61

A few minutes shy of midnight, Mickey stepped out on to the front porch for a smoke. The sky was black, bursting with stars, the air cold but not freezing. He lit a cigarette and sat in the rocking chair, feeling the weight of the day in his bones.

Darby and the shrink had spent a good part of the afternoon with Claire, who suddenly didn’t want to talk any more, just wanted to hang out in her room with the door shut.

‘She’s overwhelmed,’ Darby explained to him. ‘It’s a lot to process. Just give it time.’

He had given it eleven years. Claire didn’t need all this talking. What she needed was to be home, not here, out in the middle of nowhere, inside this sprawling farmhouse full of strange rooms and strange faces. She needed to be back in her house, in her room and sitting on her bed, and he would sit next to her and the two of them would go through all the pictures he’d taken from the day she was born until the day she was taken from him – go through each picture and the videos he’d taken over and over again until Claire finally turned to him and said –

‘Smoking’s bad for you.’

Mickey turned, saw Claire in the doorway. He hadn’t even heard the door open.

‘You’re right,’ he said, and mashed the cigarette out on the floor. Then he flicked the butt into the darkness.

Claire came out, dressed in grey sweats and a denim jacket over a thermal shirt. Mickey wondered who had bought her the jacket, if it was a birthday gift or something she had picked out for herself, a reminder of her home for the past decade now comforting her as she waited in this strange house, about to go to another strange house and another strange bedroom.

‘Can’t sleep?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Long day. Stressful too.’

Claire nodded. There was a problem; it was written all over her face.

She’s here to tell me she wants to go home to her other family.

Only that wasn’t going to happen. Claire wasn’t going back to Canada. But the warm, good feelings and memories she attached to the Smiths were very real and weren’t going away.

‘This scar,’ Claire said, pointing to the skin near her right temple.

Mickey couldn’t see it. He got to his feet and took a closer look.

The scar was faint, about an inch long and jagged. He hadn’t noticed it earlier.

‘I can’t remember where it came from,’ Claire said. ‘Do you know?’

Mickey thought about the dried blood he’s seen in her hood.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

He wanted to ask her about what had happened that night on top of the Hill. He had so many questions.

Claire crossed her arms over her chest. She seemed on the verge of tears. He resisted the urge to reach out and hold her.

Don’t force it, Darby had told him. Let her come to you. And, most importantly, listen. Listen without judgement, without anger. Make this about her, not you.

Mickey said, ‘I’m sorry you have to go through all this.’

Claire said nothing. She turned her head and stared out at the trees, the leaves rustling in the wind.

‘Today, when we were walking, we saw a skating rink,’ she said. ‘At least it looked like a skating rink.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘I was in bed thinking about it – about the skating rink, I mean. At your house, was there a pond out back?’

‘Not out back,’ Mickey said. ‘It was about a mile away. Salmon Brook Pond, it’s called.’

‘It’s out in the woods, right?’

Mickey nodded. ‘You learned to skate there.’

‘You put these, like, crates or something on the ice.’

‘Yeah. Plastic milk crates. I’d stack two of them together and you’d hold on to the top. You didn’t like them after a while; you wanted to skate on your own.’

She saw him smile from the corner of her eye and turned to him, serious. ‘What?’

‘Sorry, I was thinking about when you fell on the ice. Each time you did, I’d reach down to pick you up and you’d get so mad. Each and every time.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you were stubborn,’ Mickey said. ‘You wanted to learn how to skate on your own, liked doing things on your own, ever since you were a baby. Skating, swimming and sledding. Especially sledding.’

The last words came out before Mickey realized what he’d said.

It was okay. The words washed right over Claire. She went back to staring out at the trees, only now she had this faraway, dreamy look, as if the memories he’d been describing were being played out for her.

‘But,’ she said, ‘I got better.’

‘Oh, yeah. You really took to skating.’

‘And we played a game. You held me up in front of you while we skated.’

A chill washed through him. He wanted to speak, wanted to urge her on, but was too terrified to say or do anything that might break this fragile connection to her hazy, fragmented memories.

‘You held me up,’ Claire said, ‘and I’d call out names. These really silly names.’

Mickey swallowed. ‘Your favourite was “Fighting fish”.’

Claire nodded slowly, lost in a time they had built together and shared.

‘Yeah,’ she said with a shy smile. ‘I remember.’