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anyway. Sometimes people just want to be sad and alone. So I left her like that, pumping her legs, swinging up high in her tire swing, her girls bouncing up and down in the field, and Grace hiding somewhere nobody could find her, somewhere safe.

THREE
    Kathy was missing. Gideon had been driving for more than an hour looking for her, scanning the forested areas on either side of the highway for her, getting out and checking for footprints, shouting her name as loud as he could, both while driving and when stopped. But he was yet to see anything. He could still hear Alice’s voice when he’d arrived that morning for breakfast. Desperate. Terrified.
    “Find her, Gideon! You have to find her!” she’d cried.
    He said that he would, but as each minute passed with no sign of Kathy, the grip on his steering wheel had grown tighter. He’d seen the news about Aboriginal girls who had gone missing. It wouldn’t take much for somebody to pick her up, take her away. And then she’d be gone forever, like Grace.
    It was on his third pass on a stretch of highway that Gideon noticed a turtle in the middle of the road. He passed it at first, thinking, rightly, that there were more important things to do. But even so, against his better judgment, he glanced into his rear-view mirror at the turtle he’d passed and imagined a vehicle running over the poor thing. He couldn’t stand the thought of it. He stopped the truck, got out, and walked over to the small, dark green mound. He watched as it crept along its way, oblivious to the danger it was in, then leaned over and picked it up.
    It felt strange in his hands, hard like plastic but warm and smooth, and he marvelled at its design, how the different-sized shapes, squares, and hexagons fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. It was far too beautiful to be destroyed. Gideon brought it to the side of the highway with its head tucked inside its shell, and looked around for a good place to let it go. There was a stream alongside the road, and it seemed as good a spot as any. He navigated his way down the embankment; then, careful not to fall into the running water, he reached forward, submerged it beneath the surface, and let it go.
    The turtle darted off with all the agility of a fish, sharply moving from left to right on the way as though dancing in its freedom. He never thought a turtle capable of that. He laughed, and watched the thing swim all the way downstream until it was out of sight.

ANCHORAGE
    D OWN HIGHWAY 57, and with nothing to worry about aside from the slight curves and undulations along the neglected road ahead, Edward pressed down on the gas pedal and watched as the speedometer’s red needle crept past 160 km/h. He made sure to keep an eye out for the RCMP , as well as oncoming motorists, but the few times he had been down the same road had yielded little, if any, traffic, so this was a small concern. The bulk of his attention thus rested on the area directly in front of him. He curled his hands around the steering wheel and felt the soft material compress under his fingers. Occasionally he snapped his head left or right and then back to the front again, and when he did this he thought the sight of landscape rushing past his vehicle was pretty, like a pastel painting of the actual scenery. He wished, in certain moments, he could somehow freeze time and better appreciate the view rather than glimpse it in such short bursts.
    His was a two-and-a-half-hour trip and didn’t require too much “luggage.” That is to say, he didn’t have much more with him other than the shirt on his back, a few road snacks—including a ham sandwich he was reticent about eating—and, on the passenger seat, being treated very much like precious cargo, a Nikon camera. The Nikon D600, to be exact, which held a prominent place in their family, particularly adored by Nicky, who cherished it on the level of a well-behaved dog. Edward had seriously considered strapping it in with the