Carol GoldenEagle - Bone Black

“No… I’m going to run to the little girls’ room. Do you want me to get anything as I make my way back?” Wren asks before grabbing her purse.

“Nothing, thanks. I’ll just sit and watch,” Raven shouts in response.

As Wren scurries away and Raven takes another sip, she’s startled when a man whispers into her ear, “Nice bandana. Wanna see my banana?”

What a comment to utter to a lady! Her instinct is to turn and give this intruder a hard, verbal lashing, maybe even slap him across the face. Raven turns toward the voice to make her disapproval clear but changes her mind immediately. The fellow standing there is incredibly handsome.

“Sorry about that cheesy line, but it is redneck night.” The man introduces himself as Lance. “Seriously though, you just won me twenty dollars. My friend over there bet me that you’d slap my face saying something like that. Thanks for making him the loser.”

Raven laughs, admitting, “Well, you almost did get hit in the face, but there are too many witnesses here. Besides, we don’t want to get thrown out of the bar.”

“It’s often more fun to party out here instead of in the city,” Lance explains. “Especially during the summer. Everyone is so friendly.” He tells Raven he delivers furniture for one of the larger stores in the city.

As Lance and Raven continue to chat, it isn’t his words that grab Raven’s attention, it’s his low-cut wife beater. The white undershirt fits him just a bit too tight and shows off his muscular chest and arms. He reminds her of a young Richard Gere.

“Smoke?” Lance pulls a worn, silver cigarette case from his back pocket. “Keeps the smokes from getting squished. It used to belong to my dad. Took it with him when he’d go hunting.” Lance glances at the worn lettering engraved across the front. “I know it’s a bad habit, but now that the band has taken a break, seems like a good time to head outdoors,” he adds. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes, if it’s okay to join you when I return.”

“Actually, I think I’ll come out, too. Hardly anyone smokes anymore and it’s more interesting to have company than just lighting up and standing outside alone. Besides, my sister is in the washroom. I may as well grab the opportunity to sneak out before she has time to give me a lecture.”

Raven’s been craving a cigarette all evening. She’s not allowed to smoke in the farmhouse and isn’t comfortable standing outside by herself all the time, especially at night in the dark. In the city when she smokes at her own apartment, it’s usually out on the balcony where she can see streetlights, people and automobiles at every hour.

Raven realizes how much she appreciates being back in the stillness of the valley. It’s beautiful and brings her comfort. Being here takes her back to her childhood. She’s happy about the prospect of relocating back to the land she knows and loves, should the law firm she works for expands into Saskatchewan as planned.

Raven grabs her purse from the back of her chair. She leaves her sweater because the night air is still warm. No one notices Raven walk out toward the exit with some handsome stranger she’s just met. All attention has turned to an arm-wrestling competition that has just started up.

It’s Saturday morning and Wren is frantic on the telephone with Lord. It hasn’t been easy to reach him because cellphone connections are sometimes tenuous in the mountains, especially if the weather is bad. Plus there’s been a thunderstorm. It started shortly after his plane landed yesterday and it hasn’t let up since.

“What do you mean the police won’t help you?” Lord asks, trying to make sense of what she’s telling him.

Through a crackling phoneline, he’s been able to piece together that Raven is missing. The sisters went to the bar last night and stayed longer than either had planned. Wren explained that when she came out of the bathroom, Raven was gone along with her purse.

“I was on hold for more than ten minutes when I called. What kind of emergency service is that?” Wren asks rhetorically. “And when I told the cops that my sister had vanished, they asked where we were. Like she was asking for trouble being in a bar, like it was typical for her to leave the bar without telling anyone. They even asked how much we had to drink and suggested that maybe there was some type of harmless romantic liaison.”

“And how much did you drink?” Lord asks, regretting it even as the words pass his lips.

“Probably too much to drive home,” Wren admits, dismissing any accusatory tone. “But I waited at the bar for hours, just in case she came back. I stayed until it closed, so by the time I left, I was sober.”

Wren had already made a mental note about the blue pickup with the offensive bull balls attached to its hitch. She remembered the plate number and reported it to police, just in case there was any sort of file on the owner. Wren can’t say if the person taking the call even wrote the information down. She just found it important to note though, because the truck was no longer parked beside her car when she went to check the parking lot for her sister. It was a fleeting thought, but she wondered if someone who’d make such a grotesque statement like that on his vehicle might be the type of person to hurt someone like Raven. It was a gut feeling only, but it was enough that it caused Wren to mention this detail to the police.

Wren tells Lord that she drove on the shoulder of the short highway back to the farmhouse in the valley.

“I wasn’t going more than forty kilometres. Makes it easier to see something when the speed is lower. I thought maybe she decided to walk because the night was so warm. We didn’t even have a breeze last night.”

Wren didn’t see anyone walking on the shoulder nor in the ditch. She doubled back and checked the streets in town, and then took a walk along the shoreline. By this time, the first light of day was appearing across the horizon and except for songbirds, everything was quiet. There was no traffic, no voices. The leaves on the trees didn’t move and even the lake was still.

“I didn’t sleep a wink,” Wren continues. “And then first thing this morning, I got on my bike and rode along the grid roads nearby.”

Wren neglects to tell Lord that she hit a pothole while out searching and riding. She lost balance and it caused her to swerve severely and crash into a tree. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, and when she awoke from unconsciousness later in the ditch, alone with the sound of crickets and wind, she felt dried blood on her scalp and hair. She was also dizzy and disoriented, and figured she must have been knocked out for some time. Wren has no memory of riding her bike out near the lagoon.

“I stopped in at the gas station as soon as it opened,” she tells Lord, “because as you know, if anything went down overnight that would be the first place where locals would be talking. But no one had heard a thing.”

Wren tells him she didn’t know what else to do but to call 911. Her heart broke when the police offered no help. That’s when Wren began sobbing over the phone.

“They told me it isn’t an emergency because Raven is not a child. The dispatcher even scolded me saying police don’t usually get involved in missing persons cases until at least twenty-four hours have passed. But I know something is wrong. I have real worries and there is no timeline. Why would they dismiss me like this?”

“So what are they doing now?” Lord asks. He can’t figure out how to comfort his wife over the telephone, and it makes him feel guilty, like he should have stayed home instead of going on this business trip. He knew how much it meant to Wren that her twin would be visiting, but he also wanted to give them some time alone to reconnect.