Page 91 of The Wild Beneath

A pair of headlights blinds Evan momentarily as he crosses onto Granville Bridge. He grips the steering wheel. His hands are freezing and sweaty at the same time and his uniform clings to his neck. He cracks the window to get a full breath. There’s no point in arguing the tape recordings in his head; they always say the same thing, about how awful he is, how ashamed of himself he should be. He knows from experience that he has to let them play out until they reach the end.

That night in the library, as the violinists descended the stairs, leaving them alone with the janitor and his broom, Annie said: “I don’t deserve you. I haven’t been there for you at all.”

“You’re right here.” He put his hand over top of hers. “We can get back to the way it was between us, Annie. I know we can.”

As he said it, Evan wasn’t as confident as he wanted to be. But he knew what he’d done, and now it was his responsibility to keep life going for her. An eternity must have passed while he waited for Annie to say something. She looked at him with her grey-blue eyes and they held him there, a mooring buoy.

“I have to get better,” she said with a determined look on her face. “For us.”

It settled something inside her. A door opened, and they stepped through it.

They go to hear music all the time now. It doesn’t get old; she seems to have a full-body experience each time. Season tickets at the Orpheum, ukulele on Sunday afternoons at the pub down the street, even concerts at the Pacific National Exhibition. She collects the ticket stubs for performances they attend in a stack in her desk drawer, runs her fingertips over the neatly perforated edges, reminds him which ones she liked best. She plans ahead and fits in shows between ER shifts and department meetings and rounds. She doesn’t talk about her family much anymore. It was unusual that she mentioned Aiden, yesterday. She talks about medical conferences and mortgage rates and possibly learning to play the cello.

He still can’t bring himself to tell her the truth about what happened on the tug.

It nags at him. That deeper questioning: Had Walker been what she really needed? Seeing her there on the ocean yesterday... it’s a version of her he misses. In part, that’s what made him suggest the coast guard in the first place.

Evan approaches West 4th Ave. now. He has to get through another rescue today, then a slog of mission reporting. So much paperwork to deal with. His cell buzzes again in the cup holder and he answers on the dash.

“Hey, bud. You caffeinated yet?” Peter says.

He looks down at his untouched coffee. “No.”

“I gotta send you to Campbell River.”

He waits for Peter to go on with details, knowing he will, while he takes a sip of coffee and prays the caffeine focuses his brain.

“King tide event last night. A tug collided with a container ship near Desolation Sound. Its lines are tangled up with the ship’s engine. Visibility is shit, too. Winds forty knots, gusts to sixty.”

“Can’t they handle it out of the Campbell River station?”

“They’re short an engineer, for starters.”

Evan puts his coffee back in the cupholder and rubs his chin. “You have a pilot for me?”

“I’ll even throw in two cadets.”

Evan turns onto West 4th Ave. “Alright,” he says, because that’s what he always says. He’s good at this job. Being good at something and liking it are two different things. “My ETA’s four minutes.”

Evan rolls the window back up. He totals the hours it’ll be before he and Annie will sync up. Not until tomorrow morning, likely.

He wants to call the apartment, wake her up, hear her voice tell him he doesn’t need to be as worried as he is—­about any of it.

All he wants to do is get home.

Chapter 34

Annie rolls over to an empty space.

She fans her fingers over the wrinkly sheets, the rounded edge of the mattress. It’s cold on Evan’s side.

Her ears flood with traffic noise.

Their second-floor rental apartment in East Van is too close to the road. They’ve talked about getting their own place—­maybe a house?—­but they’re still saving up, still debating the merits of neighbourhoods. This bedroom overlooks cracked asphalt and a convenience store awning. She stands at the window in her socks. Outside: A pickup with a faulty muffler drives by; a bus hisses its air brakes. Music plays from the window of a black Volkswagen Golf.

Her breath fogs the glass.

The rest of the world moves. Across the street, a woman in platform sneakers walks her Chihuahua. The dog sniffs the weedy base of a mailbox while she scrolls her phone. A door chime, then a balding man in a crisp suit emerges from the store below. He pours sugar from a torn paper package into a Styrofoam coffee cup.