Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

The mischievous grin in her voice makes Cal grin back, right across half the world. “Hey,” he says, mock-offended. “I could run. If I wanted to.”

“So do it. Worst case, you’ll give her something to laugh at, and she could probably use that. She’ll be looking for ways to feel like the world can still be normal. Laughing is good.”

All her confidence and competence blow Cal clean away. His baby girl is, somehow, a grown adult who knows how to get shit done and done well; who knows things, and has skills, that he doesn’t. Here he was fretting about her like a mama hen, listening every minute for her to fall to pieces, and all the while she was just tired out from the hard work it’s taken to grow into this. He listens to her talk about regressive behaviors and modeling healthy emotional expression, and pictures her sitting at ease next to some American equivalent of Trey, deftly and calmly transforming all these words into solid action. It seems to him that he can’t have fucked up too badly, if Alyssa turned out like this.

“All of that sounds pretty great,” he says, when she finishes up.

“Well, I’ve had practice. An awful lot of the kids at work, they’ve lost someone, one way or another.”

“They’re lucky to have you around.”

Alyssa laughs her big wonderful laugh. “Yeah, mostly they think so too. Not always. Is any of that going to be useful?”

“Oh yeah. I’m gonna keep every bit of it in mind. Except maybe the running.”

“I can put it in an email, if you want. And if anything specific comes up, like if she starts engaging in risky behaviors or whatever, let me know and I’ll give you whatever strategies I’ve got.”

“That’d be great. Thanks, kiddo. I mean it.”

“Anytime. You’ll be fine. Better than fine. Remember when Puffle got hit by the car? You drove us all the way out to that forest because I wanted to bury her there. And you carved her a gravestone and everything.”

“I remember,” Cal says. He wishes he could call Donna and tell her that he thinks he might get what she was talking about, at least some of the time.

“That was exactly what I needed. You’ll be fine. Just, Dad . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Your neighbor girl, she really needs consistency right now. Like, the last thing she needs is someone else disappearing on her. So, I mean, if you were planning on coming home any time soon . . . probably you should point her to someone else she can talk to, instead. Maybe another neighbor you trust, or—”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I know.” He almost asks her whether she wants him to come back. He stops himself in time; it wouldn’t be right to put that on her.

“Yeah, I figured you did. Just checking.” In the background, Ben’s voice says something. “Dad, I’ve got to go, we’re meeting people for dinner—”

“Go ahead,” Cal says. “Say hi to Ben from me. And tell your mama I sent my best. I don’t want to hassle her, but I’d like her to know that I’m wishing her well.”

“Will do. Talk soon.”

“Hey,” Cal says, before she can hang up. “I picked up this little toy sheep in town. It reminded me of all those toys you used to have when you were little, the raccoon and all. Can I send it to you? Or don’t you want fluffy toys any more, now that you’re all grown up?”

“I would totally love a toy sheep,” Alyssa says. He can hear her smiling. “He’ll get along great with the raccoon. Night.”

“Night, sweet pea. You have a good dinner. Don’t get to bed too late.”

“ Dad ,” she says, laughing, and she’s gone. Cal sits on the step for another while, drinking his beer and watching the stars, waiting for the morning.

The weather holds; the morning comes in with harsh winter sunshine sliding low across the fields and in at Cal’s window. The air of the house has a new, icy edge that the heaters only partly dispel. Cal eats breakfast, re-straps his knee and puts on most of the clothes he owns. When it comes time for Mart’s tea break, he heads up that way.

The land has left its luring autumn self behind and put on a new, aloof beauty. The greens and golds have thinned to watercolor; the sky is one scoured sweep of pale blue, and the mountains are so clear it seems like Cal can see each distant clump of browning heather, sharp and distinct. The verges are still soft from the rain, with puddles in the ruts. Cal’s breath smokes and spreads. He takes the walk slowly, sparing his knee. He knows he’s walking into a hard day, in a hard place.

Kojak is rooting around a corner of Mart’s garden, digging for something too interesting to be left. Mart comes to the door. “Long time no see, bucko,” he says, smiling up at Cal. “I was starting to wonder should we send in a search party to see were you still with us. But you’re looking in fine fettle altogether.”

“Doing OK,” Cal says. “Well enough to go out digging, now that the rain’s stopped.”

Mart, peering at Cal’s face from various angles, ignores that. “I’d say that nose is just about back to its former glory,” he says. “Lena must be pleased, is she? Or is she after ditching you? I haven’t seen her car around our way.”

“Guess she’s been busy,” Cal says. “Would you be free to take me for that walk?”

The mischief falls away from Mart’s face. He says, “Didja talk to the child?”

“Yeah. She’s not gonna do anything.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I’m sure.”

“Your call, Sunny Jim,” Mart says. “I hope you’re right.” He whistles for Kojak. Kojak comes bounding happily over to exchange pleasantries with Cal, but Mart motions him into the house. “We don’t want him along for this. Wait there a moment, now; I’ll be back to you.”

He shuts the door behind him. Cal watches a flock of starlings billow like a genie against the sky until Mart comes back, wearing his wax jacket and a thick knitted beanie in a startling shade of neon yellow. For an instant Cal has the urge to make some crack about it, call him DJ Cookie Crumble or some such, before he remembers they’re no longer on those terms. It catches him with a twist of loneliness. He liked Mart.

Mart is carrying his crook and a straight-edged spade. “That’s for you,” he says, holding out the spade to Cal. “Will you be able to use it, with that collarbone?”

“I’ll figure something out,” Cal says. He balances the spade over his good shoulder.

“How about that knee? It’s a long aul’ walk, and half of it’s not on roads. If that knee lets you down on the mountainside, there’s nothing I’ll be able to do for you.”

“Call in P.J. and Francie. They can carry me down.”

“I haven’t brought them up to speed on this wee expedition,” Mart says. “They wouldn’t approve. They don’t know you as well as I do, sure. You can’t hold it against them.”

“My knee’s fine,” Cal says. “Let’s go.”

The walk is a long one. They start up the same mountain road that Cal took to the Reddy place, but half a mile up Mart points his crook at a side trail, too narrow for them to walk abreast, its entrance almost hidden by scrubby trees and long grass. “You wouldn’t have spotted this, now,” he says, smiling at Cal. “This mountain’s fulla tricks, so it is.”

“You know ’em,” Cal says. “You go ahead.” He doesn’t want Mart at his back.

The trail runs over rises and between boulders, among thorny flares of yellow gorse and stretches of leggy heather whose purple bells are fading to brown paper. “All this here,” Mart says, stirring a clump of heather with his crook as he passes, “that’s ling heather. You’d get the finest honey in the world from that. A fella called Peadar Ruadh that lived up here, he usedta keep bees, when I was a child. My granny’d send us up for a jar of his honey. She did swear by it for the aul’ kidney troubles. A spoonful of that morning and evening, and you’d be right as rain in no time.”