Steve Hamilton: A Stolen Season

She has green eyes. She has a little scar on her chin. What hockey player doesn’t have scars? She has brown hair, and she usually has it tied up. When she reaches up to unpin it and it falls down to her shoulders…Well, let’s just say the image stays with me for a while.

She was a good cop until her partner was killed. Then she took a leave of absence. At the time, I felt like maybe I was the only person in the world who could understand exactly what she was going through. Which is why I showed up at her house on New Year’s Eve with a bottle of champagne in my hand.

It was cold outside. Neither of us wanted to be alone. We ended up on the floor of her guest bedroom. That was the beginning.

Things happened after that. Her own past caught up to her, much as mine had. When we finally got through it, it was like we had more in common than ever. I was starting to imagine what it would be like to spend the rest of my life with her. A miracle in itself, that I’d even think that. But then it came time for her to make a choice.

It was time for her to decide if she was ever going to go back to being a cop.

Her commanding officer was a man named Henry Moreland. He was a staff sergeant in the Ontario Provincial Police, stationed up in Hearst. He was the one who sent her out on leave, and now he was the one who was asking her to come back. He believed very strongly that if she didn’t do it soon, it would never happen. That if she waited too long, she’d never again be the kind of person who could wear that badge.

Staff Sergeant Moreland and I had had our differences: he seemed to think I was at least partly responsible for all the trouble Natalie had been through. But this was one thing we could agree on. I knew he was right in this case. Even more, I knew the cost of not going back. I didn’t want it to happen to Natalie. I didn’t want her to lose that part of her life forever, and to always wonder if she should have tried to be a cop again.

I wanted her to go back. I hated the thought of her going away, of not knowing how long I’d have to wait to see her again. I hated it, but God help me, I told her to go. I told her to go.

So one more trip out to Blind River, to help her finally close up the house for good. The place was sold. A few last boxes to load up, then she’d say goodbye to it forever.

We went back upstairs one more time, to the room where we first spent the night together. The room was empty now, a sad, late afternoon light streaming through the window. We lay on the floor, just like the first time. But the air wasn’t cold now. We weren’t feeling desperate and lost, and unsure of what we were doing.

It was slow this time. A couple of hours later, we went outside and looked around the place one more time. We didn’t go into the barn. There weren’t any good memories there for either of us. No need to relive them.

When it was finally time to go, neither of us knew what to say. Toronto was a long haul. That’s where Moreland was assigning her-about as far away as she could go and still be in Ontario. I couldn’t help wondering if it was intentional. Hell, if she were a Mountie, he’d probably be sending her to British Columbia, or the Yukon Territory.

I didn’t know if this would work. I didn’t know if I could still be a part of her life if she was five hundred miles away. All I did know was that, while being alone was something I had grown accustomed to, now it would feel different. Every day, I’d wonder how she was doing. How the job was going. How she was dealing with the city.

We’d talk on the phone every night. That was the promise. I said goodbye to her and told her to take care of herself. I told her not to drive like an off-duty cop all the way to Toronto. “You always drive too fast,” I told her.

“Yeah,” she said, “look who’s talking.”

I kissed her and told her to get on the road.

I watched her get in her Jeep and start it. She looked at me for a long time. I thought she was going to roll down her window, but then she seemed to change her mind. She pulled down the driveway and turned onto the main road.

I got in my truck and followed her. I never caught up to her. She was driving too fast.

It was a beautiful day in May. It was beautiful enough to make you believe that summer was right around the corner. That was the promise.

That was the hope.

She called me that night, as soon as she hit Toronto. She was lonely already, she said. She had no idea what she was doing there. She called me again the next night, after reporting in to the station. Things were a lot different. Toronto’s a real city, after all. There’s traffic, and noise, and tall buildings. Like any other city, there are good parts and bad, the streets with good food and music and everything you could want, and the streets you don’t walk down alone after dark. Coming from Blind River, it must have felt like a different world.

She wanted me to come out to see her. I said I would. Eventually. My gut told me I should wait a little while, let her get settled, let her find her own place before I came and made things more complicated.

But God I wanted to see her.

I talked to her every single night for a month straight. She was working the day shift in the center of the city, right next to Chinatown. The precinct was right on Queen Street. She was doing foot patrol, getting to know the place.

Then June 21, the first official night of summer. The sun hadn’t shone in Paradise yet. The temperature hadn’t even cracked sixty yet. But it was early still. There was plenty of time for summer to arrive. At least that’s how it felt then.

No, it wasn’t the weather that got to me that night. It was the fact that she didn’t call, for the first time since moving to Toronto.

I called her number. The phone rang a few times. I hung up and went to bed.

The next day, I was surprised by how bad I felt. I didn’t want to admit that the phone calls were so important to me. I didn’t want to feel like I was depending on them. That they were the only part of the day that really mattered to me. I was starting to think, maybe it’s time to go pay her a visit.

She called that night.

“Alex.”

“Natalie, what happened? Are you okay?” The words coming out too strong, before I could stop them.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m sorry about last night. A bunch of us, we went out for drinks, and it got kinda late.”

“I understand,” I said. “It’s no big deal.” I was starting to feel a little off balance. I held on to the phone tight, listening to her quiet voice from five hundred miles away.

“We got talking about what kind of work we’d all done before. I had a couple of beers in me, you’ve got to understand.”

“Yeah?”

“Normally I don’t make a big deal about it, but I started telling everyone about the undercover work I did up in Hearst.”

“You never told me you did undercover work.”

“It was just the one time. This was years ago, when I could still pass for young.”

“Oh, come on, Natalie.”

“I’m serious. On this assignment, I had to be a biker chick.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. There was a gang I tried to get close to.”

“A Canadian biker gang?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I’m picturing a really polite version of the Hell’s Angels.”

“Alex-”

“With mufflers on their bikes so they don’t make too much noise.”

“How about making crystal meth in a bathtub and selling it to teenagers? Is that polite enough for you? How about beating the hell out of people with metal pipes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You guys in the States,” she said. At least she was starting to sound a little more like herself again.