At first, every few months to a year, the constable would drive to the abandoned center, just to check on things. He felt as if he had unfinished business there. Metal scrappers stripped the place of every cot leg and stray bit of metal they could remove, even the wires in the walls. The plaster began to reek of mold and decay. The constable boltedno trespassingsigns on the gate and adangersign on the door.
Still, he kept returning, and sometimes he paused on the second floor, looked into the silent array of trees, and wondered.
He often thought of the boy in the well. Sometimes you had to let things go. He felt he had failed. Years later, he would hire a secretary, and she would indeed purge many of his old reports, and by then he would feel he would rather not know if he had made a mistake, after all.
In the town, Aspire grew. When she was old enough to hold a spoon, she was put to work in the kitchen with her mother. It was clear that this was more for Gertrude’s benefit than the child’s. The town tried to intervene, gently, by making sure the girl got to school.
The memorial aged, but the stone had been well cut. Everyone aged.The coast was a place where you got older, like the sturdy pines facing away from the wind. If you look closely at their needles, they are flat on the wind side, bulging with promise on the lee.
The constable’s children grew up. Like most coastal kids, they left and didn’t come back. His wife stayed. The bartender died in a freak accident when a keg he was keeping on a rack rolled off and fell on him. The cook got the job at the nursing home. Ike Tressler vanished into the woods, and eventually, the constable almost forgot about him. Just as they all nearly forgot about Ralph, the kindly custodian who had disappeared soon after the boy died.
Charlie ran his hotel, and on good days, the locals would see him out on the dunes, studying the sea. The crowds never did come.
33
“You’re back!” Amanda’s boss said.
“I still have two more days,” she said. “But I brought something for you.”
“It’ll be great to have you back. Hey, I heard Molly loves your videos. Sean hooked up a television outside her sleeping quarters. She goes in there, watches you. The one you just sent, from Alaska? He said she stood straight up.”
Amanda wasn’t sure that was good, but she smiled at him. He got up, and celebrated her return by popping a gumball in his mouth. Today he wore a ratty shirt that saidBlue Gallery. The back saidART MUSIC BEER.
She handed over a file.
“For me?”
“Open it,” she said.
Inside was a printout of a DNA profile. On one side was Molly. On the other side were three other bears.
“What’s this all about?” he asked.
Amanda stood next to him and pointed. “This one is Molly. This next one is from the tooth that was supposedly taken from her mother. The rescuers found the body on the ice, a week after taking Molly.”
“It’s not a match.”
“Because it wasn’t her mother.”
“Okay. Fill me in here.”
“This other bear here, this one is her mother.” Amanda pointed. “I got the DNA from hair I took from a sleeping den in Anger Bay, Alaska.” His eyes jumped to her, full of alarm and amusement. “One of the former researchers at the station, Pete Ashoona, took me there. I found Pete after I started looking into what happened to Molly. I had questions, and he had answers.”
Her boss stopped smiling. His face had become very serious.
“So her mother is alive.”
“Polar bears can live up to thirty years in the wild. They start having babies around age four or five. She’s probably not fertile anymore, but yes, she’s still there, in the same territory.”
“Okay. Tell me more.”
“Pete Ashoona told me what really happened. He said the men were out in an area known for bears. One of the researchers fell through the snow into a maternity den. The mother was inside. She charged at them. They shot at her. They thought she was hit—she took off running. They took Molly, thinking it was for the best. When they found the remains of a female bear on the ice, they assumed it was the dead mother.”
“What happened to the real mother?”
“She came back a few weeks later. She tracked them to the station and hung outside for weeks, charging at them. Trying to kill them. She knew they had taken her babies.”
“Hold up here. You just said ‘babies.’”
