that had clouded Eli’s life began to lift. For the first time since Karen’s death, Eli appeared to be seeing a future for himself, and Alex and I had allowed ourselves the luxury of hope.
Then everything fell apart.
At first, it seemed as if the gods were smiling. When she arrived for the weekend, Hilda surprised Alex and Eli and my kids and me with tickets for the annual Labour Day game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. As we settled into our seats on the fifty-five-yard line, Alex and I grinned at each other. The seats were perfect. So was the weather, which was hot and still. And on the opening kickoff, the Riders’ kick returner broke through the first wave of tacklers and scampered into the endzone for a touchdown. All signs pointed to a banner day.
From the beginning of our relationship, Alex and I had been careful not to use the fact that Eli and my son, Angus, were both sixteen as justification for asking them to move in lockstep. We had hoped for the best and left it to them to find each other. That Sunday, they were sitting a few seats away in the row behind us, and as their game patter and laughter drifted towards us, it seemed our strategy was working.
At the beginning of the third quarter, Angus announced that he and Eli were going to get nachos; they bought their food and started back, but somewhere between the concession stand and their seats, Eli disappeared. There were twenty-five thousand people at Taylor Field that day, so looking for Eli hadn’t been easy, but we’d done our best. After the game, we checked the buses on the west side of the stadium. When we couldn’t find Eli, we went back inside the stadium and waited until the stands emptied. There was always the possibility that he had simply lost track of where we were sitting. But we couldn’t find him, and as we walked through the deserted parking lot it was clear that, as he had on many occasions, Eli had simply run away. The rest of the day was spent in the dismally familiar ritual of checking out Eli’s haunts and calling the bus station and listening to a recorded voice announce the times when the buses that might have carried Eli away from his demons left the city. Now, without explanation, he was back, and it seemed that all we could do was hold our breath and wait until next time.
Detective Hallam arrived just as I was carrying the tray with the teapot and cups into the living room. On my way to the front door, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the hall mirror and flinched. I was tanned from a summer at the lake, and the week before I’d had my hair cut in a style which I was relieved to see fell into place on its own, but after I’d talked to Alex, I only had time to splash my face, brush my teeth, and throw on the first two items I found in the clean laundry: an old pair of jogging shorts and a Duran Duran T-shirt from my oldest daughter’s abandoned collection of rock memorabilia. I was dressed for comfort not company, but when I opened the door, I saw that Hilda’s caller was dapper enough for both of us.
Robert Hallam appeared to be in his mid-sixties. He was a short, trim man with a steel-grey crewcut, a luxuriant bush of a moustache, and a thin, ironic smile. It was a hot night, but he was wearing meticulously pressed grey slacks, a black knit shirt, and a salt-and-pepper tweed jacket. He nodded when I introduced myself, then walked into the living room ahead of me, checked out the arrangement of the furniture, dragged a straight-backed chair across the carpet and positioned it next to the couch so he’d be able to look down at whoever sat next to him. He turned down my offer of tea, and when Hilda came into the room, he didn’t rise. As far as I was concerned, Detective Hallam was off to a bad start.
He motioned Hilda to the place on the couch nearest him. “Sit down,” he said. “Inspector Ke-quah-too-way has informed me that we don’t need you to make the ID any more, so this may be a waste of time for both of us.”
Hilda remained standing. From the set of her jaw as she