Chapter 10

Bastian Tremblay closeshis eyes and allows the podcaster’s voice—sweet and smooth—to wash over him. The long vowels and dropped gs charm him, even though they’re not standard Anglo pronunciation and, so, don’t help him much in his continual quest to perfect his English. The trailer ends and restarts immediately. He opens his eyes and lifts the lid off the enamel Dutch oven on the stove to inhale the savory scent of the bouilli he’s making:

As its name suggests, Dead Man’s Hollow’s history is one of confirmed and unconfirmed deaths and tragedies dating back more than one hundred and fifty years. In the years between 1880 and 1905, the hollow was the scene of at least one fatal shooting, a deadly quarry explosion, a drowning, and a tragic elevator accident. Today, Dead Man’s Hollow is a 450-acre conservation area in McKeesport, PA, less than twenty miles from Downtown Pittsburgh. Owned and maintained by the Allegheny Land Trust, Dead Man’s Hollow offers eight miles of hiking and biking trails and interpretive nature and history programs.

Chloe walks through the kitchen with a basket of folded laundry on her hip. She pauses to listen for a moment, shooting him a quizzical look.

But in 1994, one year before plans to preserve the area were announced, Dead Man’s Hollow was a neglected dumping ground, choked with weeds and trash, and a favorite party spot for underaged teens. The kids were drawn to the remote location by the spooky legend of its spine-tingling past and because it was off the radar of their parents and other adults in the community.

He pauses the player to explain. “Practicing my English.”

“Curious choice of subject matter,” his wife counters with a small smile.

He shrugs. “I like her voice. But, it’s true it’s not a good match for the topic. It’s not compatible.”

“Incongruent,” she agrees.

Chloe never has to practice her English. And neither does Emilie, their fourteen-year-old spitfire who can sass her parents just as well in English and in French—a true bilingual Québécoise. But Bastian’s mother tongue is French, and French was all he spoke growing up.

Then, as a young man, he moved from his small village in the countryside to Quebec City to take a job as an apprentice chef in a well-regarded restaurant. His first assignment was to learn to speak English, and he did. Each night, after dragging his tired body home from work, he would pop one American movie into the player and watch it in English, with the captions on. He wasn’t particular about genre or plot—whatever was available from the library served his purposes. And this is how Bastian taught himself to speak fluent English. He watched and then rewatched everything from Aladdin to Sister Act to The Fugitive.

By the time Chloe walked through the restaurant doors to apply for a job waiting tables, he was the executive chef, and his English was good enough to flirt with her. As it turned out, her French was better, but once they started dating, they fell into the habit of speaking English to each other. And now, after twenty-seven years together, they shift from French to English and back seamlessly, often mid-conversation. Sometimes mid-sentence.

But Bastian doesn’t want to get rusty, so he continues to consume media in English. Now, instead of movies, it’s often English-language podcasts from all over. He likes the format because he can listen to them while he cooks without having the distraction of a screen. And he particularly likes “The Farley Files.” He got hooked on the first season and is thrilled to know Maisy Farley is starting a second season.

“Is this a ghost story?” Chloe asks, cocking her head toward the speaker.

“No.” He shakes his head and glances at the timer he’s set for the bread dough he’s tucked into the warming drawer to rise. “A missing person case.” He resumes the stream:

And it was in 1994 that Dead Man’s Hollow claimed its most recent victim. On Friday, May 27th, at the start of the Memorial Day Weekend, a group of teenagers gathered around a small bonfire deep in the woods to drink and celebrate the fast-approaching end of the school year. One of those present was sixteen-year-old Heather Ryan.

“Sixteen. Only two years older than Emilie.” Chloe’s eyes, always expressive, turn liquid with sadness.

“Oui.” He pauses the trailer.

“Her poor parents.”

“They died recently, without ever knowing what happened to their girl. But her sisters are still looking for her.”

“What an unimaginable heartbreak.” She frowns, then makes a tsking noise before kissing his cheek and heading upstairs to put away the clothes. “The stew smells marvelous,” she says over her shoulder.

He smiles at the compliment, but his heart is heavy. Chloe is right, the story is painfully sad. Still, he trusts Maisy Farley will help the Ryan sisters get answers. And this is a topic on which he and Chloe differ. Bastian believes knowing is always better than not knowing. Chloe believes in possibilities, miracles. He suspects if Chloe were in the Ryan sisters’ shoes—even if Emilie were to vanish, God forbid—she would prefer to go to her grave still holding out hope than to have that hope dashed by reality.

He understands why. Growing up, Chloe was placed in Montreal’s child welfare system, floating from one foster family to the next before aging out of the system when she reached adulthood. She rarely mentions her childhood or any of the foster families, but from time to time she falls quiet and a haunted, faraway look overtakes her. She says she doesn’t remember her childhood before foster care, but it’s clear it was tragic. Then, when Emilie was a baby, there was The Incident. The doctors chalked it up to postpartum stress disorder, exacerbated by her own apparent parental abandonment.

He stirs his bouilli again and then retrieves the dough from the proving drawer, pondering his wife’s approach to hard situations. Given the ugliness that life doled out to his wife at a young age, it’s no surprise to Bastian that fantasies, wishful thinking, and relentless optimism hold such sway over her. But in his experience, the best way to handle a difficult truth is to face it—the way the Ryan sisters in Pennsylvania have done.