But sleep doesn’t come easily.
In the early hours of the morning, the moon has come and gone, the clouds have dissolved to reveal a handful of stars. It’s close to three in the morning when I hear the creak of Mom’s door opening, the sound of her telltale shuffle heading downstairs. Another door opens from the other side of the hallway. The noise must have woken Aunt Irene.
I get out of bed and crawl carefully down the ladder, pull a blanket over my shoulders to keep off the chill and pad to the landing.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I hear Mom murmuring to Aunt Irene. “I thought maybe a hot drink would help.” Dull yellow light spills out into the lower hallway. I sit down next to the banister, still mostly in shadow.
“It’s okay, Char. Let me help you.” The soft thud of the drawers opening and closing and then silence, then the sound of chairs moving, the two of them settling in.
Mom’s voice again. “I couldn’t stand being in the hospital with Sophie. I’ve spent the last few months terrified. And I thought that the terror would be an inoculation. If anything ever did happen I’d be prepared for it. I’d imagined it so many times already.”
“There isn’t a way to be ready. Not for something like this.”
“I gave up David, and then I lost Kira. You’d think I wouldn’t be so damn careless with the things I love.”
The hardwood floor is cold against my bum. A deep chill is setting in. There are tears on my face and I pull the blanket closer around me.
“Did it stop hurting for you?” Mom asks after a little while.
“No. Not ever. But I made peace with what happened. After my daughter died I was a wreck, Char, you remember that. But slowly I came out of it.”
“It was easier when Mum and Dad died. I know you did most of the work, clearing up the house and taking care of the arrangements—but that’s not what I mean. There’s a wrongness to this.”
The kettle whistles.
“Take some time, Char.” A sharp breath. “Really, if that’s what you need, then go away and put yourself back together. You could head north—Dad’s sister lives up there still, near Warwick. We’ve kept in touch on and off. You remember Jacklyn and her boys?”
“Cousin Jackie…”
“She has a patch of farmland where the kids stay, the grandchildren too. It’s beautiful. She’s asked me over before but I’ve been so busy lately and I thought we’d take the girls.”
“I can’t do that. Not now.”
“Think about it. I can take care of Sophie for a little while.”
The silence stretches on and after a while I can hear the sound of crying, little gasps for breath. I don’t want to hear any more of this. The anger I felt at Mom leaving me in the hospital has leeched away. What’s left is guilt—and a deep sense of regret. I wish I could help her but I don’t know how.
I head back to my bedroom. Shrugging off the blanket, I stare out the window: a perfect view of sky, dusky rooftops, the stippled surface of the Thames, reflecting streetlamps and starlight, bounded by a line of slack, wind-snapped sandbags. I pick out constellations I recognize from when Dad used to take us to the outskirts of Toronto to watch the Perseid meteor shower in August. Orion’s Belt, his top shoulder marked by a bright reddish star and his bottom foot by another of silver-white. The cluster of pinpricks that make up the Seven Sisters.
Will Mom leave like Aunt Irene said? Do I want her to?
The only way through grief is through it. I’ve begun to find my own way but she doesn’t know what I know. She doesn’t have any hope. Maybe her leaving for a while would make it easier for me to see through what I’ve started with Kira.
On the bedside table is an old storybook we used to read together. A fragment of Kira’s favourite story floats into my mind. It described a time when the world was underwater—no land to be found anywhere, just endless ocean and endless sky. And birds—hundreds of them, thousands of them, filling up the empty space with their song. Birds like smoke, birds like weather. Among them was a lark. When her mother died, there was nowhere to bury her body. No earth, only water. And so the lark lived in grief, idly circling. Her path was a knot of sorrow. On the third day she buried her mother in the back of her head.
I always loved the simplicity of that image, the clear blue of the waters, the endless horizon. I can picture it as a kind of heaven—the memory of what you loved, kept safe inside you. But how do I keep Kira safe?
Time is an arrow without a target, hurtling into the unknown. What will happen to me if Mom goes away? To our family? Kira’s death has changed us all. And we’re still changing, everything still in motion, nothing coming to rest. Stars, cities, sisters.
How much does Kira still feel? Has she locked away some memory of me within that strange, new form? Does she know where all this is going? Does she have a mind? A soul?
I suppose it isn’t just her I’m thinking about, but me. How I should’ve done all this first so she’d know the way. So she wouldn’t be alone. How for once she is going to reach the end of something before I do.
I’m afraid of being left behind. I guess that hurts too.