Regan Wolfrom - After The Fires Went Out - Coyote

“Not if she tried going through New Post,” I said.

“New Post hasn’t seen her.”

“You went down there?”

“No,” she said, “I messaged them.”

“But we disabled their access.”

“Matt turned it on for me.”

“Did he turn it back off afterwards?”

“Does it matter right now?”

“There’s no guarantee she stuck to the roads,” Lisa said. “If she’s trying to run away, she may have kept out of sight.”

Fiona climbed up and started lifting a bag of flour.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What does it look like?,” she said. “I’m getting this cart unloaded. We need to get out there and find her.”

“You need to get your coat on,” I said. “And a hat and some mitts. We’ll unload the cart while you get ready.”

Fiona went inside.

“Do you really think that girl just started walking back to Helena?” Graham asked. “That would take like four of five hours, at least.”

“At least,” Lisa said. “But she’s obviously not thinking straight.”

“She might be dead already,” I said.

Fiona and I took the cart back toward Helena, while Lisa and Graham took the snowmobiles up to the Abitibi. Gwyneth had told Fiona she grew up in Timmins, so that meant she should know the area well enough to pick one way or the other. I doubted she was going to try and hoof it over a hundred klicks to Quebec.

We didn’t see any obvious footprints in the snow, but that didn’t mean much; we may have wiped them with the horses and the cart, or Gwyneth may have walked in the woods and out of sight.

We wouldn’t know until we found her.

“This is my fault,” Fiona said. “I shouldn’t have gone to the meeting.”

“So Matt and Kayla didn’t notice her leaving?”

“Matt and Kayla probably don’t care either way.”

“They both care,” I said. “Kayla because she likes you a lot more than she lets on, and Matt because…well, same story.”

“Whatever.”

“We’ll find her, Fiona.”

I just hoped we’d find her alive.

We turned onto Birchill Road to avoid the gate at New Post, like she may have done, and by then we still hadn’t found any sign of Gwyneth.

I had Fiona call on the handheld to see if Lisa and Graham had found anything.

Nothing.

“Do you think there are still coyotes out here?” Fiona asked me.

“Maybe. You remember what we read about them. They’ve got quite a range…they could be anywhere.”

“They could be following her.”

“I doubt it.”

Since Gwyneth was maybe a hundred pounds on the outside, anything more than one coyote wouldn’t have to stalk her long before deciding to make the kill. If they’d tracked her, she was already dead.

“We’ll find her,” I said.

That was all I could think to say.

We reached the green mailboxes that mark about halfway down Birchill Road. There was a little waiting-for-the-school-bus shack that looked like an outhouse with an aluminum door and windows.

I saw footprints.

I stopped the cart.

“I’ll check,” Fiona said.

I nodded.

She climbed down and walked toward the shack.

The door opened and Gwyneth stepped out.

“You can’t make me go back,” she said.

“We care about you, Gwyneth,” Fiona said. “You need to come home.”

“I’m not going home with you.” She looked over and glared at me. “And I’m definitely not going home with him.”

“We can’t force you,” I said. “If you don’t want to come back with us, you can stay out here and freeze to death.”

She looked back to Fiona. “I’ll only freeze because they stole my supplies,” she said. “You need to make them give me my stuff back.”

Fiona looked up at me. “Baptiste,” she said, “we need to bring her home. She’s not thinking clearly.”

“You can’t force me.”

“What do you expect me to do?” I asked. “Tie her up?”

“I don’t know,” Fiona said.

“I’m not forcing anyone to live with me.”

Fiona looked back to Gwyneth. She held out her hand.

Gwyneth took it.

“Please, Gwyneth,” Fiona said. “Please come back with me.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t go back with him. You shouldn’t go back with him, either.”

“I trust him. I love him like a father.”

“He’ll hurt you. They all hurt you in the end.”

“Let’s go, Fiona,” I said. “She’s made up her mind.”

“I’m not leaving her,” Fiona said.

“I’m not forcing her.”

“Then I’m going with her.”

I almost laughed. “That’s crazy, Fiona. You’re not even halfway there. You won’t make it.”

“She’s my friend. I can’t just abandon her.”

“I can’t let you die out here. I’m not above tying you up.”

“That’s it,” Gwyneth said, “right there. He’s going to tie you up and then he’s going to rape you.”

I didn’t even know where to begin. What could I even say to something like that?

“He wouldn’t do that,” Fiona said. “Baptiste loves me like a daughter.”

“Ask my father about that,” Gwyneth said. “Ask him what that means. I came up here to get away from him. But I was too stupid to realize that I really needed to get away from all of them. He will hurt you, Fiona. He will rape you. He may even kill you one day.”

Fiona looked back up to me. “We’re going to keep walking,” she said. “I’d really like you to stay with us. But even if you won’t.”

“I’ll stay,” I said. “I’ll follow behind.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

Then she and Gwyneth started walking down the icy gravel road.

I called Lisa on the handheld and told her the story, and I asked her and Graham to catch up with us as soon as they could. Lisa was a nurse and not a psychiatrist, and I wasn’t supposed to know, but I knew that she’d have to have better luck with Gwyneth.

Or at least better luck convincing Fiona that there was no point in humouring that crazy girl for one more minute.

The two of them chatted with each other up ahead of me, sometimes even laughing together.

I kept a good fifty to a hundred paces behind, stopping the cart every few minutes just to keep from catching up.

Occasionally Fiona would look back and give me another smile.

Sometimes Gwyneth would look back and give me another glare.

She was starting to wear on me.

Lisa and Graham arrived within twenty minutes. Lisa left her snowmobile in the ditch and jogged to catch up with the girls.

Graham dumped his snowmobile as well, but climbed up on the cart to join me.

“Fiona’s lost it, too?” he asked.

“She feels like she’d be leaving Gwyneth to die,” I said. “And she’s right.”

“So what do we do?”

“We hope to hell that Lisa’s more persuasive than I am.”

“To be honest, I’m surprised you didn’t try and force her to come home.”

“I don’t want her to come back with us,” I said. “She’s almost as crazy as the fucker I had to shoot.”

“Fiona cares about her.”

“You are such a woman, Graham.”

“Come on, Baptiste. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

“Of course it matters, idiot. I love Fiona. I don’t want her to be upset.”