Page 13 of What You Never Knew

It was the cards I got when people found out she’d died: distant family members who had never even known her telling me she was in God’s hands now or that I should trust in God and his plan for May. It did nothing to console me, only made me angry.

I leave the clearing, happy to escape the creepy feeling it gives me, and run back at a much slower pace, stopping now and again to clear away branches and pull free some of the vegetation that’s grown in on the path. If I work at it, I may be able to get the whole path back to its original form in a couple of days. I imagine running laps around the island, the water and the trees as my scenery. The thought ignites a tiny flame of pleasure. One simple run and it’s changed my mood completely.

Simple tasks, movement, being in nature—that’s what’s going to save me, I tell myself. I was right to come here. I’ve created my own grief retreat, and I’ll power my way through it until I can go home whole again. Or better yet, maybe fly the girls out here for part of their summer vacation. Leo’s already booked them in at least two camps, basketball and tennis—he doesn’t believe idle time is good for kids—but I’m sure I could convince him to let them come here for a week or two.

I start planning all the things we’ll do together: sailing, days spent on the dock and evenings on the verandah talking, night swims, trips into town for greasy fries and cinnamon buns. The three of us will pick up right where May and I left off.

I return to the cottage feeling like a new person, the heaviness of my grief dissipated. The run combined with the prospect of bringing the girls here has done it. For the first time in a long time, I have something to look forward to.

With renewed energy, I decide to tackle cleaning the upstairs of the cottage. Moving up and down the hallway, clearing dead flies from windowsills, I relish the creak of the floorboards underfoot. Sweeping dust from the stairs, I breathe in the smell of warm wood in the cramped stairwell. As I go from room to room, I note the cool solidity of the metal doorknobs in my hand.

These things went unnoticed when I was young, but they defined this place to my senses. These are the characteristics that left their mark on me, as familiar as my mother’s own voice once was, as my sister’s sweet hot breath was when she leaned in to whisper a secret.

In my parents’ room I pull the sheets and quilt off the bed and once again catch a whiff of my mother’s scent beneath the smell of neglect and damp. I leave the bed stripped to air out the mattress and throw open a window to get some breeze flowing.

After removing a thick layer of dust from my mother’s dresser—removing each perfume bottle, jar, lipstick tube, and hairbrush to wipe down the surface before carefully putting them all back exactly where they were—I move on to my father’s side of the room.

The surface of his dresser is bare. Pulling open the top drawer, I’m surprised to find it still full of his socks and underwear. Seems strange that a man who took off in the night—abandoned his family, as my mother always told us—wouldn’t take his socks and underwear. Especially since he left from here and apparently never went back to our family home in Boston.

I think of the search party for my father that Jim Junior mentioned at the marina. Was there more to his disappearance than my mother ever told us? The question fits right alongside the mystery of why she said she’d sold Avril Island when she hadn’t. You don’t grow up thinking your mother is a liar, so when you come to understand that she just may have been one, everything in your world becomes suspect. Which makes me wonder: are there even more lies that my mother told us about Avril Island and my father?

Balling up the dirty bedding and leaving my parents’ bedroom, I decide to take a trip back to the marina. I’ll ask Jim if he knows anything more about the search for my father. I’m going to need to know the secrets of Avril Island if she’s truly going to be mine again.

I steer the boat into an empty slip at the marina. Jim is busy with another customer, so I tie up on my own and go stand by the office door. I’m nervous but not sure exactly why.

“Back for more supplies?” Jim asks, once he’s finished with the other customer and comes over to greet me.

“No, not quite. I was actually wondering, Jim—do you have any information about when my father disappeared? About the search?”

Jim seems taken aback by the question. Takes his hat off and scratches at a bug bite on his forehead. “To be honest, Ms. Bennett, I don’t remember much about that time. I was a rowdy teenager back then, not too fussed about adult problems, if you know what I mean.”

My heart sinks. “That’s okay, Jim. I have two teenagers myself and can completely understand. It’s a strange request, I know,” I continue, hoping my honesty might jog his memory. “But you see, my mother told me and my sister that my father left. There was never any mention of a search or that it could be anything more than a man taking off on his wife.”

There’s confusion and sympathy in Jim’s eyes, which makes me realize how strange it was that my mother would rather have us think our father was an asshole who took off than remember him as a great man who had something bad happen to him.

I’m starting to wish I’d never come when his features suddenly brighten and he claps his hands together. “I think I might have the answer. My dad, he kept a scrapbook of all the newspaper clippings about events around town.” He motions for me to follow him into the office.

Reaching high up on a bookshelf packed with binders, carboard boxes, and the odd book, Jim pulls down a brown, leather-bound photo album. “This would be it,” he says, placing it on the counter in front of me. The sound of a boat approaching draws his attention to the window. “Take your time with it. I’ll just go help this customer.”

The pages of the book are covered with newspaper clippings, no bit of the paper underneath left visible. I flip past articles on cottages being broken into over the summer, on the drowning of a little boy at the beach, on a storm that caused thousands of dollars in damages. There are obituaries from people Jim Senior must have known and stories about business openings and closings, bar fights, and how the recession affected tourism and the locals.

Jim Senior’s love for his community sits right here in this meticulous preservation of his town’s current events. As touching as it is, I flip forward until I find articles from 1991, the year my father disappeared. There are two whole pages dedicated to the frigid temperatures and record-breaking snowfalls of that winter. Just when I feel my frustration rising, I turn the page and the words Avril Island jump right out at me. I’ve found what I’m looking for.

I skim the headlines: Summer Resident Disappears Without a Trace; Where Is Simon Bennett? Avril Island Affair Gone Wrong; Local Man Connected to Simon Bennett’s Disappearance; Search for Avril Island’s Owner Continues.

My mouth is suddenly very dry, and I’m finding it hard to focus on the words in front of me. How did all of this happen without me ever knowing? It feels as though I’ve stumbled into some alternate, more sinister version of my life.

The bell over the door jangles, startling me out of my shock, and Jim steps inside the office. “Find what you’re looking for?” His cheerfulness makes a surreal contrast to what is going on inside me.

“I did, actually.” I force lightness into my voice. “But I was wondering, Jim. Would you mind if I borrowed the scrapbook for the night? Just so I can take my time with it.” I give the book a pat. “There’s so much history in here; would hate to miss anything.”

“Of course. Take it for as long as you’d like. My dad would be right tickled to know someone’s appreciating his handiwork.”

“Thank you so much, Jim. I promise to take good care of it.”

“My absolute pleasure, Ms. Bennett,” he says, as I follow him out of the office.

“Please call me June,” I scold, once we’re back out on the dock. “Every time you call me Ms. Bennett, I feel like my mother.” He laughs and holds up both hands in apology.