Page 13 of Lost With My Enemy

"I need to take this," I say, standing up too fast, the tea sloshing. "It's my client."

"It's 9 PM."

"Napkins don't observe business hours."

He laughs. A real one, startled out of him. And I retreat to the cabin with my phone and my racing heart and a growing suspicion that the thing I'm most afraid of on this trip isn't the schedule falling apart.

It's wanting it to.

CHAPTER FOUR

JAXON

The canoe was a mistake.

To be clear, the canoe itself is a perfectly good canoe. Sixteen-foot Prospector, cedar strip, bought it from an old guy in Bragg Creek three summers ago for six hundred bucks and a case of Kokanee. It's been across Lake Louise, through the Bow River valley, and down enough backcountry waterways to qualify for frequent paddler status.

The mistake was convincing Elise Boyd to get in it.

We're on a lake near Batchawana Bay, an hour north of Sault Ste. Marie, because this morning over coffee at the rental I said, "The lake's calm, the light's perfect, let me get some photos from the water," and she said, "Absolutely not," and I said, "Twenty minutes," and she said, "You said thirty was the max," and I said, "So I'm under budget," and she looked at me for a long time and said, "Fine, but if I die in a canoe in northern Ontario, my ghost will haunt your truck forever."

That was forty-five minutes ago.

The first fifteen minutes went well. Elise sat in the bow, rigid as a fence post, gripping both gunwales while I paddled from the stern. The lake was glass. Mist sat on the water in thin white sheets, and the shoreline was dark spruce reflected so perfectly it looked like the world had been folded in half. I got six incredible shots.

Then Elise tried to turn around.

In a canoe, turning around is a whole-body operation that requires communication, balance, and a basic understanding of physics. Elise has a thorough understanding of physics but absolutely no trust in any watercraft that doesn't have a motor, so when she pivoted to ask me if twenty minutes had elapsed, her weight shifted left, the canoe tilted, and she overcorrected right with the full force of someone who has never been in a boat smaller than a ferry.

The canoe flipped.

The water is cold. Not dangerously cold, but cold enough that the sound Elise makes when she surfaces is part gasp, part fury, and part a word I've never heard her use before.

"You're fine," I say, treading water three feet away. "We're in five feet of water. You can stand."

She stands. The water comes to her ribs. Her sleek bob is plastered to her face, her glasses are hanging off one ear, and her sweatshirt is ballooning around her midsection. She pushes her hair back with both hands and fixes me with a look that could curdle milk.

"Twenty. Minutes."

"We made it to eighteen."

"The canoe is upside down."

"Canoes flip. It's part of the experience."

"This is not an experience. This is a catastrophe."

"It's a Tuesday."

My camera. The thought jolts through me, and my hand plunges underwater before I remember: the camera is in the dry bag, clipped to the thwart. Standard protocol. I flip the canoe, check the bag, and everything is sealed. The relief is physical.

"Your camera?" Elise asks, and the fact that her second thought, after legitimate outrage, is concern for my equipment does something to my chest I'm not prepared for.

"Safe. Dry bag."

"At least one of us planned ahead."

Getting back to shore takes ten minutes of wading, dragging the canoe, and silently agreeing to never discuss the sound I made when a piece of lake weed touched my ankle. Elise sloshes out of the water, yanks off her sneakers, dumps them upside down, and stands on the rocky shore looking like a woman who has been personally betrayed by nature.