"You brought Jenga?" said Teddy, leaning against his mother's old Honda as Jello came down the driveway of his house carrying an overstuffed backpack, two plastic grocery bags and a Jenga box.
"I like Jenga!" said Jello defensively.
He threw everything into the open hatch of the car and got into the back seat as Teddy closed the hatch. C. J. was sitting in the front passenger seat looking at her phone.
"It says the Coquihalla is clear all the way to Kamloops and there's no snow in the forecast. Traffic will be rough through Delta and Surrey. Probably pretty heavy until we get past Chilliwack."
"We're stopping for coffee, right?" said Jello.
It was ten after six on a Thursday morning. They were going to catch the 7:00 a.m. ferry from Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen, south of Vancouver, then bypass the big city as much as possible before heading up the Coquihalla Highway to Kamloops. Expected travel time was about six hours, getting them to Kamloops not too long after noon if all went well. That would give them, hopefully, enough time to find Darwin and convince her to come back to Victoria with them before they had to turn around and head back. The last ferry back from Tsawwassen was at 9:00 p.m. so they'd have to leave Kamloops before 4:00 to safely catch it and get home. Teddy figured they could always crash at his dad's place in North Vancouver if they were too late for the ferry.
Teddy pulled away from Jello's house wondering what kind of insanity he was getting himself into. He'd spoken to Neea first thing in the morning and she'd given him an update on his grandfather's condition. Ukki was doing surprisingly well and was impatient to get back home.
"Actually he's driving the nurses and doctors a little bit crazy," Neea had said, laughing. "And he's completely sure he's going to be all better before for ice-fishing season is over!"
It was good to hear her sounding happy again. With all her news from Finland she hadn't asked many questions about Darwin, accepting Teddy's vague answers enough that he hadn't been forced to stretch the truth too much. As far as Neea knew, Darwin was still at their house and everything was just fine. Teddy was determined to make it the truth.
"How do I plug my phone into this thing?" C. J. asked, looking at the car's stereo.
"You can't," said Teddy. "It's just a radio and CD player. Old school."
"What? But I crafted the perfect playlist!"
"Uh, my Mom has some CDs in the glove compartment. I think there's some Coldplay."
"No," she said.
From a pocket in her backpack C. J. pulled out a black cylindrical thing with wires attached. She shoved it into the car's cigarette lighter and plugged a wire into her phone, then turned on the car's FM radio and dialled in a specific frequency. She hit play on her phone and the first chiming guitar chords from her playlist poured out of the speakers.
"Voilà !" she said. "I am the goddess of tech."
The line-up of cars at the ferry terminal at Swartz Bay was huge, but the lady in the ticket booth said that they would most likely get on the 7:00 sailing. If they didn't, it would be an hour wait for the next ferry, which could mess up their entire plan. Teddy pulled the Honda into place at the end of a long row of cars. They had time to grab coffees in the ferry terminal but came right back to the car to anxiously wait.
After watching hundreds of other cars board the big, white ferry, and being convinced they weren't going to make it, it was finally their turn. Teddy followed the car ahead up the ramp. "Oh god, never driven onto a ferry before!" he said nervously. The ferry was one of the huge ones, holding hundreds of cars and more than a thousand passengers. It would be packed full today.
"No?" said C. J.
"No, it's always been either my mom or my dad driving."
"You're doing great," said C. J.
"Just keep it out of the water, bro," said Jello from the back seat.
Teddy took it slowly and drove on without incident. Once parked, they went up to the passenger deck to find a place to sit for the ninety-minute crossing to the mainland. All the window seats were taken so they ended up in the middle of the deck sitting in a row that faced a busy aisle. A steady stream of people walked by, heading to and from the ferry's cafeteria. C. J. sat in the middle, with Teddy on one side and on the other, Jello, half asleep and holding onto his Jenga box. A family walked past and their young son saw the box and said, "Jenga!"
Jello perked up immediately. "Yeah, Jenga!" he said, and raised his hand to give the kid a high-five, but the boy just stared at Jello's hand and kept walking.
"Kid knows what's up," Jello said and closed his eyes again.
"So what's Darwin's last name?" C. J. asked Teddy.
"Umm..." Teddy said.
"You don't know her last name?" said C. J. loudly.
"I do!" said Teddy. "Give me a second. It's..."
"Lilley," said Jello, eyes still closed.
"Yes!" said Teddy. "Lilley. How do you know?"
"Lily, like the flower?" asked C. J.
"No, like double L, E, Y," said Teddy.
"OK. And the brother's name is what?"
"Oh god... Hang on. I have her note here."
"You're hopeless," said C. J.
Teddy took the folded note from his pocket. "It's Kev. Kevin, I guess."
C. J. typed it into a search box on her phone, then scrolled through a list.
"Where are you looking?" asked Teddy.
"Facebook," said C. J. "I know Darwin isn't on here, but maybe Kevin is. There can't be that many Kevin Lilleys in Kamloops... Come on Kev, where are you?... This guy? No, definitely not. He's like fifty. Um... could be this one. Too blonde to be her brother? Looks like the right age though. Let's see if he cares about privacy... Nope! Sweet! We have photos!"
Teddy leaned over to look at C. J.'s phone.
"Whaddaya think?" she said. "Resemblance?"
Teddy frowned looking at a picture of a guy wearing a baseball hat, half his face in shadows, then another shot of the guy dressed in a tux with his bowtie loosened, looking a little drunk.
"Maybe?" Teddy said. "Keep going."
"I guess this is his girlfriend, or wife maybe. Yup, wife. These are wedding pics! Perfect! That means family!"
C. J. went through a bunch of pictures from the wedding: guys in rented tuxedos, girls in frilly dresses, everyone happy and smiling. There were a few of various bridesmaids who all wore matching royal blue dresses. C. J. stopped at a particular photo.
"Oh my God!" said Teddy.
"Bingo," said C. J.
There was Darwin, smiling widely in her royal blue dress, her hair done up in an artful bun tied with pearls. She was clearly uncomfortable and embarrassed to be all dressed up, but she looked undeniably beautiful.
"Lipstick!" said C. J. "What a hottie!"
Jello looked over. "Definitely," he said, nodding his head in approval.
Teddy stared at the photo for a while, hardly able to believe that it was the same girl who'd been living with them, the same girl he was kissing less than forty-eight hours ago. Then, remembering what they had to do, said, "OK, so that's the right Kevin, but it's not like his address will be on here, right?"
"Look up here," said C. J. "He works at some place called Odin Alarm Systems. Let's see, Odin, Odin... there, it's on McGill Road in Kamloops. Perfecto! We can just go find him where he works and talk to him about Darwin."
"You're a genius," said Teddy.
Jello had closed his eyes again but was listening in. "Is there a number?" he asked. "Why don't you call the place?"
"Hmm, we could do that," said C. J.
"Why?" asked Teddy "Just to make sure he's gonna be there? I mean we still have to go to Kamloops to get Darwin, right?"
"Let's call," said C. J. "What should I say?"
"Wait, it's only 7:15," Teddy said. "What time do they open?"
"Oh, right," said C. J. "Probably not till 9:00 or so. OK, we'll call later. Remind me."
They played Jenga to pass the time for the rest of the crossing to Tsawwassen, piling pieces carefully on the vinyl seat vacated by C. J. who knelt on the floor. Half the passengers on the ferry looked over every time the tower noisily fell, which happened frequently as the ferry rolled with the waves. Jello had a minor panic when it was time to go back to the car to disembark and they had to spend five minutes looking for one of the pieces.
They drove through Vancouver's suburbs of Delta and Surrey, staying well south the city centre. C. J. and her phone guided Teddy to the right exits and interchanges and they made steady progress, despite the traffic.
Before long they were on Highway 1, also known as the Trans-Canada Highway. If they'd wanted to, they could have stayed on that same highway for more than seven thousand kilometres as it spanned the entire country, from the Rockies through the Prairie provinces, then Ontario and Québec, continuing all the way to the Maritimes on the eastern coast of Canada. Fortunately for them they didn't have that far to go. They'd be turning off Highway 1 just the other side of the town of Hope and heading north on the Coquihalla Highway toward Kamloops.
As they were approaching Abbotsford, Teddy noticed the time: 9:05.
"Hey, it's time to call that place," he said.
"Oh right," said C. J. She found the number for Odin Alarm Systems and called.
"Hi," she said. "I'm wondering if Kevin Lilley is working there today? ... Oh. Do you know when he'll be back? Hmm... OK, we're friends of his family and we're coming to Kamloops for the day. I was hoping to catch up with him. If we come into the office there, do you think we'll be able to see him?"
She covered the phone with her hand and in a hushed voice said, "She's not sure if he'll be in the office today. He's out in the truck doing service calls."
"Can we get his cell number?" Teddy asked.
"Would it be possible to get his cell number?" C. J. asked the woman on the phone.
"Right," C. J. said after a moment. "I understand."
"Negative," C. J. said, covering the phone again. "She's not allowed to give out his number."
"Damn, OK," said Teddy. "Um... how 'bout you give your number and he can call us?"
"Good idea!" said C. J. and asked the woman if that would be OK. C. J. gave her the number, thanked her and said goodbye.
"Now we just wait and see if he calls, I guess," she said, looking out at the road ahead.
She unpaused the music and was quietly humming along when there was a clattering sound from the back seat.
"Crap!" said Jello, picking up Jenga pieces from the floor of the car.
An hour passed with no call from Kevin. Traffic was much lighter now that the sprawl of Greater Vancouver had given way to wide fields of loamy Fraser Valley farmland. Teddy could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd ever ventured this far east out of Vancouver. A couple of school trips, and once or twice with his Dad and Cassie, that was about it. It always felt like another part of the world, like you were halfway across the continent as soon as you left Vancouver.
An electronic chirp came from the back seat and Jello announced, "Text from Byronius. He's asking if we've been taken out by a jack-knifed semi."
Teddy laughed a little nervously and said, "Tell him we're not even on the Coquihalla yet."
The Coq was a notoriously dangerous highway that climbed over the Cascade Mountains that separate the evergreen forests of the coast from the strip of near-desert running up B.C.'s interior. Up on the pass the weather could change quickly with winter storms often sweeping in at a moment's notice. It was only late-October but Teddy was not looking forward to it.
When they got hungry, Jello broke out the sandwiches his mother had made for them, neatly wrapped in wax paper, and passed them around along with juice boxes that made them all feel, in a comforting way, like they were back in high school. After lunch and a stop for gas, C. J. decided it was time to keep Jello company in the back seat, so Teddy was left alone up front chauffeuring the two love birds. There was enough kissing, giggling and whispering to make Teddy feel a little uncomfortable but he concentrated on the road and on the music from C. J.'s playlist. Then came a squeal from the back seat.
"Keep your hands to yourself, mister!" said C. J.
"It wasn't me," said Jello. "It was Teddy. You can't trust that guy!"
"Yeah, right," said C. J. "Your arms aren't that long, are they Ted?"
"Uhh," said Teddy.
"Wait! My phone!" said C. J., disentangling from Jello and tugging the phone from her pocket.
"Hello?" she said quickly. "Yes! Yes, I did. Sorry to bother you at work, but we're friends of Darwin... from Victoria. My name's C. J. and I'm with Teddy Aiken. Teddy and his mom are the ones who've been helping Darwin, not sure if you know about all that... Mmhm... yeah, well we were hoping to meet up with her there in Kamloops. She's staying with you, right?"
C. J. paused. In the rear-view mirror Teddy saw a frown come over her face.
"You haven't? Really? Umm... one sec..."
C. J. covered the phone and said, "He says he hasn't seen Darwin in almost a year! She definitely isn't staying with him."
"What?" said Teddy.
She put the phone back to her ear. "Um, could she possibly be staying with your parents, or maybe someone else in the family? She would have gotten to Kamloops just yesterday. She was coming up by bus, we think."
Again, C. J. frowned. "Really? Umm... wow. Well... thanks for calling us back... Wait, would it be okay if I call again if we have any more questions? We really want to get in touch with her. And if you talk to her, let her know we're trying to find her, OK? Thanks so much! Right, OK... Bye!"
C. J. put her phone back in her pocket. "He says his brother Dan lives with their parents and they don't have any other family anywhere near Kamloops. If Darwin was in town his mother would know and she'd have said something when he talked to her this morning. He says he's ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure she's not in Kamloops."
"What the hell?" said Teddy. "Where is she then?"
"She probably never left Victoria," Jello said.
"Maybe she went to her ex-boyfriend's place," said Teddy. "Oh, what was his name? Nathan something... no, Ethan! That was it!"
"Um," said C. J. "You want me to look up every Ethan in Kamloops?"
"She probably never left," said Jello, louder this time.
"Maybe Ethan is Facebook friends with Kevin?" said Teddy.
"Maybe!" said C. J., bringing up a list of Kevin's friends.
"Hey, you two detectives," said Jello. "Did you hear what I said? Doesn't it make way more sense that Darwin is still in Victoria?"
"No!" said C. J.
"Yeah," said Teddy, sadly.
"Yeah?" C. J. asked.
"Sure," said Jello. "Maybe she was pissed at Teddy and didn't want to tell him the truth, or maybe she just didn't want him and Neea to worry about her anymore, or get their place trashed again. If she says she's going back to her friends on the street they'd freak out, but if she says she's going home to Kamloops, they'd be cool with it. She said herself that lying is her default, right Ted? It's what she does."
"Jell's right," said Teddy, sounding miserable. "She's still in Victoria... This was a total waste of time."
Teddy steered off at the next exit and drove around to rejoin the highway going south, back the way they'd come. After a couple of minutes C. J. said, "The aunt! What was her name?"
"Yvonne?" said Teddy. "Darwin kinda hated living there, but yeah, I should have thought of that."
"I don't suppose you have Yvonne's number?"
"Nope. I know where she lives though. I can check there once we're back in town."
The trip home wasn't much fun. They ran into a traffic jam west of Chilliwack and it took an hour to finally crawl past a delivery van with the word "Sublime" on the side that was mashed into the back of a green SUV. It didn't look like anyone was hurt, but the hold-up meant that they got to the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen just a few agonizing minutes too late to catch the 3:00 ferry back to Swartz Bay. The next ferry wasn't until 5:00. The grey day turned rainy and no one said much as they waited in the car, rain drumming endlessly on the roof.
Once on the ferry they found seats by the window, though there wasn't much to look at except streaks of rain, heavy grey mist and whitecaps on the Strait of Georgia. C. J. and Jello talked about Darwin, trying their best to cheer Teddy up by coming up with theories about how Darwin might still have feelings for Teddy but felt like she had to go back to her life on the street. Teddy wasn't buying it. In his mind, he drove her away, not only from him, but from Neea's care and from the long, hard recovery that had set her up for a brighter future and maybe even saved her life. He was sure he'd ruined all of it.
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â D.B.