Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

‘A body,’ I murmured.

‘I watched him haul it out the front door and then a few minutes later the lights of his car turned on and he drove away. I went back to bed and waited. I remember feeling weak and sweaty and scared, but not of my father – I’ve never been afraid of my dad in my entire life. I was scared of the body, the way the hair swayed each time he took a step and the arm that hung along his back skimming the walls, the furniture. I was afraid the arm would reach out and find me, even though I knew my father was making it go away. He was taking care of it. The sun was up by the time he got back and he made us breakfast and told me we were going to camp for a while as soon as I felt better. I didn’t hesitate; I wanted out of that place. I told him I was ready and later that day we canoed into the Boundary Waters and never came out.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Lucas said, ‘but he didn’t do it. I can’t explain it, I just know. Have you ever known something about your parents, like the knowledge is in your blood?’

I had a mother who’d abandoned me and a father who chased ghost ships, trying to salvage the impossible. I looked away, as if Lucas could read the legacy in my eyes.

‘My dad spent the last ten years protecting me, providing for me. He hiked out a few times a year and came back with fresh supplies, boots when I outgrew my old ones, books and science experiments for us to try. He taught me everything he knew, including what the world was like and what they’d do to us if we ever left the Boundary Waters. He didn’t tell me why. He didn’t need to, because I was protecting him, too.’

‘But you left anyway. Why did you raid the outfitter’s store?’

He covered his face with a hand. ‘In the last few months dad became sick, weak. He could hardly stand up, let alone hike out of our camp. When he started mumbling and sweating through his blanket I made him take the emergency medicine and went to get more, but I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I waited until it was night and tried to be quick, to not get caught.

‘That was three weeks ago.’

Without warning Lucas sat upright and grabbed my arm, almost bruising it with the sudden force. The movement brought Jasper to his feet, but Lucas paid no attention. ‘If he’s dead, it’s my fault for leaving him. There’s no one else to blame. And if he’s alive I’ve still abandoned him. I have to get back there, Maya. Now. We need to leave today.’

Jasper advanced with his ears standing straight up, a nervous growl working up his throat, the rumble of it filling the room. I could feel Lucas’s heart racing through the ice pack caught between us. He was too close; I couldn’t breathe.

I broke away and tugged Jasper’s collar, processing everything as I pulled a hundred pounds of anxious muscle across the room on one good leg. ‘You want me to help you—’ I broke off as Jasper whined in frustration.

‘Find my father. We have to go alone.’

Was he joking? We barely had one working body between us. ‘Lucas, you’re not the only person who wants to find your father. The entire world is asking what happened to him. Do you have any idea how much attention your story has gotten? And there’s Dr Mehta, Officer Miller, and everyone working the missing persons case. US Forest Service rangers are searching for him right now.’

‘They won’t find him.’

‘He’s not wanted for any crime. No matter what really happened with Heather Price, her case is closed. They won’t take you away from each other.’

He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. He won’t come out. The Boundary Waters… it’s part of him… he couldn’t survive in this world anymore. Whatever’s killing him is nothing compared to making him leave, and that’s what all those other people would do, right? No, we have to go alone.’

‘Why me? Why did you come here when you could have been halfway to Canada by now?’

I let Jasper pull me back a step and looked Lucas directly in the eye, trapping his gaze in a way I’d never done with another patient. I always gave them a way out, room to be comfortable, the space they needed to grapple with their own voice. This, though, was way past the point of comfort. I wasn’t asking him for a fluent, compound sentence; we weren’t working through aphasia or a stutter. An escaped psychiatric patient was asking me to reunite him with his potential-murderer father somewhere in the wilderness, with a Minnesota winter bearing down fast.

Lucas stood up and walked over, ignoring Jasper’s warning growl. He stopped a few feet away and reached out to take my free hand. ‘I heard you talking to Dr Mehta yesterday.’

‘Jesus, don’t you sleep at all?’

He laughed once. ‘Not really. There’s too much noise here.’ Then, growing serious again. ‘You didn’t tell her about the body. She asked if anything made me run and you lied to her.’

‘Yeah.’ I didn’t try to explain, even though he seemed to be waiting for me to do just that.

Eventually he took a step closer. ‘You told me I could trust you before, but I didn’t believe it. Not until now. So I’m trusting you, Maya. I’m trusting you with my father’s life.’

The directness in him – the openness, after so many sessions of careful avoidance – was stunning. I forgot about danger. I forgot about psychology and my job and the relationship we were supposed to have and what was possible and impossible. I had a flash of stumbling through the Congdon grounds on a sprained ankle, thinking of nothing except the trail of blood spreading underneath Lucas’s body and getting to the hospital as fast as possible. The desperation had consumed me beyond all reason and only now was I beginning to understand it. I was the girl who didn’t need anyone and made sure things stayed that way – no matter how many therapy students had tried to befriend me or occasional, brave-hearted guys asked me out. I turned them all down and I was relieved when Dad went out on the lake and left me with only the dog for company. My life was lonely, but there was something vital in the loneliness, an imperative that I keep the space around me empty and weightless. The only time I let myself get close to ­people was at Congdon and even though I loved helping my patients beat down their barriers, it was always so they could stand on their own someday, not near me. My work didn’t build relationships; it created more Mayas.

Somehow Lucas had changed everything. If it was possible, he was even more fiercely independent than me, yet he’d broken out of a guarded hospital room and traveled halfway across the city to find me, because he needed me. Not a random therapist doing their job. Not anyone else they’d tried to send to him. Me. And for the first time since my mother left, I wanted to be needed.

I realized I hadn’t said anything for a good minute, standing in the middle of the living room with Lucas staring at me, yet he didn’t seem bothered by the silence. He wasn’t fidgeting or pressing me for a reply like most people would and it occurred to me that his life up until now must have been one decade-long conversation with his father, where a pause could fill a breath, an hour, or several sky-bleeding sunsets.

‘Lucas, I—’

Jasper’s sudden bark cut off the words in my throat. Hair raised, he broke out of my grip and ran toward the front door. Limping after him, I peered through the peephole and saw a police cruiser pulled up at the curb with its lights flashing. Lucas shadowed me, his eyes darting from window to window.

‘What is it?’

‘The police.’ I didn’t stop to assess the situation, to rationalize. All I knew was that I wanted more time. I grabbed him by the arm and lunged toward the back door. ‘Let’s go.’