Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

His little girl had not come home yet. Jack got in the car beside him, tossing McCarroll’s hat into the back seat. The police had told Blair that they could not consider her “missing” after merely three hours. Jack did not remark on the stupidity of this, not wanting to stoke McCarroll’s distress. Instead, he asked, “Have you called the service police?” They drove to the MPs’ office, where Corporal Novotny climbed immediately into his patrol car and radioed another to join the search.

They had just driven past the willow tree, crawling south along the Huron County road, when Jack suggested Blair turn back and head for the schoolyard where the Brownies were gathered. They could ask Claire’s assembled friends if they knew where she might be.

The driver’s door opens as the car lurches to a halt beside the toadstool. Madeleine watches as Mr. McCarroll gets out, along with a second man from the passenger side. Dad. A winged Brownie has stopped short on the golden pathway; everyone waits while Mr. McCarroll speaks quietly to Miss Lang. Behind the two of them, the sun is setting fast. It will be dark before the Brownies have their refreshments. Madeleine waits to catch her father’s eye, but he looks past her at her mother.

“Attention Brownies,” says Miss Lang. “Mr. McCarroll would like to know if anyone has seen Claire recently?”

Recently . When you are nine or ten years old, “recently” means a minute ago. Certainly it refers to nothing that occurred before supper or in the remote reaches of this afternoon. No hands go up.

Mr. McCarroll turns to them. “Girls and boys—”

Madeleine looks at Lisa Ridelle, Lisa looks back and they burst into stifled giggles. Boys?! There are no boys in Brownies! Madeleine looks up. Her father is staring at her now, one eyebrow slightly raised. She stops giggling.

“I would appreciate knowing,” continues Mr. McCarroll, unaware of his gaffe, “if any of you saw Claire today at any time at all.”

Several hands go up. She was seen by almost everyone at school today. She was seen afterwards in the schoolyard by Madeleine, Marjorie — who jogs Grace’s memory with a jab — and by Cathy Baxter and the other girls who were helping Miss Lang. Diane Vogel saw her out her living-room window, talking into a drainpipe in the ditch near the corner of Columbia Drive and St. Lawrence — it must have been between three-thirty and four because her mother was watching Secret Storm . Madeleine’s hand is still up and Miss Lang says, “Yes Madeleine?”

“Me and Colleen — I mean Colleen and I — saw her on the county road.”

“Walking south?” asks Dad.

“Um,” says Madeleine, “she was going to Rock Bass.”

Claire’s father walks so suddenly toward Madeleine that she starts. He drops to one knee, his face a bit too close to hers — is she in trouble or something? No, it’s Mr. McCarroll who is in trouble. There are lines between his eyebrows, his Adam’s apple looks raw as he swallows and says in his soft southern voice, “Where’s that at, honey?”

“Um, you turn at the dirt road.”

“What dirt road?”

“At the willow tree. Before the quarry.”

“Quarry?”

“Where kids swim.”

“Oh my God—” Mr. McCarroll gets up and places a hand over his mouth.

Dad is there suddenly. He leans in and asks, as though making himself perfectly clear in a foreign language, “That’s where you would turn right if you were going to Rock Bass?”

Is he mad at me? “Yeah.”

Miss Lang and Maman have joined them now, they are standing over her; all the Brownies are staring. Madeleine starts to feel strange, as though she were hiding something — Claire in a sack. Why are they leaning so close?

Her father says to Mr. McCarroll, “Rock Bass is about half a mile west of the county road, if she was going there she’d’ve turned long before the quarry, Blair, she’s nowhere near the water.”

Mr. McCarroll nods and frowns. Her father continues, “That puts her there at around four, four-thirty, eh? We can be there in ten minutes.”

Madeleine says, “Ricky might know.”

Everyone looks at her again. Mr. McCarroll, his lips no longer stiff but parted now, kneels back down. Madeleine can see his five o’clock shadow; his face, bony and almost as young as Ricky Froelich’s, white scalp visible through his brush cut. He looks at Madeleine in a way that no adult ever has. Supplicant. Like the faces at the foot of the Cross.

She says, relieved to have come up with the right answer, “She was with Ricky and Elizabeth. And Rex.”

The adults look somewhat reassured at the mention of Ricky’s name. If Claire was with him, she is bound to be all right.

Dad pats her on the head. “Good girl,” he says, moving to follow Mr. McCarroll back to the car.

Marjorie Nolan pipes up, “She was going for a picnic with him.” The men stop and turn again.

Madeleine says, “No she wasn’t, Claire probably just made that up,” and looks at Mr. McCarroll, concerned lest she has been rude. “Sometimes she just likes to pretend.” Mr. McCarroll smiles at her and goes to his car. Jack follows.

The car backs over the grass, then fishtails a little as it accelerates out of the parking lot, onto the road, and they’re gone.

Marjorie Nolan raises her hand. “Miss Lang, could I please have my wings now?” she says, in a sarcastic voice that is intended to be funny. Several girls laugh, and Miss Lang smiles. There is a general sense of relief. They’ll find Claire. If she was with Ricky Froelich, then no harm can have befallen her.

The two men drive to a spot where the fence has been left unrepaired, and Blair follows Jack along the path to the edge of the ravine. They skid down and walk for a mile in opposite directions along the stream. It is deeper and faster at this time of year, but it wouldn’t come above the waist of a nine-year-old, and it’s well furnished with logs and stepping stones. Still, both men look not only to left and right, they look also into the water as they go.

Darkness falls and Jack rides with McCarroll well into the night, at a snail’s pace, the headlights of the Chrysler illuminating stark fields on either side of one dirt road after another, in an ever-widening circle that takes in the Huron County seat of Goderich and grazes the eastern shore of the great lake glimmering beyond the dunes. Inland once more, past the lights of farmhouses, pulling in at a gas station to call again — has Claire turned up yet? — the look on McCarroll’s face as he hangs up and walks back to the car: disoriented, as though he had only recently arrived on this planet. Driving, driving, between columns of trees whose shadows grow more animated with the passing minutes, until Jack is able to persuade him, “for your wife’s sake,” to head for home.

Jack doesn’t mention having seen Ricky Froelich out running shortly after four-thirty this afternoon on Highway 4. At this point, it doesn’t seem necessary to discourage McCarroll by telling him that Claire was not with the boy.

AT NINE P.M., the Ontario Provincial Police had a local radio station broadcast Claire’s description, and every squad car in the area was alerted; this despite the fact that she was not yet officially missing. For anyone who knew Claire, her failure to show up at the most important Brownie pack meeting of the year was enough to indicate that she was missing. But the OPP didn’t know her. They were able to say things like “You never know with kids, they get strange ideas, she may turn up at a relative’s place.”

“All our relatives are in Virginia.”

“Oh. Well, Mrs. McCarroll, it’s a bit soon to jump to conclusions. Our officers are keeping a sharp eye out. Why don’t you get some rest and give us a call in the morning.”