THREE

“Hi, Chloë-bear.” Mom sounds tired. It’s eleven o’clock in Montreal. I wonder if she’s just getting home from work.

“What’s up, Mom?” I cradle my phone on my shoulder so I can keep knitting. I’ve almost finished the pair of socks I started when we got here. Turquoise and purple with a Turkish heel. Mom’s size.

“Honey, things are turning out differently than I expected.”

She’s probably trying to tell me she has to bring work to Tofino this weekend. As if this is big news. She always works part of the weekend. The most important thing is that she’ll be here, on this side of the country. She booked the lodge the day Dad bought our flights to Victoria. She stuck the reservation printouts in my How-to-Survive-This-Move kit, along with a homemade calendar so I could count down the days. She promised we’d spend every second catching up, but I’m fine with a few hours on my own. It’s not the end of the world.

“I have to resubmit a major piece of research by Tuesday.” Her voice is tight.

“Don’t worry about it, Mom. You’re flying across the country to see me. I’m not going to be offended if you have to work a bit while you’re here.”

Silence stretches between us, and my stomach twists. “You’re still coming, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve already got a ticket and—”

“I’m sorry, Chloë. You know how much I was looking forward…”

I feel like hurling the phone across the room.

Mom’s babbling on about how she’ll make it up to me when I press End. I’m moving in slow motion. If I move any faster, I might explode. I pick up her homemade calendar with its cute drawings, and I shred it in two, then four. The pieces flutter to the bottom of my wastebasket.

Next I consider my closed door. I need to get out. Now. But on the other side, Dad is cooking supper. One look at me and he’ll know what’s happened. If he sees me now and he tries to help, I’ll fall apart completely.

I climb out the window and head for the beach. Easy escape. Our crappy first-floor apartment has something going for it after all.

“Here we go.” I set our plates on the table and slide into a chair next to Dad.

“Thanks for supper.” Uli picks up his burrito. It’s Tuesday evening, which means we eat at a restaurant and do the grocery shopping afterward. On Thursdays, we all go for a walk together, same time every week, same route down to the ocean and back. Dad calls Uli daily but doses out visits like medication, measured to the minute. Tonight’s restaurant is a Mexican one downtown, hidden away in the middle of a mall. I don’t know how Dad finds these places.

We always ate at home in Montreal. “Why pay top dollar for something you could make yourself?” he’d ask if I mentioned a new Afghan place on the corner or the Sri Lankan one down the street. Then he’d go online. A few days later he’d present his homemade traditional Afghan mantu (meat dumplings) or Sri Lankan green jackfruit curry. Not that I’m complaining. I love his cooking. But it’s strange that now, after we have moved to Dullsville, he’s so into eating out.

“Weather’s warming up,” says Uli. “Planting time. Should have had the soil ready by now.”

Dad gives him a sharp look. “You’re not planning on gardening, are you? That’s way too much bending and lifting for you.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Uli says.

“I’ve heard that before.”

I look back and forth between them. They glare at each other.

“I made a promise,” Uli says, “to the people who gave me the seeds. Darned if I’ll go back on it now.”

Dad takes a deep breath, lifts his burrito and starts eating like he’s the only one at the table. I feel sorry for Uli. The whole vegetable thing reminds me of when Sofia visited her great-aunt last summer, and the old woman wanted help sorting her plastic-bag collection. What do you say to a super-old person with who knows how much longer to live who wants nothing more than to sort plastic bags (or grow vegetables that no one wants)? How do you tell them they’re wasting their precious time?

The silence is getting awkward. Someone needs to say something. It looks like it’ll have to be me. I turn to Uli. “Where did you get the seeds for your vegetables anyway?”

“I’ve got a list of people as long as your arm. The first old fellow, I met at a retirement home I gardened for. He’d come sit on a bench while I planted flowers or pruned the trees. One day he gives me a small envelope. Purple beans, he says. His great-great-great-grandmother grew them back in Italy, and his mother smuggled them over here when they moved to Canada. He grew them himself for years but didn’t have anywhere to plant them anymore. He wanted to know if I’d grow them. To keep the line going.”

“The line?” I ask.

“Line of seeds,” he says. “Let ’em sit around too long, and they lose their growing power. Get too lackadaisical with this kind of thing, and the only string beans left on the planet will be the flavorless supermarket kind. Blech. Wait till you try the varieties people used to eat. The flavor will knock your socks off.”

It’s hard to imagine getting that excited about beans, but who knows? Maybe they’ll surprise me. “If they’re so great, why don’t the stores carry them?”

“They don’t keep as well,” Uli says. “If you grow them yourself, that doesn’t matter. You just pick them when you need them. The thing is to grow them every year, though, and save the seeds for the next season.”

“Or give them to someone who believes in endangered vegetables.”

“Bingo. I’ve got more seeds and stories than you can shake a stick at now. Pink broccoli from Russia. Blue kale from Scotland.”

“All smuggled?” I ask.

“Probably, but decades and decades ago. Families grew them here for generations before I got them. I wouldn’t have taken them otherwise. Seeds from far away are too risky. They might have diseases that could wipe out a whole garden.”

“Huh.” I had to admit this was more interesting than I’d imagined—family heirlooms you can keep growing generation after generation. Who knew our family even had any keepsakes to pass down?

I glance at my dad. His face has relaxed again. Maybe Uli’s noticed that too, because he makes another attempt at conversation. “Muriel brought me the paper today.” His home-care nurse is always doing thoughtful things like that. Much as Uli hated the idea of someone coming around to the house every day, I think he enjoys her visits now. “Saved it for you, in case you want to read it.”

“Thanks,” Dad says. “Anything interesting?”

“Only read the gardening section. It was all about flowers though.”

“Flowers aren’t your thing?” I ask.

He shakes his head and gives me his strange half smile. “I’d rather read about pre-Civil War peanuts, or fish peppers, but no such luck. There was an interesting article on earthworms though. Did you know the worms in an acre of soil can till eighteen tons of dirt each year?”

I picture an army of worms with little hoes and cowboy hats on. You’ve got to admire a guy who gets excited about something so simple. It reminds me of Sofia’s little brother, Jordan, who’s three and does a happy dance every time he finds a bug in their garden.

I take another bite of burrito. It’s better than I expected. Uli keeps talking, telling us how Charles Darwin spent years proving that earthworms make conscious decisions about how to pull leaves and pine needles into their burrows. “He wrote a whole book about it.”

“I bet that was a bestseller.”

“You bet your bootstraps, young lady!”

I laugh, and Uli keeps feeding us earthworm trivia. When that runs out, we all focus on our food. We’re the only quiet table in the whole restaurant. I can’t help thinking about Mom, probably in her office, hunched over her computer. When I told Dad she had bailed on Tofino, he was furious. That same night, he booked two tickets to Montreal. We go home in ninety-nine days. He booked return flights too, but I didn’t dare point out that there’s no way I’m coming back here with him. I’ll deal with that later. Meanwhile, we’ve both agreed not to talk about Mom right now.

“Excuse me. Nature calls.” Dad stands up to go to the bathroom, leaving me alone with my grandfather. I seize the opportunity.

“Hey, Uli. Remember a few weeks ago, when you talked about the bombed-out cities? You promised you’d tell me about it sometime.”

He takes a deep breath and glances after my dad. “You know where I was born, I guess.”

“Germany,” I say. During the Second World War. I think that’s what Dad said.

Uli shakes his head. “Poland. My family was German though. Russians invaded, and my mother and I escaped with the clothes on our backs.”

And somehow Dad never thought to mention this to me?

“I was three,” Uli continues, “so I don’t remember that part, but we stayed with relatives in East Germany for a while before crossing to West Germany. That part I do remember, running in the dark with bullets flying. We slept wherever we could—in barns, sometimes in bombed-out churches.”

My burrito has turned to stone in my stomach. It’s one thing to read about the war in a textbook, another to hear about your grandfather sleeping in a bomb crater.

Dad returns, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Ridiculous. The bathroom’s at the end of the earth, you need a key, which is back here, and they’re out of paper towels—hey, are you two okay?” He looks back and forth between us.

I realize I have tears in my eyes. “Uli was telling me about escaping from Poland when he was a kid.”

I expect Dad to nod solemnly and look concerned—these must be painful memories for Uli—but his sigh sounds exasperated.

Uli holds up a hand. “Don’t worry, Darryl. I’ll stop.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Your father’s heard this story a million times, Chloë.”

“But I haven’t,” I say. “And it’s part of my history too, right?”

Uli looks at Dad like he’s asking if it’s okay to keep talking.

“Go ahead. Whatever,” says my dad. He takes another bite of his burrito. “Great. Now it’s cold. I’m going to ask them to reheat it.”

“What’s up with him?” I ask Uli as Dad gets to his feet again.

“I talked a lot about Europe when he was a kid. I thought he should know where he came from. Maybe I overdid it.”

I bite my lip. “Is that why things are so tense between you?” I blurt out. “I mean, why you never visited each other? Why you hardly ever came to Montreal?”

Uli’s hands fall to his lap, and his right eye is wet. He sniffs and shakes his head. “You’ll have to ask your dad about that, Chloë. I can tell you more about Europe though.” He talks quickly. “Mother knew we had cousins in Germany. We never did find them, but she also had a sister in Canada. Mother remembered the address, so she thought we’d head here. She worked three jobs to pay for the tickets.”

“Where was your dad in all this?” I ask.

“The Russians shot him. I was a toddler,” Uli says with no emotion whatsoever. “I don’t remember him at all.”

Dad sits down again, his burrito steaming. Uli glances at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it short.” He describes the little town on the Baltic Sea where he and his mom lived. “She died when I was ten though.”

“What?” Another crucial detail Dad’s never mentioned. “How did she die?”

“I don’t know,” Uli says. “She didn’t want to spend money on a doctor. She just got thinner and thinner, and—”

Dad brushes off his fingers. “Are you two finished eating? I’ll take the plates up to the counter.”

“Thanks,” Uli says while I watch my father get up yet again. I can’t believe he’d butt in when Uli’s talking about his mother dying. But Uli carries on as if nothing happened. “Some neighbors took me in. They gave me a choice: I could stay with them, or they could help me get to Canada to be with my aunt.”

Dad comes back and stands by the table until we both get up and put on our coats. He helps Uli with his.

“I chose Canada, obviously. That’s what my mother had wanted.”

“What was your aunt like?” I ask.

Dad rolls his eyes. Uli squeezes my shoulder. “Let’s leave that story for another time, Chloë. I’ve tortured your father enough for one evening.”

In the car, conversation drifts back to safe topics like earthworms and the national budget. Dad drives us across town to the huge grocery store, and we buy our supplies. By the time we’re back outside, it’s pouring rain. We get drenched on our way across the parking lot.

“Tell me again why we can’t just buy food a block from home?” I ask. Every week since we got here, we’ve driven halfway across the city to get groceries, even though Smith’s store is just down the street. It can’t possibly be worse than some of the little places we shopped at in Montreal. Sure, it always looks kind of dark inside, but plenty of people go in and out all the time. None of them ever have the horrified look Dad gets on his face when I mention it.

My shopping question was designed to bug him, to get him to show some feeling about something. I’m still mad about how he treated Uli at the restaurant. I asked my grandfather to tell that story, and Dad acted like Uli was some old guy who talked too much.

“Wouldn’t catch me dead in that place.” Uli spits on the ground next to him, like I’ve fed him poison.

I must look stunned, because Dad gives me a sympathetic look. “It’s a long story, Chloë.”

I can tell there’s no point in asking more questions. We’re all silent as we climb into the car. Back at Uli’s, Dad and I carry his bags of food up his front steps and leave them at the top. I hug my grandfather good night, and we leave before he opens his front door.

“So what’s the deal between you two?” I ask Dad when we’re back at our place. I’ve never gotten anywhere with this question before—I’ll tell you when you’re older, he always says—but maybe after his performance tonight as The Heartless Son, he’ll be embarrassed enough to cough up some explanations.

Dad pulls a box of crackers from a bag and shoves it into a cupboard. “My father had a terrible childhood. I understand why hearing about it affects you so much. But I grew up hearing it used as an excuse for every screwup. It got old pretty quick.”

“What screwups?” I ask.

“Look, Chloë,” Dad says. “Let’s leave the past in the past, where it belongs.”

I can’t believe he’s brushing me off again. “You’re telling me that? You hardly talked to him for decades. Now you can barely stand to be in the same room with him, and you’re telling me to leave the past in the past?”

My dad yanks a hunk of cheese from a bag and slams it onto the counter. “Chloë, this is not a conversation I’m prepared to have right now. We came here because I need to lay some things to rest with my father. But it’s hard for me, okay? I don’t want to make it hard for you, too, by telling you the whole story. Your mother’s given you enough to deal with.”

That kind of makes sense. I tone it down a bit. “Just tell me a few basic things, okay? I mean, he’s safe to be with, right? He’s not an ax murderer or anything?”

Dad sighs, leans his elbows on the counter and puts his head in his hands. When he looks up, his eyes are red. “No, he’s not an ax murderer, Chloë. And in some ways he was a very good father. But we have some stuff to work through, that’s all.” His eyes meet mine, and they’re not hard like they were at the restaurant. They look sad, like he can’t bear to have this conversation. And the pain in his eyes scares me. So I drop the topic.

For now anyway.