Friday night, there’s a knock at the door. Michael and Mia, stretched out on the floor in front of the fire trading sections of last Sunday’s Times, a half bottle of shiraz standing on the carpet between them, both groan.

“You expecting anyone?”

Mia shakes her head.

“Probably someone collecting for something,” Michael says. “They always come on Fridays, when they know we’re at our weakest.”

“Charity people—heartless bastards.”

“You went out for Heart and Stroke.”

“Don’t remind me. Most of the neighbours were so unhappy to see me, cap in hand. God, and Randolph. The millionaire on the corner—”

“With the Aston Martin.”

“—dropping change into my hand. Nickels, dimes, the occasional quarter.” Mia shivers. “I’ve been wishing a heart attack upon him ever since. Or a stroke. Either would be fine.” She leans a little closer and lowers her voice, as if there’s a chance whoever’s on the front porch might overhear her. “He doesn’t deserve the tree on his lawn.” An enormous maple, at least two hundred years old, Mia’s always been crazy about it. Even Michael, not a huge tree connoisseur, is impressed by its size, the fact it grew so large in the city.

They lie still, listening for the dull thud of boots on snow-packed porch stairs to release them back to their papers. Instead, there’s another knock, this time louder, more insistent.

“Shit,” Michael says. “You get it.”

“No, you.”

“No, you.”

“I’ll blow you if you get it.”

“Deal.” Michael slaps Mia’s ass as he rolls up off of the carpet. He knows that after another couple glasses of wine, they’ll probably both fall asleep in front of the fire. Still, he likes the sexual banter, likes the fact that after nearly two decades of marriage Mia still says the words and, from time to time, graces him with the deed.

He goes to step away, but Mia slips her hand under the hem of his jeans and gives his ankle a squeeze. “Lucky,” she says.

Which is exactly what he’d been thinking. By the end of the work week, all he wants is to be home. When they’re invited out for dinner, separated by people, he misses having her to himself. At a party, it’s always Mia who catches his eye. Her vitality, her youthful heart. He’ll wait for her to feel him watching. Then from ten, twenty, thirty feet, their eyes will lock, hold, as love rises sly into the room.

Front door open, Michael can’t quite process the man shuffling from foot to foot on his porch, in a tuque and puffy down jacket, each breath an icy fog. Michael’s used to seeing Stanley tugging at his tie in their boardroom, trying to explain to him and Peter why even though sales are up, their property management companies aren’t making the money they once did. Stanley showing up at his house on a Friday night, even with his briefcase clutched to his chest, is way out of the norm.

Michael puts a hand on Stanley’s back and guides him into the front hall. “Come in before you freeze to death.”

“Sorry to drop in like this.” Stanley places his boots on the mat beside the door, then unzips his jacket, revealing an impressive paunch, fallout from long hours behind a desk and too many client lunches. “I saw your Jeep in the driveway.”

“You want something to drink?”

“This is a professional visit,” Stanley says, “but if you’re having one.”

Mia’s still on the floor by the fire, but now she’s sitting up, cross-legged with a pillow on her lap. “Mia, you remember Stanley. Stanley, Mia, my wife.” Michael knows he doesn’t have to clarify the relationship, to add the title, but he likes to lay claim. Mia’s always worn her hair long, but this week she had it cut into a short bob, the bangs high on her forehead. On an older woman the haircut would be severe, on a child it would look like a mistake, the scissorwork of an unskilled parent, but on Mia the effect is gamine, showing off her straight, dark eyebrows, her moony eyes. She looks like a ripe tomboy from the Isle of Man, a French schoolteacher who prefers cafés to classrooms.

“Our boys were on the same team a few years back, weren’t they?” Mia says, repeating a neighbourhood mantra, forget Kevin Bacon, everyone one ice sheet removed.

Stanley nods. “Finn’s not playing this year?”

“Nope,” Michael interjects. He bends and picks the wine bottle from the floor. “Concentrating on his marks.” Which is only partly true. Finn will be applying to universities next fall, so sure, his marks are important, but playing hockey a couple of times a week hadn’t hurt his grades; Finn’s always done well at school. But when he turned fourteen, fifteen, the sport turned rough. Even in their no-hitting house league the boys had started raising their elbows and slamming each other into the boards, trying out their bigger bodies, throwing around their new strength. Finn had been one of the biggest kids on his team—close to six feet tall and naturally muscular—but still he started hesitating going into the corners, looking over his shoulder, shying away from really fighting for the puck. Michael wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed, but he sure did.

At one mid-season game against a team of farm kids from Quebec, a brawl had broken out, every guy on the ice grabbing hold of an opponent, jerking them around by their sweaters, trash-talking each other in both official languages. Finn had been the only kid to skate away. Michael had felt relieved, although standing in the brouhaha of hollering parents, he’s not proud to admit he’d also felt a stab of embarrassment. There was a code in hockey, unwritten rules governing sportsmanship and honour, and his boy wasn’t playing along. Watching Finn hanging on the boards by the bench, the word pussy had floated into his head, although Michael had pushed it away fast.

When it came time to sign up this year, Finn had said he was going to stick to shinny, that he preferred pickup games on outdoor rinks with only his gloves and his skates and his stick.

“Daniel still playing?”

“Only thing that gets him off the computer.” For the first time since he walked in, Stanley risks a smile. “Made the A team again this year.”

“Good for him,” Mia says as Michael heads for the bar at the back of the room.

They bought the house before Finn was born and had extended the legs on an old pump organ they’d inherited from Mia’s grandmother, added a matching rosewood extension, complete with a built-in fridge and a discreet stereo system. They’d painted the walls a rich ruby red, and Mia had hung velvet curtains and an antique mirror behind the bar and a Fortuny lamp—hand-painted Venetian silk; Michael hadn’t even asked how much it cost—overhead, so what had been an awkward, unused end of a long living room now had the lusty warmth of a Parisian salon.

“You still taking those pictures?” Stanley asks.

“I am.”

“That one you took of Daniel a couple years back. My wife just loves it. You just, just got him somehow, you know?”

“Well thanks, Stanley,” Mia says. “He’s a lovely boy.”

Michael pulls the curtains against the cold and clunks a fresh glass onto the bar. The kid is a puck hog. Fast, but he never passes. Always tries to go end-to-end, which worked okay when the boys were younger but rarely once they all figured out how to skate. Michael pulls the cork and motions to Stanley. “Shiraz okay?”

Stanley nods but stays put at the front of the room. “I have some papers to go over.” He reaches up and scratches his neck. “We’ll need better light.”

“It’s brighter in the kitchen,” Mia says, flashing Michael a wondering look. “You could use the table in there.”

Michael has no desire to sit in the kitchen. He’s comfortable behind the bar. “Should I call Peter for this?” he asks, rather gruffly. “He’s the finance guy.”

“No.” Stanley shakes his head. “You shouldn’t. You definitely shouldn’t call Peter.”

—

THE PARTY’S A RAGER. And like all things Eli, his basement is killer. Rich kid. Rich parents, currently in Costa Rica. Everyone drunk on their left-behind booze.

If anyone tries to talk to me, I pretend I can’t hear over the music, which is loud—Eli’s at the coffin, two decks, two laptops, professional six-track mixer. Tonight, I’m not into it. At all. What I’m into is drinking—tequila shots, beer, more tequila. You know, whatever. What I’m feeling is the bass from the upstairs party. Like hammer blows from above.

Frankie and this other girl, Brooke, from my physics class, straddle arcade motorcycles in the corner. Eli’s dad got them cheap from some place that was going under, gave them to Eli and Eric last Christmas. I got a hockey stick and some socks. The girls swing into the curves—the bikes tip, their asses tip—but I’m not really paying attention. Until game over, Frankie slides off the bike.

I got owned, she laughs, stumbling against my leg, drunk or pretending to be. She sits on my knee, holds up her phone and leans in for a selfie. I tell her she’s heavy and bounce her off. She gives me a bitchy look as she walks away.

Like I care. Tonight, I only care about the upstairs party, the music. Which is irritating. And distracting. Very Fucking Irritating and Distracting.

I haul myself off the couch, head over to tell Eli I’m leaving. But he’s totally oblivious, in his five-hundred-dollars-a-pop headphones. He finally sees me and frees up one ear. You okay? he shouts over the music. Travi$ Scott. “Goosebumps.” Tonight I hate the fucking song. You in a shit mood, or what?

I’m fine. A bit wasted.

Crash here. In my room. Just don’t puke in my bed. His pupils are small, the whites red. He’s been upstairs with Eric. Eric and Jess.

I’m not gonna puke. I’m fine. I’m going home.

Come on, man. Stay here. I’ll call your mom. Make some shit up. He tries to throw an arm around my shoulder, but I shrug it off.

Frankie elbows her way in, flashing smiles and cleavage as she leans into Eli, making some bogus musical request, shimmery and happy, pretending I don’t exist. Eli smiles loosely back—he’s always been into her, she’s given him nothing so far—his face lit blue by MacBook, his stupid fucking smile.

When he’s stoned, he looks just like him.

I’m going, I say.

I’m halfway up the stairs. Eli calls over the music. Finn!

I trip.

Hey, Finn!

I trip again.

—

WHEN MICHAEL CALLS HER, his voice sounds strangled, as if Stanley’s got him by the throat in the kitchen. They’ve been in there a while—obviously their time together hasn’t been pleasant. Reluctantly Mia downward-dogs her way off the living room floor, finds the remote and with a click shuts off the fire. She and Michael have always agreed she wouldn’t get involved in the business. And despite her financial acumen—ten years as a corporate banker—Peter never argued. Nothing more emasculating than a wife hovering over her husband’s shoulder, he’d laughed. Especially one as number smart as Mia. But there’d been no bonuses at the company this year or last, and recently Michael has been making noises about her taking a look at the books.

Let him and Peter work it out. She’s had enough of men and their money. She knows that in every business numbers get fudged, games get played, and honesty and integrity aren’t typically at the top of anyone’s list.

She pushes hard through the swinging door. Michael and Stanley are sitting side by side, watching as she makes her way across the kitchen. If it weren’t her husband and his accountant at the table she’d laugh; the two men are the embodiment of white-collar scared shitless. Normally with his easy smile and beautiful skin Michael looks like a man just back from sailing. But tonight his face is the colour of chickpeas. His lips are white. And Stanley’s hot and red as a second-degree burn. Two full glasses of wine stand forgotten in the spread of papers between them.

The radio, permanently tuned to the CBC, is playing an old Q rerun, the host interviewing Joni Mitchell. Mia turns it off. She also shuts off the hood fan left on after a dinner of homemade lasagna, so all is quiet, the air undisturbed but for the lingering smell of burnt cheese. Mia takes the two steps down to the garden room. The dining room. A new addition to an old home. A bank of windows overlooks the yard; Michael likes to stretch out on the long bench seat beneath them after dinner. The outside lights are off, so the windows reflect back the room, making it feel encapsulated, as if beyond the glass the world has stepped soundlessly back. The deck, the trellis, the snowy yard, the crabapple’s twisted branches. The cedar fence flattened. The house behind them, converted to a triplex years ago now, much to the chagrin of the neighbours—Jess and her mom live on the second floor. All of the houses, all of Old Aberdeen crept away, the handsome bridges fallen. They’ll wake tomorrow alone in a new wilderness, a white flatness running to every horizon, the river a rush in the distance.

The image is not entirely unpleasant. When Mia was a new mother, she had a recurring dream of watching the house burn. Smoke gushing out the windows, flames shooting from the roof, the heat pressing into her where she stood in the middle of the avenue. And instead of feeling panicked, she’d feel relieved, joyous even. She’d wake flushed and excited, as if she’d been liberated into a glorious second chance, although even in her dreams she was careful; she always held Finn in her arms and stood Michael squarely beside her before burning her life to the ground. At least that’s the way she remembers it now.

Mia circles the table and takes the chair next to her husband, so she’s facing away from the windows.

“Explain it to her,” Michael says, his voice pinched.

Stanley squares papers neatly in front of her, ready to back up all his bad news with official documentation. A corporate search, his fingerprints clammy along the edges. “During the last restructuring,” he tells her, “the splitting of one company into three, Peter wrote Michael out.”

“What?”

“He wrote him out.”

Company records slide across the table, an amendment to the shareholder agreement with Michael’s signature at the bottom. Mia does her best not to flinch. Stanley explains how Peter had things drawn up so he was the sole owner of the Conrad Management Group, eliminating their negotiated sixty-forty split with a few scratches of a pen. Formed a new company—Peter Corp.—Peter Corp!—into which, after flowing from one company to the next, consulting fees totalling close to half a million dollars were funnelled annually.

“How could this happen?” Mia directs her question at Stanley. She doesn’t look at Michael. It is enough seeing his signature on these pages.

“Michael always left the financials to Peter.” Stanley taps a short stack of documents beside him, the ones Mia hasn’t yet seen. “He never really read the paperwork.”

“We’re friends,” Michael says. “We’ve known each other since high school.”

“He’s been withholding information,” Stanley says. “Purposely making things difficult to figure out. I just work with the in-house numbers I’m given. I’m not paid to ask a lot of questions. But for the past few years, things just haven’t added up. I’ve done more than I should.”

Mia stares across the room at the fridge. Finn’s last report card, a notice from school about an upcoming ski trip, a dental appointment reminder, the fine details of their lives held up by glossy magnets. She wonders what, if anything, Helen knows about this.

“I’ll call Peter tomorrow,” Michael says. “Get this whole thing straightened out.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Stanley says, his eyes skittish. “I’d get in touch with a lawyer first thing Monday. First thing, you hear?”

—

UPSTAIRS, I STAY close to the wall. I try not to look over. I try not to look over at her. Leaning on the counter, her back to me. Two steps and I’d be grazing the sliver of skin showing above her jeans. Running my fingertips along it. Like just casually, on my way by.

Eric’s standing beside her. Not touching her. Not touching her. Lucky, stupid prick. The first time I came over, he dumped the dog’s water bowl on my head. I was, like, six. He’s been selling weed to half my friends since grade eight. On the breakfast bar in front of him, a big blue bong, a lazy cloud drifting overhead. Upstairs crowd. Downstairs crowd. Except for the dedicated stoners, we don’t really mingle that much.

I make it through unnoticed. In the aftershock of the journey, my heart’s hammering, confusing a stroll through the kitchen with a blind stumble across a minefield or something. Idiot. Idiot heart.

I dig through the pile of winter jackets on the couch, locate mine—neon blue, so it’s easy—rip it from the pile, grab one black glove, then another, it’s not mine, I whip it back into the fray, if it wasn’t so fucking cold I’d just ditch, do a couple laps of the block, punch a tree, sober up, go home.

And I don’t even see her at first. I’m still rifling through the pile, but I feel her come out of the kitchen. I feel her moving along the hall. I turn my head and she disappears into the bathroom. She’s wearing a pink sweater that I know to be incredibly soft. I drift over, like smoke I drift over, press myself against the wall and listen to her pee—even this I love—the toilet flush, water running as she washes her hands. When she comes out, the smell of soap, I know it’s stupid, but I don’t care, I grab her around the waist.

She lets out a little scream before she sees it’s me. Finn, she hisses, twisting away. I reach for her again, but she traps my hands in hers, holds them down and away.

I stare at her as hard as I can.

Stop it. She squeezes my fingers, tight, so I know she’s not fooling around.

What?

Just stop. You’re drunk. You wouldn’t do this if you weren’t.

She has a velvet ribbon tied around her throat. Black. Black on creamy brown. Thai. No, Indonesian. Or maybe half. I’m not sure—Jess never talks about her dad.

I like your necklace thing, I say.

Thanks. A quick, cautious smile.

Can I touch it?

No.

Can I?

No.

I pull one hand free, wave it around a bit, let it do a little victory dance, before I reach up and run my index finger slowly along the ribbon.

Soft, I say. Like you.

Finn. She steps away. Glances toward the kitchen. No one’s watching. She tilts her head to one side. I tug a dangling black end. The bow collapses. The ribbon falls from her throat. I take my time wrapping it around my fingers. I can do all this because I’m drunk and I don’t care.

Are you leaving? She nods at my jacket.

Yeah, but I can’t find my glove.

She takes my hand and leads me to the front hall. Wait here, she says, pressing down on my shoulders, collapsing me onto the stairs. I’ll find it for you.

She’s back in a minute, my glove on her right hand. I pull her down beside me, thankful when she doesn’t resist.

You okay? she asks.

No. My knees jumping, radioactive. I was losing it downstairs. I sound so sucky, like a two-year-old, but I can’t help it.

Finn.

It’s been six months.

Really? Are you serious?

Yeah. Six months today. Every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day. I bump her shoulder. Your fault. You started it.

I shouldn’t have.

But you did.

She takes my chin and turns my head toward her. It’s just that you’re so gorgeous. So gorgeous and so nice.

Come to the bathroom with me, I say.

She raises her hand, makes my glove deliver the warning, an obedient puppet. Be good, Finn.

I will. In the bathroom. You know, the bathroom.

Finn, she says, I can’t. Her face is two inches from mine, her breath is warm and weedy, her lips are—

HEY!

Like a kick in the fucking head hey and Eric standing in front of us, his hands on his hips. You babysitting or what?

She’s off the step, poof, gone. Finn’s not feeling great, she says, all trippy and fast.

Ahh, Eric says, poor Finn.

I think about hiding the hand with the ribbon, but I don’t. I let it hang there between my knees. He’ll see it if he looks. I want him to see it.

I thought maybe you could drive him home.

Yeah, I say, in the Porsche. Or the Caddy. Jess and I’ll sit in the back.

In your dreams, he says, glaring at me, glaring so he looks like some kind of animal, a wolf maybe, a wolf that trots sideways from the woods, kills more than its share, disappears back into its piss-marked territory, panting, with blood on its teeth. Just one of the Kelly boys.

When he grabs Jess’s hand, a sting of vomit hits the back of my throat. Come on, he says, I want to show you something. He pushes past me, his knee slamming into my shoulder. She slips by like I’m not even there. They climb the stairs together. The one I’m sitting on quakes.

Even then, I can’t help myself. I’m a fucking masochist. I look up. I watch. They round the banister and start down the hall, he’s in front, she’s one step behind, her hand wrapped in his and my glove on her other hand and her ribbon wound round my fingers and his room, his room at the end of the hall.

—

MICHAEL’S IPAD CLATTERS onto his bedside table. “You mad?”

Mia opens one eye. All she wants is to sleep, but Michael is staring down at her, double-chinned from this angle, and still weirdly pale. He looks like he needs a transfusion, although she’s the one who spent most of the night alone in the kitchen, going through the financial statements, tracking the money from company to company, drawing up a cash flow statement, finishing off the wine.

“Mad?” Mia considers his question. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I am.”

“If it’s true, I’m going to kill him.”

“Who?”

“Peter,” he says. “Who else would I be talking about?”

“Oh. Well, it’s true.”

“And you’re not mad about it?”

Michael might be asking the question, but he’s the one who’s furious. She wouldn’t have expected anything else. For a normally well-balanced human being, Michael does not do well when things go wrong. Whenever a hockey coach yelled at Finn, or Finn got hurt, or wasn’t where he was supposed to be at the allotted hour, Michael’s temper would flare. Once when Mia was rear-ended on her bike and ended up sprawled on the pavement, Michael had raged at the driver, an older man, close to seventy, who’d been as shaken as she was. Mia had limped over and calmed Michael down, but once she’d separated him from the driver, he’d started in on himself. He should have been riding behind her, he should have seen the car coming, he should have warned her about narrow roads and careless drivers, he should have, he should have, he should have.

Tonight his anger tires her. She has no desire to placate him. A stubbornness settles over her. And it’s probably just the wine, but she’s having a hard time taking the whole thing seriously. She knows it’s serious, a million and a half dollars is serious, but money, Peter, his greed—at the moment it all feels so cliché and melodramatic. “I guess I’m mad at myself for being too lazy or unwilling or complacent or complicit or whatever I was to look at the books before. I mean, in retrospect, it seems negligent.”

“We all agreed you’d stay out of it.”

“Which seems stupid now. I mean, we know what kind of man Peter is. In some ways, he was just being true to his nature.”

“Jesus Christ, Mia. I’m glad you can be so philosophical about it.”

“It’s business,” she says. “He had no duty to protect us.”

“No duty to protect us? He lied to us, Mia. He stole from us. They’re our best friends, for Christ’s sake.” Michael yanks one of the pillows out from behind his back and throws it to the floor.

“Men who lust after money. They’ll screw over their own mothers for a buck. We were naive to think friendship would change that.”

“So it’s our fault, then? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Mia sits up, cross-legged on top of the covers, her sleepshirt hammocked over her knees. “But we probably should have expected something like this. We have a fairly lax attitude toward money, and we’ve climbed into bed with a man who doesn’t. Hoping his greed would be big enough to keep us all living in style.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No,” she says bluntly. “I’m not fucking kidding you.”

“I worked my ass off for fifteen years building that business. I brought in every client. I closed every deal.”

“I know. And every successful company needs men who work their asses off and one sick, greedy bastard to make sure the focus of all that work is directed toward one thing and one thing only. Making money. Peter’s that guy.” She catches the swoop of cotton T-shirt stretched over her knees and pins it to the mattress, covering her fleshy folds, the dark points of entry. “You don’t care enough about money to be a successful entrepreneur.”

“Oh, fuck. Is that your professional opinion?”

“Yeah. It is.”

“You’re such a hard-ass, aren’t you?” Michael is now sitting fully upright in bed.

“You don’t last ten years in corporate banking by being soft. I’m a much kinder photographer.”

“Are you?”

Mia snorts disdainfully and flails her way under the covers. Michael knows it bothers her that no one would ever describe her as kind. Smart, yes. Honest, yes. Moral, yes. But her opinions can be harsh. She has high expectations of herself and the people around her. She does not easily forgive. When she had Finn, she surprised herself by being such a loving mother. She’d never babysat, never even liked kids. But she’s always adored Finn and is her best self when she’s with him. She gets along well with teenagers in general, loves their energy and their unrest, the possibilities, so many different lives they might live. She is patient with the elderly and almost no one else. Most women find her intimidating: too confident, too assertive, too much. Other than Helen, whom she fell in with so easily—their husbands’ partnership, kids the same age, Helen’s sweet nature—Mia doesn’t claim many women as friends.

“You want to know what I’m mad about, Michael? You signing that amendment to the shareholder agreement without consulting a lawyer. Writing yourself out of the companies. You want to tell me how that happened?”

Michael collapses back onto his pillow as if he’s just been deflated. They lie side by side in a heavy quiet, interrupted only by the soft thump of Michael banging his own forehead. Mia snaps off her light. Turns on her side so her back is to him and stares into the darkness, letting herself hate him just a little.

“It was probably on a Friday,” he says, finally. “At lunch. We used to do paperwork then.”

“Your famous Friday lunches at the Mekong. Peter getting you drunk and taking advantage.” Like a fucking schoolgirl, she thinks. Nineteen years. Nineteen years of marriage to this man. Mia reminds herself most of them have been happy. That on good days, they love being together. That every day, they love Finn. That the last word she said before Stanley showed up was lucky.

“I’ll call David on Monday,” she says. “He’s the best lawyer I know. And the kindest.” Behind her, Michael sighs heavily. “He’ll work it out. What you have to do is…Michael? Are you listening?” With the slow roll of his body the mattress gives, then his breath warms the back of her neck, a disturbance she does her best to ignore. “What you have to do is find every document that directly states or implies that you and Peter are partners in the business. Preferably documents that he signed. That way we can probably get him on fraud.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, after another long pause. His hand slides up her thigh, under her shirt, and settles on her hip. She slaps it away, more forcefully than intended. With a frustrated huff, Michael lurches to his side of the bed. Ten seconds later his iPad grey-glows the room. Mia closes her eyes, but still finds the light annoying. A common complaint, an old argument, one she has no energy for now.

“What about Finn?” Michael asks. “When’s he coming home?”

“His curfew’s one thirty. You know that.” She should get up and find her phone in case he tries to get in touch. It’s downstairs—somewhere. The front hall table? The pocket of her coat? She can never keep track of the damn thing. “I’m tired.” And she is, suddenly and desperately so, every thought sluggish, every bone heavy. “You wait up for a change. I worked all night. I’m off duty.”

—

FUCK YOU, ELI, my friend, fuck you who pulled up a stool and pushed the bong toward me even though you know I don’t, and I did, I put the chamber between my lips and inhaled, and the drunken freakoid rage receded like you said it would when you found me smacking my head against the wall. I inhaled again, I coughed, it was funny, everyone laughing, everything funny, hey, Finn’s finally partaking, the bong reappeared, reappeared, and I laughed when she slipped her hand in my back pocket. I turned and she was like, whoa, right there, aren’t you hot in that jacket, Finn? and I was, I was so hot, my blood like rocket fuel, and fuck it, I leaned in and kissed her like I knew she wanted me to, wanted me to for the last five years. And I got so into kissing her, my hands on her butt, one glove on, my other glove upstairs, gone, shit I didn’t want to think about that, so I kept kissing her, people guffawing, get a room…Who were those people, Eli? I didn’t know, I didn’t care, I wanted to go and she knew it. Then you, all loud, like ground control to Major Tom, Where are you going, Finn? Hey, Finn! as she pulled me up off the stool and led me out of the kitchen and into the laundry room and closed the door and dropped to her knees and it was so mind-fuckingly amazing I let her do it, sweat running down my back, and my hand in her hair, it felt so good, I didn’t care who she was, I didn’t want her to stop.

—

MICHAEL LISTENS AS Mia’s breathing slows and deepens, feels her body fall still on the bed. The chart of hockey standings he’s been feigning interest in for the last five minutes—the Canadiens are in second place in the East—blurs on the screen in his hands. He relaxes back against his pillows, exhales, thankful Mia’s finally asleep. With her awake, he’d been holding himself motionless, too tense to even risk a sideways glance.

Michael rotates his head on the pillow to loosen up his neck. Fucking Stanley. Fucking Peter. And Mia, his lovely wife, turned into a complete banker bitch. He lets his iPad drop to his stomach and closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, it’s quarter after two.

Christ.

Sleepy and disoriented, he stalks through the house flipping on one light after another. Finn’s bedroom is empty. His bathroom. TV room, living room, kitchen, shit, shit, shit. By the time he reaches the basement, he’s wide awake and the house is lit like summer.

He yanks his phone from its charger on the hall table, tries calling. No answer. He texts him. Where are you? It’s late. No answer.

Finn. You should be home. Come home NOW. In the chill blaze of their front hall, it takes Michael half a dozen tries to get the capitalization right. He stares at the small screen in the palm of his hand, waiting for three small dots to tell him that Finn is responding, willing a text bubble to bloom a reply.

Where are you can you answer me

Come home.

A current of cold air sweeps across Michael’s ankles; the fire’s off, the thermostat programmed to drop at night. He should probably go back upstairs and wake Mia. She has everyone’s number. She’ll know where he is. Some party somewhere. But the disdain in her voice when she’d told him to wait up for Finn, as if it was something he could actually manage, still rankles. Not to mention the way she slapped away his hand.

Finn?

I’m not mad. Just come home

Can you get in touch please

Finn? Are you okay?

Finn?

—

I AM A SPOTLIGHT, spotlit, the only thing that’s glowing. My eyelids a radioactive blood orange, a pink-jelly sunset snapped to black, everything quiet and calm. I exhale and open my eyes and whoa! like, just whoa! Above me the pale city stars, I have never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. Except for the moon, fuck! the moon, a sickle of pure silver light, all the stars switching places, the trees sliding across the sky. The whole yard spinning, then faster so I press my heels into the snow and turn my head and hold on to the moon. And I’m scared—get up—but also sort of laughing, feeling my body heat reflected back by the snow, amplified, so warm it’s keeping me safe, Inuit and igloos, I am one with my northern brethren in their homes of ice, I totally get it, the insulating properties of snow and I know there’s probably an equation for it, Mr. Elms could write it on the board, It’s simple, kids, it’s Physics 101, why my fist burns in a hotspot of snow, my hand melting into the snow and the snow melting into my hand, the boundary between snow and flesh disappearing, the boundary between everything beautiful and everything beautiful melting away, my body gone, my heartbeat floating…slow…slow…slow…into the universe…and everywhere, everything love.

Love.

I feel it. I am it. Every neuron fires into that awe.

From some great distance I see myself getting up to build an igloo, but it’s so nice here, so nice being so cold and so fearless, I was so hot before.

—

THREE A.M. MICHAEL grabs his hat and coat, shoves his feet into a bulky pair of Sorels and stomps out the front door. He has no patience for scraping the tough web of ice from the windshield or letting the Jeep idle to warm. He sinks into the collar of his coat and hustles up Springfield on foot, like the last man on Earth, shadowed by darkened homes and naked maples—one on every patch of lawn. Icicles big as children hang from the corners of the roofs, giant daggers of ice; one fell and sheared the side mirror off Mia’s Jetta before Christmas, leaving a stump of shattered plastic in its wake.

The spongy creak of packed snow, the grind of sidewalk grit marking time, Michael trudges up the snowy street, in the heart of Old Aberdeen. A neighbourhood of good schools and decked-out parks—tennis courts, soccer fields, speed skating ovals, baseball diamonds—and of course, gracious avenues of red brick homes with leaded windows and big wraparound front porches. Kids riding bikes in summer, ringing friends’ doorbells, playing pickup in the winter, and regardless of season, the streetlights their cue to get home. Like the old days. Like it was when Michael was a kid, growing up in Beaconsfield, an anglo enclave in Montreal. Only nicer. And pretty much a hundred percent English.

Although Michael doesn’t often think in these terms, Old Aberdeen is actually an island, a long, narrow strip of land only a ten-minute drive to downtown. The western tip—where his buddy Peter lives, on an estate-sized lot in a house overlooking the water—cleaves the Aberdeen River into two streams. The northern passage is man-made, a stone-walled canal that in fact created the island a hundred and seventy years back. The canal ferries boats safely past a rough section of the river, although along the island’s southern shore, not all the water runs fast. Interspersed with the rapids are long stretches of slow, sliding calm that freeze every winter, although even this far north, it’s not something you can count on anymore. The canal is still usually solid enough for skating—city crews monitor the conditions carefully—but it’s gentlemanly, real Hans Christian Andersen, and sticks and pucks aren’t allowed. So far the winter has been a bitter one—tonight is no exception—and Old Aberdeen is well surrounded by hand-shovelled rinks and foot-thick ice.

Michael pauses when he reaches Main Street, empty at this dead hour. His thin leather gloves were a bad choice—two minutes outside and his fingers are already aching. He pinwheels his arms, like a speed swimmer warming up for a race, encouraging blood back to the tips. He looks left up Main. The bagel shop. Past the bagel shop, a few new hipster bars and restaurants serving craft beers and questionable cuts of meat—places Finn couldn’t get in and would have no reason to visit. To the right, Eli Kelly’s riverside home. Eli’s father, Don, slapping Michael on the back at the door, sloppy drunk, insisting on a nightcap. And his wife, Dorothy, worn down but still flirty, a dark, leathery tan.

Michael turns left. Across the street, sun and sand shine from a bright-lit billboard, the undulating taunt—legs hip waist breasts—of a bikinied girl against a blue Cuban sea. All-inclusive. All yours for only $999.

He could buy a lot of that with half a million dollars. Or a million and a half—Stanley said it’s been going on for the last three years. So to hell with a week in the sun. A loop through Southeast Asia would be nice. Thailand, Vietnam, Japan. A dip down under to Australia. He and Mia have always talked about showing Finn a bit of the world.

Christ, Finn. It’s so unlike him not to check in. He’s always been a thoughtful kid. Confident, but laid-back. Rarely gets mad, rarely raises his voice. Doesn’t do drugs, if what Mia’s told him is right. He’s come home noticeably drunk only once. Fighting a slur, he’d tried to tell her about his night, but she sent him to his room, said she didn’t like talking to him when he was in that condition. “Aw Mom,” he’d said. Michael had been lying in bed, the door open to the hall, and he’d heard the shame in Finn’s voice, how much he hated disappointing his mother.

Michael begins to jog, awkwardly. His boots are clunky beasts, tough leather and felted wool, footwear pried from an unearthed Neanderthal’s desiccated feet. He jogs past boutiques and coffee shops, a pet store pushing hand-knit sweaters and rubber booties for dogs, the Italian deli where an organic tomato can set you back three bucks. The air sears his lungs—it’s like breathing dry ice—but he keeps on running, suffering the hard ache in his chest, deserved punishment for anyone without enough sense or luck to stay inside so deep on a winter’s night.

What else? He distracts himself with everyone’s favourite game. What to Do with the Money? A ski chalet in the Eastern Townships. Definitely a cottage, nothing big, nothing fancy, just a wedge of pine-scented forest, a couple hundred feet of frontage, lake water like warm velvet at midnight, a million stars overhead.

Peter and Helen have all that. Claimed the cash came from her parents as part of some tax-saving deal, assets tipping from one generation to the next without the grief of anyone actually dying. Most summer weekends, he and Mia and Finn are invited up to the cottage. In winter, it’s the chalet in Orford. He supposes all that’s over now. They’ll be making other vacation plans. Other plans, period.

Michael thought he knew the deal with Peter. Like Mia said, the man was born lusting after money. He stretches the truth and bends rules to get more of it. Michael’s seen him do it countless times at work. Hell, he watched him pluck twenties from his mother’s purse back in high school, helped him smoke the pot he bought with the stolen bills. Still, Michael had somehow convinced himself that Peter’s greed would never trump their friendship. Hundreds of teenage parties, hockey games, baseball games, dozens of girls. And later on, hadn’t Peter shown up at Mia and Michael’s door, suitcase in hand—not once, but twice—after finding out that his then fiancée had been cheating on him? Hadn’t he lived with them for months? They were close, for Christ’s sake. And Peter wasn’t stupid. He knew he needed Michael to soothe the staff and charm the customers while he took care of the dough.

When the company had started to take off and they sold their first few franchises, it was Peter who insisted they formalize their arrangement. Michael hadn’t even wanted a shareholder agreement. They’d always worked on a handshake-is-my-word basis and there’d never been any trouble between them.

Except for the incident with the boat. A two-hundred-horse bowrider, wraparound white leatherette seats trimmed in navy, surround-sound stereo, built-in cooler. He’d only had it a couple of weeks when their bookkeeper, Jill, all six feet two of her, had marched into Michael’s office, closed the door and told him about the unauthorized $35,000 withdrawal from the company’s main account on the same day Peter purchased the boat. Michael wasn’t sure if he didn’t totally believe her, didn’t want to believe her or simply didn’t want to confront his friend, but he never said a word. Told Jill to leave it alone. She stomped around the office for a few weeks until Peter found some excuse to let her go.

He never told Mia about it. Hadn’t wanted her to worry or think he didn’t have things in hand. And if he’s honest, he hadn’t wanted her to force him to, well, rock the boat, because he knew it was something she wouldn’t let lie. He wonders what would have happened if he’d confronted Peter then—this was ten or eleven years back, now—if the company would have blown apart or if they’d have come out the other side on more even ground.

His throat anaesthetized by frigid air, lungs pruned by cold, Michael wheezes his way through Kettleman’s parking lot. Choking back a cough, he peers through the front window, streaming with condensation. Booths of kids, ski jackets, flushed faces, saggy tuques, he searches for but can’t find the right combination. The neon blue of Finn’s jacket, the pocket of brown hat, the jut of dark brown hair.

He yanks open the door, stumbles into steamy heat, young noise and yeasty wafts of baking bread. A deep, wood-burning oven runs fifteen feet across the store’s back wall; the bagels are fed into the oven on wooden pallets the length of a grown man. Like a crematorium, Michael can’t help thinking every time he sees it.

College kids who’ve outgrown worried parents hang along the counter beside the oven. The bearded guy who begs change outside Metro hunches over a shaky metal table by the front window—drafty, second-class seats in winter. In one of the middle booths Michael spots Tristan, a friend of Finn’s, with two girls whose backs are to him. It isn’t until he’s standing at the end of the table that he recognizes Frankie. Her curls are hidden beneath a floppy tuque, her eyes glassy and unfocussed. He gives her a stiff nod. “Francine.”

“Hi, Michael.” A red flush creeps up her neck. She holds herself a little straighter and starts fiddling with the straw in her cup. No one else says hello or glances up from their phones.

Frankie looks drunk. Tristan looks drunk. The blond girl—they all look drunk.

Despite his joking at the chalet, Michael can’t get used to it. The fact that the kids are drinking. That they’re out this late. That Finn is AWOL and Frankie is apparently wasted and now has a hoop through her nose. He stifles his fatherly instinct to bawl her out. To drag her from the booth by her nose ring—wasn’t she supposed to have gotten rid of it?—and march her on home. Any other night he’d have done it. Any other night.

“Have you seen Finn?” He directs his question at Tristan, who slowly turns his way.

“Finn?” he says, all bleary-eyed and amused. “Hey, Frankie, have you seen Finn?”

Frankie’s golden ski-tan turns pink.

“Have you seen him?” Michael’s voice is harder now, louder.

“He’s probably still at the party,” the blond girl says.

“What party?”

Eyebrows raised, she flashes him an incredulous look. “Eli’s.”

Shit. He should have woken Mia up before he went out looking. She would have known about the party.

Tristan reaches across the table and nudges Frankie’s shoulder. “In the laundry room,” he says. “Right, Frankie? Right?”

“Don’t.” She bats a hand vaguely at Tristan, at the straw standing erect in the cup in front of her. For a second Michael thinks she might cry.

“Tristan,” the blond girl says, “don’t be an asshole.”

Michael’s halfway out the door when he stops. “Francine!” he hollers. And waits until she’s looking. The frigid air seeping in from outside, the raised voice, have everyone muttering. “Shut the fucking door!” one kid yells. Michael ignores him, and the rest of the irritated chorus. He and Frankie make eye contact across the bagel shop. “You should go home.”

“I’m staying at Brooke’s,” she calls, as if that explains everything.

“Well then get yourself there. It’s late,” he says, letting the door slam shut behind him.

—

THE KELLYS’ FRONT PATH looks like it hasn’t been cleared all winter; end of February and the walkway’s a ragged trough of frozen footprints, melted and thawed a dozen times over. Despite his chunky boots, Michael can feel the jagged edges of ice as he picks his way up the path. With every twisted step, he thinks lazy, he thinks stupid, careless people. Rich pricks, he thinks. Assholes. He wonders how many people Don Kelly screwed over to pay for this place.

Michael actually hates the house. When the Kellys bought the property a few years back, they had the original Tudor demolished and threw up a palace of glass, a James Bond beach house spliced into a Victorian neighbourhood. Tonight, the house is a scream of light, nothing turned off, nothing shut down. Through the glass of the front door, free-floating wooden steps fan gracefully up the foyer wall, like something in a modern art museum.

Michael steps onto the porch. Leaked from inside to out, he can both hear and feel rap music pounding into him like the home’s own erratic heartbeat. To his left, a floor-to-ceiling window showcases the living room. The white leather sectional, empty now like the rest of the room, could fit twenty people. Beer bottles and red Solo cups clutter a glossy coffee table. From the arch of a chrome lamp, a video game controller dangles like a gutted forest creature.

Michael knocks, but only waits a second before he tries the handle. He isn’t surprised when the front door swings easily open. And he doesn’t even bother shouting for Finn—the music, the absence of people—it isn’t worth the effort. He finds no one in the marble bathroom. No one in the laundry room. Only stacks of beer cases and boots and hockey bags, and a chalkboard with “Be good!” written at the top and a long-distance number scrawled below. Michael shouldn’t have worried about running into either Don or Dorothy; he’d forgotten they spend most of the winter in Costa Rica, a credit card or two left behind to ensure their precious boys have everything they could possibly need—other than a bit of parental guidance.

In the kitchen, a haphazard pyramid of dishes teeters in an industrial-sized sink. Domino’s boxes litter the counters. The long kitchen island is the only surface that’s clean, with a water pipe standing alone at its centre. Smoky blue belly, long, delicate neck, a medusa of darkened tubes, it stands on the granite counter like a signpost confirming kids travelled beyond rolling papers and pot.

Upstairs the music loses its power. Michael starts calling for Finn, but the ceilings are high, every angle sharp, every surface hard—glass, metal, stone. His voice sounds thin and hollow, as if he’s searching for his son in an abandoned mausoleum. He ghosts his way along the hallway, trying every door—glancing around the empty rooms, fingering the icy phone in his pocket. He’d found Mia’s cell in a clutter of papers on the front hall table and propped it against her bedside lamp, ringer on full. Just in case. But his plan is not to wake her. He’ll find Finn. He’s here somewhere. He’ll find him and bring him home. They’ll deal with him together in the morning. At least one of them will be well rested.

Michael puts his shoulder to the oversized door at the end of the hall, the bottom edge resisting the thick carpet. Inside, a light from the ensuite cuts a swath across the room. Adrenaline slams through him. On the bed, two kids sleep in a tangle of sheets; he’s sure one of them is Finn. Banded by bathroom light, the torso of a girl—flat brown belly, a scrape of ribs, high breasts, one sculpted shoulder—and a boy. Shit, now that his eyes have adjusted he can see the kid, compact and muscular, is nothing like Finn. It takes a minute for Michael’s heart to slow to a dull, flat thud and for his limbs to lose their tingle.

“Hey,” he says, loudly. “Hey.”

The boy doesn’t budge. The girl whimpers, reaches up, one arm twisting, slim and beautiful, before dropping back onto the bed with a fleshy slap.

“Hey, wake up. I’m looking for my son.”

Michael flips the switch inside the door, flooding the room with light. The bed is the size of a squash court. Its headboard climbs halfway to the ceiling, a black leather monolith. He takes in the scatter of clothes at the foot of the bed: a pink sweater, lacy red underwear, a bra with red cherries, a pair of jeans peeled inside out. A black glove. It looks like Finn’s but any black glove would. Michael steps forward and picks it off the floor. If he were alone, he’d put it to his nose and inhale, see if he could pick up a scent.

He clears his throat. “I’m Michael Slate.” He keeps his eyes off the girl. “Finn’s dad. I was told he was here.”

The boy squints across the room, looking baffled, indignant. Even with his face screwed up, Michael recognizes Eli’s brother, the feral good looks that easily cut to mean. “Turn off the fucking light,” he says, scrambling the sheet up.

“I’m looking for Finn. I was told he was here.”

“Finn?” The boy says the name as if he’s never heard it before.

“Yes, Finn. Finn Slate.”

“Go ask Eli,” he says.

“I can’t find Eli. I can’t find anyone. I’m looking for Finn.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I got it.” The boy’s eyes sweep the room. He jabs his chin at the corners. “Do you see him?” His movements are exaggerated, impatient, performed for the benefit of an idiot. “Seriously, if you wouldn’t mind turning off the fucking light on your way out, that would be great.”

A couple of long strides and Michael is at the bed. He smacks the boy with the glove, a quick, weightless slap across first one cheek, then the other, fighting back the urge to grab him by the throat. If the kid had ever dared talk to Michael’s father that way, well, he would have done it.

The boy bats the glove away and swings his legs off the bed. “What’s your fucking problem!” He drags the sheet onto his lap, uncovering the girl.

Long black hair. Full lips. And all the rest. It’s a shock to see Jess lying in this bed, with this boy, like tripping over her, spaced out and panhandling for change, on a grubby downtown sidewalk. Christ, why does this night just keep getting worse? Jess should be twelve years old, wearing pink flip-flops, a Kermit the Frog T-shirt, a pair of faded jeans. She should be perched on a stool in the kitchen, talking to Mia, or stretched out on the living room floor reading Dr. Seuss books to Finn. She should be smiling at him from behind the cash at Metro or better yet, jumping out of the crabapple tree into their yard, like she did when they first moved in and Michael hadn’t yet pried a couple of boards off the fence to make a passage, so she wouldn’t get hurt making the leap.

“I could sue you for that.”

Michael looks down at the boy. “What?”

“Hitting me. You fucking hit me.”

The glove in Michael’s hand. “Go ahead,” he says. “Call the cops. They’ll love the bong in the kitchen.”

An injured moan from the far side of the bed has both of them staring. Jess inches herself up, or tries to. Her elbows buckle and her head hits the mattress before she stumbles to her feet and staggers naked into the bathroom. There’s a thump, followed by the sound of hollow retching.

“Nice,” Michael says, shaking his head at the boy.

“It’s not my fault she got trashed.”

“But you thought it was a good idea to bring her up here?”

“She was the one who dragged me upstairs.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“Whatever. She’s my girlfriend.” The boy—Eric, his name’s Eric—lunges for the jeans on the floor, a pair of boxers settled inside. He misses and rocks back onto the mattress, still clutching the sheet to his waist. Michael kicks the clothes toward him and starts slapping his own leg with the glove.

Finn was here? Yeah. You saw him here? I said he was here. When? Earlier. I don’t know. What condition was he in? What do you mean? I mean was he drunk? Yeah. How drunk? Very. Very drunk? Yes. Jesus Christ. The boy smirks as he zips up his jeans. When did he leave? Who was he with? Where did he go? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

In the bathroom, Jess begins to vomit.

When she’s through, Michael goes in and flushes the toilet. He has to step over her, curled up on a plush white bathmat, one cheek resting on the cool tile floor. He grabs the cleanest-looking towel from the rack, wipes her face with one corner, and does his best to cover her up while Eric watches from the doorway.

“Jessica. Hey, Jess. It’s Michael. Your neighbour. You okay?” He keeps his voice even, holding back judgment, the stiff edge of impatience.

Her eyes blink slowly open. “Michael,” she says, one corner of her mouth creeping up.

He gives her shoulder an easy rattle, pushes away all recognition of warm, young skin, the way the towel is slipping off her breasts. “You okay?”

She squeezes her eyes closed. Her jaw muscles pulse. Michael can see she is probably going to be sick again. “Jessica? Jess. Do you know where Finn is?”

“Finn.” She gives Michael a sudden radiant smile, a drunken laugh. Her breath is foul, biting. “I just love Finn.”

—

IT’S OBVIOUS FROM his narrowed eyes and the snarly twist of his lip that Eric thinks Michael is a complete moron. “They always party downstairs.” With the gentlest of kicks, with one big toe, Eric glides open a sliding door to reveal a descending staircase.

Even Michael can’t believe he overlooked this door, just down the hallway from the kitchen. He’d thought it was a closet, hadn’t even considered the possibility that it might open onto anything but a rack of coats. Unlike all the century-old homes in the neighbourhood, with their squat, damp basements—more dungeons than rec rooms, most often accessed via witchy exterior doors—this modern marvel would have an incredible lower level. Michael hasn’t moved, but he can already see Finn asleep on the floor in front of a wall-wide TV, or sprawled on a leather couch, or worst case, worst case, passed out on the floor of a bathroom, fully clothed and two floors down, but otherwise in the same condition as Jess. At this point it would be a thrill to clean him up and take him home.

Eric shoves his feet into a pair of running shoes, flicks another switch, and a half-acre of snow-covered yard appears from the black beyond the glass of the back door. In the centre of the soft-lit yard, a kidney-shaped indent, like a gigantic footprint, delineates the off-season pool. On the right, a cabana, window-deep in drifted snow. Eric yanks open the door and tramps across the unshovelled deck. Apparently done with Michael and the search that hasn’t ended, he unzips and begins adding to one of the pitted ponds of frozen boy piss that trench the deck’s edge.

Michael can’t help staring at the grey glow of the backyard, like a still from an old Hitchcock movie. The trees that line the back fence look flattened—filigreed silhouettes stamped onto a cold-sharpened sky. The snow itself appears illuminated, as if it has a hidden power source and is giving off its own light. The dent of the swimming pool is darker, the block of the cabana darker still. But it’s the electric-blue shimmer emanating from the snow at the cabana’s far corner that holds his eye. The only shiver of colour in a monochrome landscape, it’s like a mirage, there one second, gone the next. An electric-blue shimmer riding the crust of the snow. Then gone. Then back.

Michael crashes out the door and tumbles across the deck, falls into the yard, slips in his socked feet as he trips toward that shimmer. Finn is sunk deep in the white. It’s his sleeve Michael had seen, propped up a little higher than the rest of him, barely breaching the lip of snow that encases him. Michael stumbles closer, Finn’s whole jacket now a bright blue scream in the spotlight that hangs, snow-dipped, from the eaves of the cabana.

Michael drops to his knees beside his son. He hovers over him, afraid to reach out, afraid to touch him. The boy’s eyes are frosted shut, his skin otherworldly. Michael has to force himself to move, to bend, forward, like a spastic robot, to turn his head and press an ear to Finn’s icy lips. In his panic he is not certain there is breath. He is terrified of its absence. He pulls away, presses two trembling fingers to his son’s neck, beneath the jaw, so cold it’s like touching death. Frantic, he grapples for Finn’s wrist, bare, no glove—the glove upstairs—the hand dark and fisted. With his fingertips he listens for a pulse, but all he can hear is the bang of blood in his own ears.

The zipper on Finn’s jacket gives way in jerky bursts. Michael slips his hand inside and his soul explodes with the small warmth at Finn’s chest. He slides his hand in deeper, presses his palm flat and hard against his son’s ribs. Michael holds himself motionless—the world suspended, time stretched thin—and offers himself up, offers up anything, everything, in exchange for one beat of this heart.

—

“MIA.” A HAND on her shoulder. “Wake up.”

A small circle of light, the bedside lamp, darkness beyond—still night. She lets her eyes slip thankfully closed.

“Mia.” Michael. His hand gripping her shoulder. “Wake up.”

She squints against the light. Michael. In his hat and coat. “Where are you going?”

“Get up,” he says. “Get dressed.”

The clock on the bedside table glows 4:37. She remembers Stanley. Peter. Does this have something to do with Peter? Her head is swimmy with sleep. It is Michael’s boots that finally hold her attention, the snow melting onto the carpet beneath them. He has worn his Sorels upstairs.

She pushes herself off the warm mattress. The down comforter falls away. Even in winter, they sleep with the window open; the air in the room is chill.

“Michael…” She is afraid to say it. “Where’s Finn?”

“Get up,” he says. “Get dressed.”

In the car Michael tells her what happened. She’s heard stories like it before. Drug addicts, the homeless, passing out in the snow. Stories that have nothing to do with her or her family. When Michael finishes, he loops back and repeats the whole thing again, almost word for word, so she’s heard it twice by the time they pull into Emergency. The important thing, he stresses as he parks the Jeep, the important thing is that the paramedics found a heartbeat. Slowed by the cold, like patients cooled before surgery, but beating, his heart had been beating. Mia does not find this reassuring. Of course Finn’s heart was beating. How could it not be beating?

There is no wait. The triage nurse checks her screen and informs them that Finley Slate has been taken directly to the trauma bay. They push through a pair of heavy swinging doors. Utilitarian grey. Michael reaches for Mia’s hand but she pulls away. She cannot be touched. He cannot touch her.

A balding doctor in green scrubs leads them to a windowless waiting room. Fluorescent overheads cast a cold, clinical light. The room is empty except for a row of back-to-back vinyl chairs and one depleted vending machine, its empty corkscrews gleaming. The doctor talks, he tells them things.

Mia interrupts. “Can we see him?”

The man frowns, shakes his head. The mask dangling from one ear swings. He is wearing running shoes. White. There’s a circle of blood on one toe, a single drop. Is it Finn’s? Michael hadn’t said anything about him bleeding. She wishes she’d brought her camera, that she was holding it in her hands. She tilts her head, changes the angle on the triangle—Doc Martens, Sorels, white sneakers—centres it on the glossy red dot. She blinks the triptych of footwear into memory, a snapshot of fear at ground level.

Two nurses pass in the hall, leaning into each other, whispering. One of them throws back her head, her laughter loud and guttural, a harsh foreign language. Mia focuses on the doctor. Superficial injuries, he says, and she exhales. Temperature-controlled mattress. Warm saline administered intravenously. To prevent blood rushing from his core to his extremities. A risk of ventricular fibrillation. The shutting down of vital organs.

A slight flicker in the doctor’s eyes is the only acknowledgment that Mia has placed a hand on his arm. “We need to see him,” she says, squeezing his wash-softened sleeve. “Please let us know when we can see our son.”

—

MICHAEL GIVES MIA’S BOOT a gentle knock. “No socks.”

She peers into her Doc Martens. Beneath her calf-length tights, a gap of pale skin.

The doctor has been gone for thirteen minutes. Mia is sitting in the chair beside Michael, facing the looted vending machine—three packages of Ritz crackers and cheese, one Mounds chocolate bar. On the wall, a big clock ticks, its second hand jumpy.

“I’ve got some in the car. In my ski bag,” Michael says. “I’ll go get them.” He stands. “It’s something I can do.”

From behind, he looks almost normal pushing through the grey swinging doors. Left alone, she tracks the second hand’s stilted migration around the face of the clock and stares through the glass of the vending machine at the menacing metal spirals.

It takes Michael six and a half minutes to return with the socks. They are somehow warm. When she asks, he tells her he tucked them under his shirt on his way back from the car.