Nick’s parents arrived bearing gifts—tins of chocolate chip cookies, homemade buns, wine, beer—bringing Bear, who leaped from their car, running in circles, hurling his scrappy little paws against Billy’s legs. His mom’s spark still radiant as she wrapped around him, around Billy, his dad more cautious, shaking his hand too long. He didn’t deserve them.
They’d gone to fetch Evie with Billy in tow. He was grateful his parents had insisted on doing the pickup. Billy’s newest wall hadn’t fully taken shape yet, just the outline of a boat rising out of bucked up swirls of lake blue. They’d spent hours talking about the project, googling stock photos and paintings. Billy took ideas from his favourites and drew up his own design, a man and a woman in a rowboat, their faces still featureless. Nick wanted his parents to see the murals and get an up-close look at the talent of their grandson.
He stood at the bathroom sink, splashing water over his cheeks, willing himself to get this day right. Sarah was coming. (I can still be part of your life, Nick.) Bear barked sharply, his claws skittering across the linoleum. A knock. She was here.
And more beautiful than ever. She took his breath away, standing in his doorway, holding out a bouquet wrapped in foil, the fat blazing sun falling out of the sky and onto her freckled shoulders.
Carter threw himself on the floor, the dog on his chest, licking his face.
“We’re here!” She laughed, passing him the bouquet. “I hope you have something to put them in.”
Why hadn’t he brought her flowers? “Who do you think we are? Heathens? We’ve got a cupboard full of vases.” Bear had flipped over, legs in the air, tongue hanging from the side of his mouth. “My parents’ dog. Bear. He’s a bit shy and standoffish. Like Carter.”
“I can see that.” She laughed again, blushing as he pulled her towards the kitchen.
“They’re with Billy. At Prairie View to pick up Evie. They should be back any minute.”
He reached into the cupboard and pulled down the new vase. “It’s crowded in here. With Evie, makes seven. We had to buy forks.” And a new table and chairs and new shirts and socks.
“The table looks beautiful. And dinner smells delicious. Do you have scissors?”
He rummaged through the drawer, passed her the scissors, and watched as she laid the flowers on the counter and sorted them by colour. She snipped and pruned, adding a flower at a time, crisscrossing the stems until her arrangement was perfect. She was perfect.
“The lily is my favourite.” She held out the bouquet with satisfaction.
He would buy her a room full of lilies.
He placed the vase in the centre of the table.
She leaned against the counter, watching. “So this is your first get-together in a while? With your parents?”
“Yep,” He sucked air, not wanting to be the kind of man who made excuses. “But they’ve had a lot of FaceTime with Billy,” he added feebly.
Carter chased behind Bear with the water dish.
“Put that down, Carter,” she said. “You’re slopping water everywhere. Bear will drink when he’s thirsty.” She retraced his steps with a paper towel.
Nick could hear the car pulling up. Sarah stood beside him. “Big day,” she said.
It was. He was drenched in flop sweat.
It started as a happy party, Carter smitten with his mother, his mother smitten with Sarah, his dad wearing a relieved grin, all dishes edible except for the God-awful carrots.
They kept to safe topics, the jarring gap in their family history following behind him like a bleeding white bear shambling through snow. He kept expecting to get caught in a trap, but there was only laughter and silliness and the easy banter he remembered from his childhood. His dad told stories from their campground days—lawn chair waterskiing and marshmallow explosions—Sarah as spellbound as a young girl on a father’s knee. Carter interjected with his take on everything from first love to a listing of ways to cook potatoes.
Evie stayed quiet, the voices bouncing around her. She was seated between Billy and Sarah, her purse on her lap, and every time her face pinched in panic, Sarah rested her hand over hers until the cloud passed.
“Your artwork is breathtaking,” his mom was telling Billy. “You could have your own art show some day.”
“How does one learn it?” his dad leaned in philosophically. “I can understand taking apart an engine, putting it together again. Building a wall. But I don’t get paintings. Starting with nothing. Creating lifelike trees and rocks and faces with a paintbrush. How’s it done, son?”
Billy blushed under the spotlight. He’d eaten four of Cathy’s buns and was reaching for another. “Grandma taught me mostly. She’s a real artist.”
Evie smiled when she heard the word grandma. “You should have more chicken,” she said, patting Billy’s arm.
“I think a person must be born with that talent,” his mom continued. “But then your father has a good eye too. He takes wonderful photographs. We have his skunks on our bathroom wall.”
It was Nick’s turn to shuffle uncomfortably, more besieged than embarrassed as his mom told the story. He’d been lucky to have captured the photo without getting sprayed, the mother skunk and her lineup of babies, toddling down the path with their tails up. His parents had kept pieces of him, surrogates for their missing son scattered across their walls.
“You’re still taking photos, aren’t you?” His mom leaned forward, concern in her voice, as if his watching behind a lens was the most important thing in the world.
When he sat there dumbly, Billy interjected. “That’s where I got the mural ideas. From Nick’s photos. They’re really good.”
They passed bowls and refilled plates and clinked glasses. Nick offered twenty bucks to anyone brave enough to try more carrots, explaining how he didn’t have the orange juice the sauce called for, so he’d used Tang instead. Bad idea.
“Do I have to eat them?” Carter muttered, which made them all laugh.
“Absolutely not,” Nick said. “You don’t even have to look at them.”
Carter giggled. “Can I be excused?”
“Yes, you can,” Sarah said. “You can keep Bear company. Quietly!”
As Carter scampered off, Cathy asked Sarah, “So you met each other at Prairie View?”
“We did. The day they moved in, I knew right away how much I’d like this family. Well, Billy and Evie at least,” she added mischievously.
A spray of laughter from his parents and Billy. Even Evie seemed in on the joke, though her gaze was on the upside-down dog and the boy on the mat, six legs and two arms cycling in the air.
“Billy’s been such a help with Carter. He’s Carter’s favourite babysitter.” She turned to Nick with a smile. “And your son is handy with the neighbours, who have been unusually quiet these past nights.”
Nick’s mind raced forward to ways he might still right this ship. He bit down hard on his lower lip and stared at her.
“I don’t know where we’d be without you,” he said, cartoonishly pleading, as if he could sweet talk her across the line.
An awkward silence followed. Her face changed colours under the harsh power of his stare, her expression landing on a hurt kind of resolve, which embarrassed them both. When Evie asked Billy if there might be a bathroom, Sarah stood quickly, as if relieved to be let go.
He watched them walk across the room, not looking away until they were behind the closed door.
“She’s a lovely girl,” his mom said.
Nick nodded. She was everything he needed.
“It was so unfair what happened to her,” Billy said. “Dorothy is such a—” Somehow he managed to stop before cursing in front of his grandparents. “You shouldn’t accuse someone unless you’re sure.”
“That’s a good principle,” his dad said. “But what exactly are we talking about here?”
Nick gave Billy a steely look, holding up his hand to shush him. They didn’t need to spill Sarah’s business all over the table.
“What?” Billy griped. “It’s not a secret.”
Nick looked at his boy’s earnest face. The kid was right. A secret shut out the light, and he wanted no more in his life. And this wasn’t Sarah’s doing; there was no shame in this for her.
Nick did the telling, cutting clean to the heart of it. “There have been some thefts at Prairie View over the last while. Little things that belonged to the residents. Sarah was falsely accused of the wrongdoing and was fired without proof. Turns out it was one of the family members.”
Billy gulped in air, as if he still couldn’t believe it.
“One of the family members? A thief?” His dad shook his head in disbelief. “Here in Rigsbee?”
Billy nodded. “Rachel fooled us all. Nobody thought it could be her. I didn’t.”
His mother kept her eyes on the closed bathroom door, lips pursed. “Oh, goodness. That’s terrible. That poor girl.”
Nick wanted no poor-girl pronouncements. Sarah would hate their dissecting her betrayal like a splayed frog in biology class. He poured himself more wine. “It’s been a shock, but Sarah is strong.”
His mother took her napkin and twisted it around her fingers. “But it must have been terribly hard to be fired for something you didn’t do. A single parent with a young boy to look after.”
Billy scowled. “Dorothy should lose her job.”
His dad drummed his fingers on the table, calculating the options. “Sarah should get an apology in writing and added to her employment record. It has to be made crystal clear what’s happened so there’s no lingering confusion.”
No lingering confusion. The only right path. The one Nick had run from all these years.
Billy said, “But now Sarah can come back to Prairie View,” as if a happy ending were the only way this could go. Nick hadn’t had the gumption to tell his son that she was not going back. He’d been a coward, afraid that if he said the words, they would cause her to disappear.
Evie and Sarah chose that moment to come out of the bathroom, Evie blinking in alarm to find a room full of strangers. Her face scrunched in worry until she spotted Billy, who she headed towards with purpose.
“Where did you go?” Carter yelled as he crawled out of the front closet.
“Just to the bathroom.” Sarah helped Evie into her seat. “What on Earth were you doing there?”
Carter brushed himself off. “It’s our cave. But Bear won’t stay in it. Can we go outside?”
They could see no harm, a boy and a dog tumbling around the yard. Billy followed, promising to keep an eye on them.
Nick stood, remembering this was his house and he was supposed to be in charge. “Does anyone want coffee?” he asked. “Or dessert? Evie, we’ve got cake.”
He and Sarah carried the dishes to the counter, leaving behind the forks. Sarah stood at the sink while he made the coffee, her neck craned so she could get a clear view of the boys. Behind them, his mother kept a running conversation with Evie—the sunny weather, the flowers on the table, Evie’s perfect grandson, Billy, who had just stepped outside and yes, not to worry, he would be coming right back.
“I like that they’re buds,” Nick said, joining her at the window. The kids were at the firepit, Billy showing Carter how to stack wood, just as he’d taught him. Bear at their feet, ripping apart a stick.
She watched them silently. When she turned and smiled, there was a sadness there too, like she was fighting back tears.
“Are you okay?” He worried she might have overheard all their Prairie View talk when she was with Evie.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Dinner was great, Nick. Thank you.”
Her eyes seemed glassy, and he didn’t trust her words. “Food poisoning can take a while.”
She laughed. “So where’s this famous cake you’ve been going on about?”
“In my bedroom.”
“Of course it is.”
They managed to get the double-layer chocolate cake to the table without dropping it. “Should we call in the kids?” Nick asked once they were seated.
Sarah sighed. They could hear Carter’s high-pitched squeals through the screen door.
“Right,” Nick said. “Children are loud and sticky. Let’s wait a bit. That can’t be illegal.”
They drank coffee and ate cake on napkins with their recycled forks, Nick tenuously holding onto a feeling of belonging, like he had earned the right to sit at the adults’ table. They chatted about the crazy summer storms: gale-force winds scooping up table umbrellas and pitching them down Main Street; great forks of lightning stabbing the black sky; hailstones the size of golf balls bouncing through the northern edge of town, smashing through windows and nearly taking out Martin Brown’s left eye.
Not ten minutes out, the boys and the dog bounded back in like they were on the way to jump off a cliff, Carter yelling, “I found a caterpillar. I made it a fort. What do caterpillars eat?”
Billy said, “There’s cake,” and they scrambled up to the table. The dog barked in approval.
They all watched Carter as he shovelled forkfuls into his sticky mouth. Listened as he described how the caterpillar moves its head from side to side. Cheered as he demonstrated the caterpillar crawl on the floor, Bear on top.
Evie seemed to become increasingly agitated, looking for an escape route, eyes darting about. “It’s time for us to go home now, Billy.”
“Why don’t I take her,” Sarah said.
“That would be wonderful.” Evie perked up, snapping her purse closed.
“Are you sure?” Nick didn’t want Sarah out of his sight.
She nodded, turning to her son, “Come on, buddy. Get your things together. We’re going to drive Evie back home.”
“Can I bring my caterpillar?”
Nick got an empty jam jar from the cupboard, jabbed a few holes in the lid, and passed it to him. “But you can only keep it a little while. Then you have to let the caterpillar go so it can build its cocoon.”
Carter ran through the door holding his jar.
Sarah turned to his parents. “It’s been so lovely meeting you.”
Cathy hugged Sarah and George patted her arm.
Billy walked up to the group and asked tentatively, “So, when are you coming back to work?”
Sarah untangled from Cathy, blushing deeply. “Maybe we can talk about this later.”
“Will you be there tomorrow?”
“No, no I won’t.”
Billy was not willing to let it go. “So when? Dorothy has to let you back. She got everything wrong and now everybody knows it.”
This was Nick’s fault. He needed to stop this interrogation. “Give it a rest, Billy.” He shrugged an apology to Sarah, but her face was pinched and flushed.
She waited a long moment, and when she finally spoke, her voice sounded raw. “Billy. I’m not coming back. I got a new job actually. I just accepted the offer.”
“Where?” Billy said.
“Edmonton.”
Nick felt his world tilt. So it was final then. “That’s great news,” he mumbled.
“Thanks.” She did her best to smile. “It’s a good job. Better than I’d hoped. I’ve got my name in for a rental.”
“So, you and Carter are leaving?” Billy’s face was the colour of potato mash.
“We are.”
He backed away and headed to his room, slamming the door. Its bang ricocheted in the dead air, leaving the rest of them bunched like muddied cows.
After stunned silence, Sarah said, “I didn’t handle that very well. It’s all happening so fast. It’s not how I wanted to tell you.”
Nick had to work to not garble the words, “I’m really happy for you.”
Evie looked about to cry. Sarah put her arm around Evie’s shoulder and said, “I’m going to take you home now.”
And that was it. She was gone.
There was so much he needed to say, to Sarah, to his parents, but he had a boy who was hurting. There was nothing to do but go to him.