Chapter 4

It was nearly four years after Amy disappeared before I saw Detective Perrin again. Chris and I were now a couple with a baby at home and another on the way, though I wasn’t showing, yet. Both of us still missed Amy, and I secretly thought our lives would have been so much better if she’d been with us, but that hadn’t happened. We talked about her from time to time, but as the months and years passed, she slipped more and more into the background. I still felt sad when I looked at our wedding pictures, but there was nothing I could do about it.

My crew was in charge of the upper reaches of the river that ran through the valley we were developing. We had a dam in place, but you needed to do more than that if you wanted the place civilized. We planned, we did more building, and when the person who had run it had fallen down on the job—convicted of taking bribes—”Wendy’s Mud-Wrestlers” had to step in and pick up the pieces.

I originally had just Paul and Bob’s teams, but soon added Chuck and Pat. This season I also got a couple of men fresh from the university that I was mentoring. They’d graduated that year, but hadn’t tried to qualify for their Certification. This was part of their internship.

I’m not sure they were comfortable with the situation. I was a woman, I made half again their money, I had the ear of Mr. Chandler, the owner, I had the respect of just about everyone working for the company and a few others besides, and I had a lot more knowledge and responsibility than they did, which made me feel good, but in a quiet way. That didn’t stop them from putting on airs and making the occasional little comment. I smiled and didn’t say anything. I didn’t mind what they said as long as it didn’t interfere with the work, but I let them know there was a line, and if they crossed it I could make trouble for them. I also didn’t remind them that I was going to be evaluating their performance. I wanted competence, not suck-ups.

On this particular day, a Wednesday, we had just finished a channel that would drain off some of the extra runoff from the glacier. We’d spent a month carving out a lake that would be used both as a reservoir and a recreational area. The channel was just a precaution. The day was hot; it was the height of summer, and everyone was walking around sweating.

I don’t care what the prudes back in Center think: you don’t wear a dress in the field. I had been wearing jeans and a khaki blouse when we had an accident. I’d been in a boat coming across the lake when it hit a deadhead—a log that was floating just below the surface—and threw us all in the water. We were only a few yards from shore, and so I waded out, dripping wet and shivering from the runoff. My hair was a mess, and I had mud all over me, part of the silt the river was carrying. The day was warm enough that I grabbed a blanket and warmed up.

In other parts of the world, this would be reason enough to go home. In Three Valleys, you could, but most people here just removed their wet clothes and kept on going. I had a clean (and dry) pair of shorts in the trailer where my office was, and put those on, leaving my top on a clothesline to dry in the sun. I had a box sitting on top of a hot plate, and I tossed my underthings in there. I was the only woman present, but this was Three Valleys, so occasional public partial nudity went unremarked, except by outsiders, and the guys didn’t stare very much, if at all. They’d seen me soaked to the skin before.

I’d no sooner gotten back to the office when it started to pour, that afternoon rain shower we got on this side of the mountains that helped kill the summer heat. I had to hustle to take my clothes down, and when I came back from that, Detective Perrin, wearing a fashionable skirt and top, and the wrong shoes for a construction site, was waiting for me. We had built a covered deck beside the trailer, and she stood there with a rain slicker in her hand, watching me.

“Mrs. Van Veldt,” she said. She eyed my partial nudity uneasily and held out her hand. “You may not remember me. I’m Deborah Perrin; I used to be a detective with the Center Police Department. I’m now with the Project Security Commission.” She carefully averted her eyes, and color flooded her cheeks. That reminded me of a question I’d had but had never gotten an answer to: why were women from Center embarrassed to see another woman showing a lot of skin?

“Do you always...?”

I laughed. “We had an accident a little while ago,” I said. “And I got thrown in the lake.” I bent over and squeezed the water out of my hair. Normally, I let it hang loose so it would dry, but right now, it was sticking to my face. I pulled it back and secured it in a quick ponytail.

Detective Perrin said something, but the rain was drumming on the aluminum roof over the deck, making it hard to hear. “Come into my office,” I called. “We can actually hear ourselves speak in there.”

I was conscious of the way she kept looking at me. I don’t think the average person expects to find a half-naked woman at a construction project, let alone in charge of it, so I dried off a little more and put on the t-shirt I kept in the closet before I settled behind my desk. It was one the guys had made up and proudly featured a wild-haired woman personally battling a river, with the words, “Wendy’s Mud-Wrestlers” above the picture.

“Coffee? Tea?” I smiled to cover my unease. Since we’d moved back to Three Valleys, I wasn’t used to people looking at me the way she was.

“I’m okay, thank you.” She looked around. “This isn’t what I expected.”

“This is a working office on a construction site,” I said. The walls were covered with schedules, maps, and charts. My desk was overflowing with more of the same, about what you’d find in any office in a place like this.

“Yes, it seems so...”

“Harsh and utilitarian?” I shrugged. I had a few knickknacks on my desk, including some family pictures, but that was all. “This is a work site. My other office is in a building in Cedar View. That’s a lot nicer than this, and a lot less used.” I laughed softly. “These days I spend most of my time in the field.”