The Marsh King's Daughter(18)

Also ironic is the fact that during the years my grandmother and grandfather were desperately trying to find out what had happened to their daughter, she was less than fifty miles away. The Upper Peninsula is a big place. Twenty-nine percent of the land area of the state of Michigan, three percent of the population. One-third state and national forest.

The newspaper’s microfiche archives show the progress of the search.

Day One: Missing. Presumed to have wandered off and expected shortly to be found.

Day Two: Still missing. State police search and rescue dogs brought in.

Day Three: Expanded search, including a Coast Guard helicopter from St. Ignace assisted by Department of Natural Resources officers on the ground and assorted small aircraft.

And so on.

It wasn’t until a full week after she went missing that my mother’s best friend admitted they were playing in some empty buildings by the railroad tracks when they were approached by a man who said he was looking for his dog. This is also the first time the word abducted appears. By then, of course, it was too late.

From my mother’s newspaper photo, I can see what drew my father’s eye: blonde, chubby, pigtailed. Still, there must have been plenty of chubby blonde fourteen-year-olds my father could have taken. I’ve often wondered why he chose her. Did he stalk her in the days and weeks before he grabbed her? Was he secretly in love with her? Or was my mother’s abduction merely the unfortunate convergence of time and place? I tend to believe the latter. Certainly I can’t recall ever seeing anything pass between my father and mother that remotely resembled affection. Was keeping us supplied with food and clothing evidence of my father’s love for us? In my weaker moments, I like to think so.

Before we were recovered, no one knew if my mother was dead or alive. The story The Newberry News published every year on the anniversary of her kidnapping grew progressively shorter. The last four years the headline and the single paragraph of text that accompanied it were exactly the same: “Local Girl Still Missing.” No one knew anything about my father beyond my mother’s girlfriend’s description: a small, slender man with “darkish” skin and long, black hair, wearing work boots and jeans and a red plaid shirt. Considering the ethnicity of the area at the time was roughly evenly split between Native Americans and Finns and Swedes, and every other male over the age of sixteen tramped around in work boots and flannel, her description was next to useless. Except for those annual two column-inches and the twin holes in my grandparents’ hearts, my mother was forgotten.

And then one day, fourteen years, seven months, and twenty-two days after my father kidnapped my mother, she returned, setting off the most extensive manhunt that Upper Peninsula residents had ever seen—until today.

—

I’M DRIVING approximately as fast as a man can walk. Not only because this road is the kind where if I drive too close to the edge and I’m not paying attention, the deep sand will pull my truck in up to its axles before I realize what’s happening and there’s no way I’m getting out without a tow truck, but also because I’m looking for footprints. I can’t really track a person on foot from a vehicle, of course, and the odds that my father left a visible trail as he traveled this road—if he traveled this road—are extremely small, but still. When it comes to my father, I can’t be too careful.

I’ve driven this road many times. There’s a place about a quarter mile ahead as the road curves where the shoulder is solid enough to pull off and park. From there, if I walk another quarter mile north and west, then make my way down a steep incline, I come to the biggest patch of blackberries I’ve ever seen. Blackberries like a lot of water, and a creek runs along the bottom of the gully, so the berries grow especially big. When I’m lucky, I can gather enough to make a year’s worth of jam from a single picking.

Strawberries are a different story. The thing people have to understand about wild strawberries is that the berries are nothing like the California behemoths they buy in grocery stores. Not much bigger than the tip of an adult’s little finger on average, but with a flavor that more than makes up for their tiny size. Every once in a while, I might come across a berry that’s as big as the end of my thumb (and when I do, that berry goes into my mouth and not into my berry pail), but that’s about as big as wild strawberries ever get. Obviously it takes a great many wild strawberries to make a decent quantity of jam, which is why I have to charge a premium for mine.

Anyway, today I’m not looking for berries.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out. A text from Stephen:


Home in half an hour. Girls at my parents. Don’t worry. We’ll get through this. Love S

I stop in the middle of the road and stare at the screen. Stephen coming back is just about the last thing I expected. He must have turned around and started for home as soon as he dropped off the girls. My marriage isn’t over. Stephen is giving me another chance. He’s coming home.

The implications are almost overwhelming. Stephen isn’t giving up on me. He knows who I am and he doesn’t care. We’ll get through this. Love S. I think about all of the times I said or did something off and tried to cover for my ignorance as if my gaffe was a joke. Now I realize I didn’t have to pretend. I put myself in this box. Stephen loves me for who I am.

Home in half an hour. Of course I won’t be there when he arrives, but that’s probably just as well. I’m glad now that I didn’t leave him a note. If Stephen had any idea where I am or what I’m doing, he’d lose his mind. Let him think I went out for breakfast, or I’m picking up a few things at the store, or I went down to the police station to help them follow up on a lead, and I’ll be right back. Which, if all goes according to plan, I will be.