Eleanor poured more batter on the grill and closed the lid.

“I suppose that’s what I mean.”

“He’s not a stranger to me, Elizabeth.”

Liz wandered back to her grandmother’s side. She hoped she hadn’t sounded too small-minded. “It’s no wonder he thought of you when he saw the cosy. You’ve always got geranium cuttings on the windowsills.” She leaned closer and breathed in the aroma of toasted vanilla. “What’s the plan for today, Grandma?”

“We’ll start with the furniture, I think. It’s a three-room apartment, so I can’t take much with me. The dining room suite is my main concern.” Since her marriage just before the Second World War, Eleanor had been caretaker of a black walnut table that came with sixteen chairs and a matching sideboard. Liz’s great-great-grandparents had brought it with them from Ontario in 1883. “Your brother is willing to take it, but Pamela is reluctant. She prefers a modern style. Smaller scale, lighter wood. She asked Thomas if they could strip and bleach it…”

“Oh, no.”

“I’m not sure what to do. There’s general agreement that it would be a pity to sell it, but that it’s too big and too dark for anyone to take.”

“We can’t sell it.” Every family occasion had involved gathering around that table. “Remember how we used to go from house to house at Christmas? Aunt Edith’s for Christmas Eve, here for dinner on Christmas Day, our house for games and turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day. This was the only place big enough for everyone.”

Eleanor lifted the lid of the waffle-maker. Two fragrant circles fell away from the grill. “The children never need to sit at a card table in another room. I like that. I like babies at the table.”

“I don’t remember babies—”

“You were one of them. And you missed the next batch.”

“I just remember Emily being smaller than the rest of us. Not quite a baby, though. A toddler.” Emily was born a few years after Liz and Susannah, the only child of Eleanor’s only daughter, Julia. She had shadowed her older cousins as soon as she could move fast enough to keep up. Now, she was a teaching assistant at the elementary school, dividing her day between the kindergarten room and the library. She still lived with her mother, about a mile down the road from Eleanor’s house. “This barbecue tonight, Grandma. Do we have to go?”

“What a question.” Eleanor looked startled and not at all pleased. “It’s in your honor. Your aunt has gone to a lot of trouble.” Using a tea towel, she pulled a plate of waffles from the warming oven and added the two she’d just made to the pile. The stack had fallen over, forming a large, rounded mound, enough to feed them all week. “Would you get the syrup? There’s raspberry preserves, too.”

Liz rummaged in the fridge. Of course she couldn’t avoid the barbecue. It was a few hours with family and friends. She’d be glad to see everyone. She’d fill a plate and mingle and then, if necessary, plead jet lag, or burn herself on the grill, and they’d understand why she had to leave early.

“The syrup’s right there, Elizabeth, by the milk. Don’t let all the cold air out.”

The syrup appeared in front of Liz, beside a carton of whole milk she hadn’t noticed, either. Wasn’t whole milk extinct? Everything inside the fridge had a foreign look to it, now that she thought about it. Three dozen eggs, real butter, whipping cream. Had the news about cholesterol not reached Three Creeks?

As she set the syrup and preserves on the table, heavy footsteps sounded on the veranda. The dogs lifted their heads, but they didn’t budge from their spot by the stove. After a token knock, the kitchen door pushed open, and Liz’s brother looked into the room. He grinned when he saw her. “Hey, kiddo. How ya doin’?”

Liz wanted to throw her arms around him, but something held her back. She made herself busy carrying the teapot to the table. “I hoped I’d see you today.”

“Got you working hard already, has she, Grandma? Waffles—she’s got no shame. It’s from living in the city. They get used to being pampered.”

“Join us, Thomas. We’ve got plenty.” Eleanor was already setting another place.

“I suppose a little more breakfast won’t hurt me.” If anyone could tolerate two breakfasts, it was Tom. Since their parents had retired and sold him their land a few years before, he’d been farming a thousand acres and raising a hundred head of cattle. Any spare time was spent playing with his three children.

He reached for the serving plate before he was in his chair. He helped himself, then pushed it closer to his sister. “So, Lizzie, what’s the penalty for bashing up a rental car?”

She hardly noticed slipping into the bantering tone they used with each other most of the time. “You bashed up my rental car? That’ll cost you.”

“What’d you do, hit a deer?”

“I hit a rock, avoiding a deer.”

“That was careless. I could have fed my family all winter.”

From across the room Eleanor said, “Your sister had quite a scare.”

Tom’s chastened expression gave Liz’s heart a twinge. He looked about eight years old. “You’re all right, though?”

“I’m fine. Just a little more aware how nice it is to be breathing.” Even now, thinking about her near miss made her queasy. She cut one of the waffles down the middle and put half on her plate. Slowly she poured on syrup, giving as much attention to filling the little squares as she had when she was a child. “How are my nieces and my nephew?”

“Let’s see.” Tom’s face brightened just thinking about his children, but he spoke in an offhand tone. “Jennifer’s had her ears pierced, Will says it’s not fair. Anne has joined Brownies, Will says it’s not fair. Will’s going to play hockey this season, Jennifer says it’s not fair. We’ve made a rule they all have to do an hour of chores on Saturdays before they play and they all agree it’s not fair—”

“Pretty much business as usual, then.”

“But more so. Pam’s bursting to see you. She says she’ll be around to help with the sorting and packing when work allows.” Tom’s wife taught grade five at the local school. Half the teachers there were at least distantly related to the Robbs. “I suppose you’ll still be in the house for part of the winter, Grandma? Need some firewood?”

“Thank you, but I’m all set. Jack brought me a good load last week. It should be enough with what I have left from last year.”

Tom’s cheerful mood was gone, just like that. “What’s Jack McKinnon doing bringing you wood? I’ve always brought you wood.”

“You’ve been so good about it, but look at all you have to do.”

“Bringing you firewood has never been a problem—”

Bella and Dora stopped scrutinizing each forkful traveling from Liz’s plate to her mouth and ambled to the door, nails clicking on the hardwood floor. More company? Liz hadn’t even washed before coming downstairs. There was a light tapping on the door, and then Emily stepped into the kitchen, beaming. Liz’s chair scraped back, and she hurried to her cousin, reaching for a hug.

“You finally, finally came home!” Emily said. “How long can you stay?”

“A week. Maybe two.”

“Not longer?”

Eleanor brought another plate from the cupboard. “I’m sure it will be two. We need at least that much time to get the work done. We’re starting with the furniture today, Emily, if you’re interested. Thomas, would you pour your cousin some tea?”

“Thanks, Grandma.” The dogs followed Emily to her chair. “No, Bella, no matter what you might think, and no matter what happened last time, I’m not going to give you my breakfast. Is that your car in the driveway, Liz, with the big dent? Don’t tell me you hit a deer.”

“She tried her best,” Tom said, “but all she got was a rock. There’s not much point hitting a rock.”

“I swerved to avoid a car and the deer came out of nowhere. You’d think it had transported in—”

“Transported?” Eleanor didn’t watch much television.

“Like in a sci-fi program,” Liz explained. “Beamed from one spot to another…the idea is, they break you down into atoms and reassemble you at your destination.”

Eleanor grimaced. “I don’t think I’d like that. Although I wouldn’t mind a shorter trip to Winnipeg, especially in the winter—and I suppose you could drop in and out of here more often, Elizabeth.”

“And we all could have made it to Susannah’s wedding,” Tom added.

“Oh, could you believe she did that?” Emily asked. “Marry a guy like Alexander Blake in the middle of the badlands when we’d stopped thinking she’d ever get married at all, and not wait for me? I’m afraid my telegram turned into a bit of a lecture—”

This time there was no knock, and no warning from the dogs. Susannah’s father stepped into the house as if he owned it. He was tall and tanned, with graying hair cut very short. A pale band of skin just below his hairline showed where his cap usually sat, pulled down low to shade his eyes.

“There she is!” He took Liz’s face between two large hands and kissed the top of her head loudly. “Looking like a million bucks, as usual. Got all your dad’s beauty and your mother’s brains.”

Liz smiled. It was a long-time claim. “Hi, Uncle Will.”

“And Emily. Look at the two of you. All we’re missing is Susannah. Shove over, Tom.” Will squeezed into a chair next to his nephew. “Got some coffee, Mom?”

Eleanor set a jar of instant on the table. “I bought a special kind for Elizabeth.”

“Hazelnut Heaven? Sounds like a lady’s drink to me…I suppose I’ll still get my caffeine, though, won’t I?” Will smiled at Liz. “Quite a dent on that little Cavalier out there. Brand-new car, too. Reminds me of when you were learning to drive. I kept telling you to aim for the road— Oh, well, why change now?” He stirred a heaping spoon of coffee crystals into a mug of hot water his mother placed in front of him, then flinched when the smell of hazelnuts hit his nostrils. “Did you get the extra insurance?”

Liz nodded. She’d checked the rental agreement before bed.

“Always get the insurance. Otherwise, something goes wrong, you’re on the hook for the whole thing. I’ll take the car back for you—” He raised one hand to stop Liz’s protest. “I’m going into the city on Saturday anyway. I’ll settle everything, take the bus back. They won’t give me any trouble.”

“Uncle Will—”

Tom spoke under cover of their uncle’s confident voice. “Give up, Liz.”

“I’ll need a car—”

“You can use Grandma’s. It’s old, but it’s in good shape.”

“We’re all set then,” Will said with satisfaction. “So, angel, here’s the thing. Your aunt wants you to stay with us for a while. How about it? You can use Sue’s old room and keep us company.”

“I’ve come to help Grandma, Uncle Will.”

“How about over Christmas? I’m sure Sue’ll be finished at her quarry by then. Of course, it won’t be quite the same, will it? She’ll have Alex with her.” He frowned into his cup. “The way they got married, in such a hurry, with no family— It’s been tough on your aunt. She saved a picture of the perfect wedding cake from some magazine twenty-odd years ago and she was heartbroken not to have the chance to make it.”

Tom spooned a big dollop of raspberry preserves on a second waffle. “If they’d waited one measly day we could have got to Alberta in time. Would one day have made such a difference?”

“That’s what I said,” Will agreed.

Liz tried to defend her cousin, although she’d been disappointed to miss the wedding, too. “There aren’t all that many flights to the Gobi Desert.”

“Trust you to be in favor of a rushed marriage, Liz. What is it with you and eloping, anyway—” Tom broke off when Eleanor made a warning sound. With a guilty glance at his grandmother, he apologized.

Liz forced a smile. “That’s okay. I did elope. It’s no secret.”

“And everybody was very happy for you,” Will declared, “no matter what they said at the time.”

Emily jumped up. “Let’s get the dishes cleared away, Liz. Then we’ll take a look at the furniture. My mother’s hoping for that cabinet radio, Grandma.”

Eleanor tapped the table. “Settle down and enjoy your breakfast, Emily. Your cousin isn’t a child with a short attention span. You can’t distract her that easily. And you, Elizabeth, I’m sorry to say it, but you bring it on yourself. If you’d transport in here more often, people would be done commenting on that episode of your life.”