When she awoke the next morning, Rhéauna rediscovered the unpleasant great-aunt she’d met at the station the day before. Cold, stiff, pinch-lipped and frowning. Gone was the passionate woman pinned to her piano, vanished the rapturous performer of Monsieur Schubert and Monsieur Chopin. It was as if she wanted to make what she’d exposed of her real personality disappear in front of her great-niece, a vice that she had to keep hidden, a shameful flaw, and concentrate on fixing breakfast, grumbling.

She wakened Rhéauna quite unceremoniously, shouting at her from the bedroom doorstep:

“I’m going to think you’re dead! You’ve barely got time for breakfast before you leave.”

She has already forgotten that she’d just shared the warmth of her bed with a little girl she’d charmed and overwhelmed with great swaths of unsettling music. She is herself again after her everyday fit of madness, her nourishment, her reason for being, and now is acting as if she doesn’t know that the day at the Regina Public Library lying before her will be nothing but a long, tedious prelude to the ecstasy awaiting her tonight. She has traded her inspired performer’s costume for that of a grumpy archivist everyone’s afraid of. As if the one didn’t know the other. Or the more interesting of the two didn’t exist in the daytime.

Rhéauna is discouraged. The porridge, too runny to be porridge, is the same colour and pretty well the same consistency as yesterday’s eggs goldenrod. The toast is made from a hard, stale loaf, as if the delicious bread from the night before had dried on the counter all night, and the milk has a funny smell. Not sour, but nearly. She knows, though, that she’ll have a long journey from Regina to Winnipeg and she tries hard not to show her disgust for what she is forcing herself to eat, which like last night’s food is rolling around in her mouth. She makes a few stabs at conversation, comes up against a wall of silence, finally resigns herself, with her nose in her glass of milk.

Her great-aunt drinks black coffee without swallowing anything else. Maybe she doesn’t like her food either and prefers to eat out … In Maria it would be unthinkable. Everyone eats at home and never, ever, would they even think of eating elsewhere, except when they’re invited by relatives and always for supper; here in Regina, though, in such a big city, there may be what her grandparents call restaurants, magical places that Béa dreams of, where for a sum of money and in no time at all they cook whatever you want, like the lemonade man in the station but more elaborate.

She tries not to think about Montreal.

With her suitcase packed again and her coat on, she waits for her great-aunt on the balcony. Another taxi will come and Régina lets her niece know that she’s beginning to cost her a lot. Rhéauna nearly offered to pay for the taxi but she was afraid that would break her budget, which is fairly slim. As on the day before, she doesn’t have a lunch and will have to buy something before she boards the train. But just before she starts down the steps to the sidewalk, Régina slips her a brown paper bag.

“Something to eat on the train … Winnipeg’s a long way away.”

Rhéauna shudders inwardly at the thought of what might be in the bag. Should she get rid of it without even opening it for fear it might take away her appetite?

She looks out at the store windows that file past. She will have crossed this city twice without stopping, without meeting anyone but this strange great-aunt who changes depending on the time of day, one half of her not seeming to know about the other one’s existence. A walking lie.

She knows that all the people she has seen on the streets of Regina since yesterday just speak English and that, anyway, even though her English is fairly good, a real conversation would have been difficult. In Maria, she could stop and continue a conversation with anyone where she’d left it the last time she’d met that person and … No, she has to stop thinking about Maria so much, it doesn’t help to compare everything to her little village. That’s all over, all in the past. The tremendous scale of the adventure she’s embarked on with no one asking her opinion comes back to her all at once and, as she gets out of the vehicle, her anxiety has her bent in two. Régina thinks that she’s tripped over something and tells her to watch where she puts her feet. She feels like replying in the same tone of voice. But what good would it do? She keeps quiet, takes her suitcase, climbs the steps of the enormous stone staircase.

Régina has no trouble finding the gentleman who is supposed to look after Rhéauna on the train. He’s from Montreal, a student who earns money for his studies by crossing Canada from coast to coast as a baggage handler, shoeshine boy or occasional childminder. He has a funny accent, he rolls his r’s and Rhéauna wonders if everyone in Montreal talks like that. She is reassured to realize that she’s not the one with an accent, he is.

Now it’s time for farewells. She would like to jump into her great-aunt’s arms, perhaps tell her that she suspects the older woman has some great sorrow that’s impossible to share; she’d like to tell her, too, that the secret is safe with her, that she’ll never talk about it, to anyone. Of course Régina’s chilliness makes it impossible. Rhéauna must be satisfied with a dry kiss on her cheek. The train is about to take off, the Montreal fellow has picked her up to put her in the coach, as if she weren’t big enough to do it by herself. She’ll have to say something. Nothing comes to her. Her great-aunt tries to make something that could pass for a smile. It’s a pitiful sight.

“Say hello to your great-aunt Bebette. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her …”

Then, just as the door is about to close on the little woman she’ll probably never see again, a sentence emerges from Rhéauna’s mouth that she hasn’t felt coming. She looks Régina in the eyes and tells her, with a sad smile:

“I know you’re unhappy, ma tante Régina from Regina.”