For a second, Kane hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he tossed them in the box with the cans of soup.
When everything was sorted, Kane stacked two of the bigger boxes one on top of the other and headed back to the cabin. I took the last smaller one and followed. We locked it all in the cold room, then headed back to the plane.
John had reloaded the other boxes filled with fruits and vegetables that would expire back into the plane by the time we’d stepped onto the dock.
“I can probably take you to Van,” he told us when we stopped in front of him, “but I’ll have to borrow my buddy’s plane. Might work, though. We’ll have to see once we get back to town. It could take a day or so.”
“The faster the better,” I said. The sooner we talked to Kane’s cousin, the sooner we could find answers about my sister.
24
KANE
The plane—aBeaver—hummed loudly around us. Brooke and I sat in the back seat side by side. We each wore headsets with ear protection and a mic so we could hear John if he spoke to us.
Brooke was rigid beside me. I took her hand. I knew she worried about her sister. It wouldn’t be long before we landed. A trek that would have taken days and days of hard walking cross country only took a little over an hour in a plane.
Looking up at me, she tightened her hand on mine, then went back to staring out the window.
The landscape was a carpet of blue, green, and gray. The boreal forest took up almost thirty percent of Canada, cutting a swath right across the center, through the north of the provinces and practically all of the Northwest Territories and Yukon.
The plane dipped in a pocket of air, and Brooke tightened her hold on my hand. There were moments when it felt like the wind grabbed a hold of the little plane and shook it back and forth just for fun. I brushed my thumb over the back of her hand.
Another dip, and John began our descent. The glacier lake, Lac La Ronge, came into view, a massive mammoth of a thing. My lake was a drop in the pond compared to this one. It had over a thousand little and not so little islands speckled through it. The lower we went, the more of the town of La Ronge became visible. Buildings, mostly square, punctuated the shoreline. Roads ran up and away from the lake, disappearing into the trees.
The town—two towns really, La Ronge and Air Ronge, bisected by a river—was also connected to six First Nations reserves. The borders of the town and the reserves were almost indistinguishable except for where the pavement turned into dirt roads. Altogether, their populations amounted to about eight thousand people.
The floats hit the water, the engine droning loudly as John slowed the plane. Multiple docks stuck out into the lake in intervals, either connected to businesses or houses.
John’s home was “downtown,” a trailer-style aluminum building with one long dock. A bush pilot company had its base of operations two doors down. Four float planes, two Beavers and two Otters, were secured against a pair of docks coming out of their main building, an aluminum warehouse painted white—John’s direct competition. He’d told me once they’d tried to get him to join the company, but he preferred to do his own thing, didn’t want to work for the “white man” as he put it. He’d said it with a laugh, but I knew he wasn’t joking.
The aircraft quieted as we floated toward the dock, then John cut the engine. He opened his door, hopped out, and tied off the plane. I got out first, then helped Brooke down with my hands on her waist before reaching inside for my duffel bag.
The town was quiet, but the strangeness of it pressed in on me. It had been years since I’d been here, with no other contact except John and now Brooke. Even though traffic only whispered from the road up the hill, the sound of it grated on me.
“What do you want me to do with your groceries?” John asked once he’d closed the door.
I looked at Brooke, knowing she’d answer. “Could you donate them to someone who might need it?” We’d talked about it yesterday. I’d buy new veggies when I returned, whenever that would be. It all depended on how quickly we could find her sister.
“Can do.” John pushed his cap back on his forehead. “I’ll need to make some phone calls about that trip to Vancouver. Why don’t you come inside?”
My hand on the base of Brooke’s spine, I guided her after John as he led the way along the dock, up the stairs, then unlocked the back door to his building. At a width of about eighteen feet, it was one long, narrow corridor. We passed through a tidy living room and a modern kitchen, then we were in an office, the front door off to the left. A bedroom lay behind a closed door in front of us.
John threw his hat on the desk and picked up his cell phone. When I gestured to one of the lockers on the side, John nodded. “Yep, your stuff is still there.” He tossed me a set of keys from the middle drawer of the desk.
The first time John flew me to the land I’d purchased on the lake, I’d left a box of things I wouldn’t need along with emergency cash in case we ran into any problems with my accounts. Everything I purchased went through a third-party accountant. For a reasonable fee, John sent and received my mail, which he added to the cost of my supply deliveries.
I found the key marked with a six and opened the locker. My old wallet lay inside, along with a thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. Taking out five hundred, I tucked the wallet in my back pocket, then handed the brown bills to Brooke.
She stared at the wad, blinking. “What’s this for?”
Suppressing a smile at her disgruntled expression, I tugged her outside and up the four steps to street level. La Ronge Avenue, the town’s main street, wound its way along the shore of the lake. A public beach was situated a few blocks down, in the middle of what everyone considered downtown. No one would use it until the temperatures got hotter mid-summer. With a lake this size, a wet suit was almost needed any other time of the year, unless a person swam in one of the warmer bays.
Cars drove at a slow pace in front of us: white trucks, black SUVs, a blue beater blaring a 70s rock ballad out its window. Each sound slapped at me, and I tried not to flinch. I knew I’d get used to it. There weren’t any traffic lights in this town, just four-way stops and the occasional yield sign. Still holding Brooke’s hand, I gestured across the street at the pharmacy and a clothing store called The Burrow.
She curled the money into a roll. “Right.” Then she glanced over her shoulder at John through the window, busy on the phone.
The dazed expression on her face worried me. I ran a hand up her spine.
