Five pages of yellow lined paper, folded. On the top left corner, in black ink: August 29, 2017.

Really, there is little in the letter that was new to me. Except for the part about Nicole not being there when I got home, I had heard most of it before: the concern, the disappointment, the frustration, the helplessness. Still, I could tell it was difficult for her to write this; words are crossed out, her handwriting is more jittery than usual, not flowing naturally like the journals the marriage counsellor made her write. Nicole left the letter in my bag, knowing I would find it when I unpacked at the motel in Kapuskasing. It was in this envelope, placed neatly on top of my pyjamas, with care. With more black ink and in big block letters she wrote, 'DON.'

Nicole had been saying these things for years, long before my trip back up North. She didn't want me to go back to Kapuskasing again but even though she was mad at me the morning I loaded the pickup and pulled out of the driveway, leaving her standing in the doorway, wearing her summer bathrobe, her head down-I don't believe the trip was the reason she left me. More than anything, my trip gave her the chance to not have to say it to me in person. Nicole knew I would roll my eyes and turn away, like whenever she would get going about my apathy towards our relationship.

Once, I agreed to take her advice and see someone about my 'issues,' as Nicole put it. The therapist from the School Board's Employee Assistance Program wasn't too concerned with the problems we were having in our marriage, how Nicole felt I was too focussed on my work, how I was more worried about not being a good teacher than I was about being a good father and husband. The therapist, Dr. West, kept steering things back to my past, to my youth. I think these guys go around inventing trauma, looking to blame parents or someone. Needless to say, the sessions were a waste of time and I stopped going after a few weeks. Nicole was disappointed, but we were trying in other ways: date nights, making new friends, curling. Doctor West and I did agree on one point however: people don't really change throughout the course of a marriage; over time our genuine selves only become clearer to our partner. Yet Nicole kept insisting, even mentioned it here in the letter, I was a different person after I came back from tree planting that summer. 'It's like Kapuskasing took something from you, Don. It took the best of you.'

Nicole and I dated since we were sixteen. High school sweethearts, everyone said. We were in many of the same classes, had the same friends. Although we never spoke about it at the time, it was pretty much assumed Nicole and I would end up married after university. We went through some rough patches like when I was away at Western or for the weeks after I came back from tree planting but the time apart only made us stronger as a couple.

I read the letter a few times in the motel. Then I flattened the pages and put them into this file folder. I wrote 'Nicole's Letter' across the tab with a black sharpie. I sat on the edge of the bed. I let it sink in-she was gone. Jenny would be gone too, off to college for her first year away. The house would be quiet without Nicole. It would seem big, all those empty rooms. There, sitting on the grey and maroon bedspread of the Apollo Motel, imagining the life I would come home to, I devised the plan to convert three of the bedrooms into my studies; three rooms, one for each subject I teach, and one to store my files. I scribbled a map of the house on the outside of the file folder, confident arrows pointing how I would rotate from room to room to prepare my lessons. I placed the folder on the bed beside me, sat straight and slapped my thighs in a smack that echoed off the panelled walls of the motel room, proud of myself for finding a positive in all of this.

I took the camera from my bag and lay it on the bed, next to the file with Nicole's letter. It was Layla's old Pentax SLR film camera, the one that was in my pack when I ran to the outfitter's truck that morning. It takes better pictures than the new digital ones, plus I wanted to recreate, as much as possible, the same shots, the identical composition, as Layla's pictures from twenty-five years ago. My intent was to go to the same places where Layla stood when she shot the twenty-two frames still on the film roll when the police took the camera from me. They developed the film and eventually returned the camera and copies of the prints to me. All the prints are here, filed under P. I remember the location of each, recall the exact moment of the shot, can hear the click of the shutter. I can still see Layla, legs spread apart, bent forward slightly, back arched into a fine curve as she curls to adjust the aperture, framing the shot. Every picture tells a story, they say, and these pictures are our story.

Although Nicole never believed the reason for my return trip to Kapuskasing was entirely professional, I did intend to make a series of slides and put them into an educational presentation for my Geography classes. I wanted to show the changes to the land that occur a quarter century after an area had been cut and replanted. The students would be able to see the impact forestry operations have on the environment, the scars of stumps and skidder ruts lying hidden beneath the new forest's canopy, which trees have grown tall and flourished in the light, and which trees' growth has been stunted by years in the shadows. I wanted to see the changes too. Compare then with now. See what has been lost, that which has never come back.

The journey was a disappointment in terms of returning to the same locations. I awoke early, left the motel, and drove west to the main logging road. Little had changed. The town was still the same except the billboards were twenty-five years faded; the highway may have been repaved once; the same people sat on the same porches and looked out at the same highway; there were more trucks now, fewer logging trucks but more tankers. The sun still rose behind me and the bush was still just bush. And in that bush I found the road.

While the main haul road was far better than when Layla and I were here before, the side trails into the planting sites were gone. Poplar had overtaken everything and the old roads were lost beneath a tangle of branches and fallen limbs, flooded by beaver ponds or scarred by fire. I was able to get my truck to the two temporary river crossings and tried to recreate Layla's images of the timber bridges, taken during the days we worked as planters. The bridges were still standing solidly against years of ice pressure and spring break-ups. They were designed to be removed once the cutting was finished on the other side of the river, but the bridges are still there, in better shape now than twenty-five years ago when they were built.

I wandered aimlessly through the new forest, often lost, unsure where I was in relation to my place in the past. Little resembled the images in my memory or the pictures from Layla's camera. It was as though I was a trespasser from another time, fighting to exist in a world that had changed without me. Nothing was recognizable, no evidence of the trees we planted. Where were the perfect rows of jackpine? Where were the results of the pain and suffering and scars? Did nothing survive? Is nature so inconsiderate, time this uncaring? The longer I looked, the more it became clear there had been no point to any of it. And no point to me standing there, alone. I was no longer relevant. I was a tiny lost man, dwarfed by the uncontrolled growth surrounding me, wasting time, alone.

Evening in the place that would become where last saw Layla. Since nothing on the road looked familiar, I chose a place, at random, between countless trees. I made a path where none existed before to a hollow in the forest, behind the wall of a long-dead and uprooted spruce. I decided it was here where I would commemorate our departure, fashioned this hollow into the location of the good-bye never spoken. I stood still, listening to the forest. The white-throat sparrow had been calling out for twenty-five years, Lay-ay-la-la-la-la-la.

I looked around the darkening forest and waited for the evening's shadows to overtake the light, until it was as dark as our final night together. I pressed Layla's camera firmly against the tree root, one eye peering through the viewfinder, turning the focus ring, holding steady and resting my elbow on a round stone embedded in the roots. The rock was a smooth orb of polished river-worn gneiss, swirled and streaked with quartz, feldspar, entangled and trapped in the twisted root of the tree, a rock ripped from the earth the night the young spruce toppled, when years ago a wind-brief, wild and destructive-tore across the land, and ever since, the stone has remained a prisoner suspended above the ground, held captive by the dying roots; each year as the root-wood dried and decayed, its grip on the stone constricted, squeezing harder, choking tighter.

I pressed the shutter release, counted to seven, held my breath, and waited for the shutter to click to a close. From now on, this hollow would be our place. The place where I almost died. Where Layla disappeared. Where the dreams started. Where they might end.

I slung the camera to my shoulder and pulled the rock until it broke free from the roots. The stone thudded to the earth into the crater of the uprooted tree.

The long drive back to Kapuskasing on the same road I took twenty-five years ago in the back of a police cruiser. It was on this road, then, between watching the back of Officer Fletcher's head and the blur of bush flying past, I made the decision to go to Teacher's College. It was a promise to Layla, my part of the bargain. I would take up her fight, I would carry her rage and her passion with me, in my work. I would make a difference, once the mess of Layla's disappearance was cleared up.

On the logging road this time, twenty-five years later, I made the decision to sell the house. It would be a big change, but the idea settled on me gently and gradually, like the light rain misting my windshield, one tiny drop followed by another, slowly obscuring my vision until one flip of the wiper switch and the world in front of me became clear again: at the end of the next school year I would move. Sell the house, pack up, move north. The Geography teacher in Huntsville was retiring and because of Union seniority rules, I could transfer there. Huntsville is a cute little town in Cottage Country, north, but not too far north. The perfect place for a new start and to finish my career. So, for the first time in twenty years, I'll be moving.

Once the house sells and I'm settled up there I might get around to putting together th slide presentation of Layla and my photographs. Then again, maybe it's best to just keep these pictures filed away too. Under O, I suppose.