CHAPTER 18

Donna drove down the highway. Part of her felt terrible for what she was doing, but she knew she was doing the right thing. After the cattle had been shot, she’d stood in the snow watching Craig and Gord hug and cry for a few minutes.

Then Craig pulled away from his brother.

“We better get this cleaned up,” he said.

The rifle was heavy in Donna’s hands. She had clicked the safety on a while ago. She hadn’t used guns very much, but she knew to do that. In the early days of her marriage, Al had taken her out to the back forty for target practice. He lined up some cans and taught her how to use a gun. She was a poor shot and had begged to stop, telling him she didn’t need to learn how to use a gun, that there would be people around who would be able to help her. Craig, Gord or Al would be able to shoot anything that needed to be shot, she argued.

“No,” Al said, squinting down at her. “You need to learn to do this yourself.”

He’d said that to her so many times, and now she realized just how right he had been. She should have taken the time to learn from him. Things were so much more complicated now that he was gone. Good old Al. He’d tried so hard to turn her into a farm wife, to try and make her into someone who could do her part on the ranch. It wasn’t his fault. The failure was hers alone.

What would he say if he could see the mess they were in now?

As she stood there, a wave of panic overtook her and she struggled to breathe. She’d held it together for so long, stayed calm during the situation with Gord and Craig, but now she was breaking down. There wasn’t enough air in the world for her. She tried to count her breaths, watching them as they hung in the air. She wanted to drop the gun, run to the house, get in her car and drive far away.

She studied the brothers and looked at the pen. The live ones huddled in the corner, far away from the dead.

She turned and started crunching through the snow, rifle in her hands. She’d crossed this yard thousands of times in her life, but this time the trek felt immense. Abby and Al’s house loomed, the blinds half shuttered, as if the house had narrowed its eyes and was staring at her with disapproval. She looked away from it.

Inside the house, she kicked off her boots and took off her coat, leaving the gun by the door. Thank God all of this had happened while Allyson was at school.

Gord opened and shut the door. She turned on the coffee pot. His feet were heavy on the steps as he climbed the stairs to the kitchen.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, as he sat down at the table.

“I just couldn’t handle it anymore,” he said. He rested his chin on his hands and stared at nothing. “I just kept on thinking about feeding those animals, and how little we would get for them. It’s so humiliating. All that money just draining out. I didn’t want us to lose any more.”

The coffee trickled into the pot, and the brown drops fell into the carafe.

“I can’t think straight,” he said. “I’m trying to think and my head is stuffed with cotton and nothing makes sense. And I’m tired, just so tired.”

“Gord,” she said. “You need to do something about that. Go to the doctor. Go to a therapist, get some help. We should all do that. We all need to do things to get better.”

She knew she was going to leave, but she was scared to leave her daughter alone with Gord. Thank god Allyson was still at school. She’d be home soon, and then they’d have to explain the whole thing to her. Craig called Phil, and Doug, and they came over and helped clean up the dead, and salvaged the meat that could be sold. They barely talked, and that night, Donna went to bed early, after she heard Allyson in her room. She fell into a deep sleep.

When the phone rang, she thought she was watching the tv.

“You serious?” she heard him say, his voice groggy.

He turned and nudged her with his elbow, hard, as if he needed to make sure that she was awake.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “Allyson’s in Edmonton.”

“What?” Donna said. “How?”

“She stole the truck,” Gord said. “Then she got lost in the city. Clay is going to get her.”

“He wants to talk to you,” Gord said, passing the phone to her.

“She’s okay?” Donna asked Clay.

“As far as I can tell,” Clay said. He sounded tired. “Did something crazy happen there today?”

Donna threw off the covers, walked out of the room down the hall. She walked into Allyson’s room, turned on the lights and saw her daughter’s empty bed. She told Clay what had happened—the story of how she’d found Gord, Craig and the cattle out in the yard.

“Christ,” Clay said when she finished. “I kind of get why she left.”

“Yeah, well. She stole a car and drove illegally.”

“Do you want me to send her back home? Are you going to come and get her?”

Donna thought about it for a minute, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She felt as though she had cinder blocks attached to her feet and a gollum on her shoulders.

“She can stay here for a few days,” Clay said. “Just until things simmer down. Kid probably needs a break.”

“I’m not happy with her,” Donna said, and sighed. “But it would probably do her good to stay in the city for a few days. Keep us updated. As long as she’s safe.”

She and Clay talked for a few minutes and then she hung up. She walked back to the bed. Gord was still lying there, his back facing her.

“Our crazy kid,” Donna said. “We’re going to have to figure out a way to punish her.”

But Gord was already asleep.

In the morning, she awoke to an empty bed. Gord was already up. She walked down to the kitchen, where he was sitting at the table, flipping through a newspaper.

She took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “I’ve got to get away. I can’t take it here right now. I need to leave.”

Gord kept sitting at the table. The coffee dripped into the pot and sizzled. She leaned into the counter. The weight of her own body was too much for her.

He took his head off his chin and turned to face her. “You’re leaving me?” he said.

She blinked hard, and turned towards the coffee pot, trying to hold back tears. She was so sick of crying, of feeling like shit, of living like this. If only there was something she could do. If only she was able to take over the farm, do the books, be the farm wife he needed.

“I can’t take any more. I feel like I can’t breathe. I think about that dark place I went after Allyson was born, and it’s creeping towards me. I can’t go there. I can’t get any more broken. I can’t deal with this. I’m leaving.”

“What about Allyson?” Gord said. “What about me?”

“Allyson will be okay. The kid isn’t even here for a few days, and I’ll have things figured out by then. You’ll both get through.”

“Are you thinking of this like a vacation? Or are you leaving me?” Gord asked. “Where are you going?”

“I just need to leave,” she said.

*

An hour later, she was in the car. She called Pam at work, and told her she was on her way. She called Anita and Carmen and told them she needed to take time off for health-related reasons. Part of her was worried she’d be fired, but Anita seemed to understand.

“You’ve been a great employee and you’ve been under so much stress the past year,” Anita said. “We’ll be fine for a little bit. Kelly can probably come in and help out in the store.”

Carmen was equally supportive.

She’d put her suitcase and the rifle in the trunk of her car. They had other guns, and she could have put this one in the cabinet, but for some reason, it seemed to make sense to keep it with her, to keep it away from them. She locked the trunk and walked across the yard to Craig and Linda’s.

Instead of just walking into the house, she knocked. It seemed like the right thing to do right now.

“Oh, it’s you,” Craig said, when he opened the door. “Whenever you knock, I think it’s somebody coming to sell me something.”

“Just wanted to tell you I’m heading to Saskatoon for a bit,” she said.

“You two having problems?”

“Don’t try and make me feel guilty about this. And I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but it needs to stop. You need to start working together. Be a family again. Do you want to run off in different directions or do you want to act like brothers? If you want to stay brothers, you’ve got to get your head out of your ass and realize that you need to work together. You can’t just go charging around, making decisions and tearing things apart.”

Before Craig could say anything, she turned away from him and started toward her car. She got inside and steered the car towards the highway. As she drove, she felt herself relax. The roads were calm and clear. But she concentrated, knowing there was a possibility of black ice on the highway. Focussing on the road helped her forgot about the events of the past two days, and how she’d just taken off. Maybe this was another way she had failed. Maybe she should be going to Edmonton to get her daughter instead of escaping. The only thing she could think about now was getting to her sister’s house. She’d get to Saskatoon by early evening, when it was dark.

For a minute, she worried about Gord and Allyson. Would they be okay without her? Linda would be able to help them out. She’d be the capable one, as always. Craig and Linda would probably talk about her behind her back, say she was the type to run away when things got tough.

About an hour out of town, she passed the intersection where Al and Abby had been hit. She pulled off to a small side road on the edge of the highway and put on her hazard lights. Somehow it felt wrong to speed past this terrible place and not acknowledge it in some way. She turned off the radio and its crooning country songs. The road was still and silent, the sky grey. The only sounds were the low buzz of the car heater, the engine and her own shuddering breath. Abby and Al weren’t the only ones who had been hurt at this intersection. All of the Klassen family’s lives changed that day. How different they all were now. If the farm was a ship, it was a sinking one. A boat full of holes, some of which they’d created themselves. Everything had started here. She wanted to cry, but she was too tired.

Donna took a minute to think about Al and how much she missed him, and how she wished he were still alive, because he would have known what to do and say. If she closed her eyes, she could hear his booming laugh, see the red of his beard, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners. Even when he was angry or disappointed with her, there had been love. Love and pride, at all she and Gord had created, their children, their home. Al had loved them all. She had seen it, and she had known it, without ever having to ask.

She closed her eyes, remembering Al and his strength. What would he want her to do? When she opened her eyes again, she stared at the intersection, willing the former, whole selves of Abby and Al to appear. Then she turned off her hazards, flipped on the radio and drove down the road.

Hours later, she drove over the hill and the lights of Saskatoon welcomed her to the city. Her car travelled the familiar streets until she reached her sister’s house. The light from Pam’s front room shone out onto the street. The porch lights were a beacon, illuminating the snow around Pam’s house. Donna parked the car in her sister’s driveway, and went to grab her suitcase from the trunk, ignoring the rifle beside it.

Pam opened the door before she could ring the doorbell.

“I was watching for you,” she said. She let Donna take her coat off before she leaned in for a hug.

“You must be exhausted,” she said. “I’ve made the spare bedroom up for you. And there’s some leftover chicken soup. I made it on the weekend. Would you like a hot toddy?”

Donna kicked off her boots and lined them up in the corner. Pam’s house was tidy, but quiet and bare. That’s what happened when you lived alone and could control where everything went. When you only had the detritus of one person to deal with, and not a collection of coats, boots, papers and books and all the other things people carted through their lives. One person’s stuff could never fill up a house the way that five people’s stuff could. Pam didn’t have all the farm junk or the constant chaos of people walking in and out, bringing in dirt. She’d been to her sister’s house countless times, but this time the quiet struck her as eerie.

“Do you need to use the phone?” Pam asked.

“I should let Gord know that I got here okay,” Donna said, feeling a pang of guilt. How could she just pick up and leave? Was Gord okay? She pushed the guilt out of her mind. She’d done the right thing, for her own sanity.

“Don’t feel bad,” Pam said. “It’s okay for you to be here right now. You can tell me everything.”

“Let me make that phone call first,” Donna said. “Right after I wash up.”

She went to the washroom and ran her hands under the warm water. She used one of Pam’s peach washcloths and wiped her face, feeling calmer. In the mirror, her eyes were black and sunken. New lines had formed around her mouth. When did she start looking old? Seeing the exhaustion on her face made her feel worse. She would call, eat some soup and go to bed.

In the kitchen, Pam gave her the phone and retreated to the front room. Donna dialed her home number.

“You okay?” she said, when he picked up the phone.

“I’m surviving,” he said. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, if you know what I mean.”

He cleared his throat.

“Will you be back soon?”

“I’ll let you know,” she said.

“Please,” he said, his voice small like a child’s. “Don’t leave me. I can’t take any more.”

“Gord,” she said. “We can’t go on like this. Things need to change. This is bad for everyone.”

His silence on the other end of the phone was an abyss.

“I love you,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you. I’ll do whatever it takes.” And his voice sounded as though he was far away, calling from another planet.

“I love you too,” she said, and hung up. She sat in silence until Pam came into the room.

“Clay called,” Pam said. “He and Allyson are having a nice time.”

She walked to the fridge, took out an orange Tupperware container and dumped the contents of the container into a pot on the stove. “Do you want to talk?” she asked. “I’ll just heat up this soup for you.”

Donna started to cry. “I’m a bad wife and a bad mother. But I just had to get out of there. I couldn’t do it right now.”

“Shh,” Pam said, stroking her hair. “You’ve been under incredible stress. You did the right thing. You need to take care of yourself right now. It’s okay.”

She held Donna, stroking her hair as if Donna were a child.

“I just needed to leave,” Donna said, putting her head on her arms. “But I’m so tired that I can’t even talk right now. I just need to eat and go to bed.”

When the soup was ready, Pam put a steaming bowl in front of her. Donna ate the entire bowl, warmed and comforted by the soup’s meaty, savoury broth. When she finished, she put the bowl in the dishwasher and climbed the stairs to Pam’s spare bedroom. After washing her face, brushing her teeth and getting into her pyjamas, she got under the covers. But when she closed her eyes, she saw the dead cows and Gord and Craig at the corral. She shuddered. All she wanted to do right now was sleep, sleep and forget. She got out of bed and rummaged around in her suitcase, looking for her makeup bag. Her fingers found the zipper of the bag, and she unzipped it and felt the familiar shape of her bottle of sleeping pills. Normally she took one, but two seemed appropriate for today. She popped them in her mouth, swallowed them without a glass of water, and lay back down. After a few minutes, the drugs kicked in and her thoughts were woozy and blurry. She let the sweet, pharmaceutically induced sleep take her away.

Hours later, she woke up, realized where she was, and went back to sleep. It was all she wanted to do. Even though she’d been sleeping for hours, she still wanted more. She lay back in bed, letting time slip away, letting sleep overtake her, rising once or twice to tiptoe to the toilet. She had no idea how much time had passed. Then there was a weight on the bed, as Pam sat down. “You need to get up,” she said.

“I’m so tired,” Donna said.

“You’ve been in bed for over a day,” Pam said. “At least get up and eat something.”

Donna sat up, her limbs heavy. The sour scent of her own skin filled her nose.

“Just let me take a shower first,” she said, standing up, unsteady on her feet. Getting up after that much sleeping was exhausting. A shower warmed her skin and helped clear some her bleariness. She washed herself with Pam’s rose-scented soap, helping herself to shampoo from the row of bottles lining the back wall of her sister’s shower. A person could spend a lot of money on expensive bath products if they had a good job and no other mouths to feed. She dried herself off, dressed and went downstairs. Pam stood at the stove. She was heating up a pot of spaghetti and meatballs.

“Gord’s been calling,” she said.

“I’m going to eat first,” Donna said. Her head was fuzzy. “Do you have any coffee?”

She looked at the clock. “Don’t you have to be at work?”

Pam shook her head, her back still to her sister. “I took a couple personal days,” she said. “Figured I might as well, since you’re here.”

Donna sat at the table, and Pam slid a plate of spaghetti in front of her. She ate as Pam made coffee. The pasta tasted good. She hadn’t even realized how hungry she was until she started eating.

“Do you want to talk about things?” Pam asked, and Donna told her everything that happened. Pam just listened.

“You guys need help,” she said when Donna finished. Pam walked over to the counter, poured a cup of coffee and passed it across the table to her sister. She touched Donna’s hair. “You’ve all been suffering for months. It’s been hard for me to watch, and I’m sitting five hours away.”

“I just worry about all the money. Fixing this isn’t cheap,” Donna said, looking down at her empty plate.

“We’ll figure something out,” Pam said. “If you want, I’ll lend you the money. I’ll do whatever I can. I’ve been saying that to you for months. I’ll help you guys get out of this.”

Donna didn’t say anything. She stared at her empty plate as if it was the most fascinating thing to ever come in front of her face.

“Are you leaving Gord?” Pam asked. “Is that why you came here? Is the farm too much for you?”

“I just needed to get away,” Donna said.

She looked around the kitchen for the phone. “I should call Gord.” Pam brought her the phone and left the kitchen.

“How are you doing?” she asked, when she heard Gord’s voice on the phone.

“I’m okay,” he said. His voice sounded a little stronger than it had when she last saw him. “I finally did what you said I should do a long time ago. I went to see a doctor in Lloyd. He said I was depressed. Gave me some sort of prescription. Gave me the ­number of a therapist to talk to that’s cheap. Phil and Doug keep stopping in. We did some work out in the yard.”

“Well,” she said. “That’s good. That’s something. Have you and Craig been working together?”

“No,” Gord said. “But Linda has been by. She’s been checking up on me. I suppose I could go over there, but I don’t know what to say. I caused some scene a couple days ago.”

“I was so tired I just slept for over a day,” she said.

“When are you coming home?”

She shook her head, forgetting that he couldn’t see her. “Not yet,” she said. “You heard from the kids?”

“Colton called. Said he misses everything, even though he loves the training. He said the discipline is good for him. Allyson’s in the city. Clay’s fine. He keeps on calling to check up on me.” Gord cleared his throat. “You know, I never would have believed it, but going to the doctor made me feel better,” he said. “Should have done it sooner. Made me think I’m not going crazy.”

He was probably sitting at the kitchen table, with a beer or cup of coffee in front of him. How could she have left him and Allyson alone? How could she have been so selfish?

“I love you,” she said to Gord. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

He said he loved her too. She said goodbye and hung up.

Pam had left some newspapers on the table. Donna reached for a section and started reading articles to give herself something else to think about. There was so much happening in the city. She shuffled through the sections of the paper. Since she’d left over twenty years ago, entire new neighbourhoods had sprung up. The Saskatoon of today was so different from back then. She didn’t know the first thing about living in the city any more. She’d never lived here as a mother or a wife. She’d have to create a whole new life. What would she do with Allyson? She couldn’t leave Gord, could she? Even now, she missed him and wanted to see him. Part of her wished he were with her now. But he would hate living in the city. Could she go to Edmonton? That was closer, but she’d still be away from him. Could she live alone? And even if she wanted to, did she really have to do it now?

She flipped to the back of the paper to look at the want ads, apartment listings and house prices. If she rented an apartment, she’d be living like a student. She had no education, and no skills that she could market, other than retail skills and her ability to cook and bake. But there must be jobs for people like her in the city. Maybe she could take a course and get more skills. But she’d need money for that.

The letters in the paper started to blur. She rested her head on the scratchiness of the newsprint. Pam walked into the room, stomping her feet a little as she came closer. Her sister had never been subtle.

“How is he doing?” Pam asked.

“He saw a doctor today.” She raised her head to look at her sister. “I didn’t think I would miss him so much.”

Pam pointed to the classifieds. “Find anything interesting?”

“Just looking,” Donna said, closing the paper.

The two of them went to the front room and watched television for a while. Donna was comforted by her sister’s presence and the distraction. The phone rang and Pam went to answer it. She came back into the room after a few minutes.

After a few hours of mindless television, Donna went back to bed.

In the morning, she felt strangely refreshed, as if something had shifted in the night. Pam greeted her in the kitchen. “Do you want to do something today?” she asked.

“I think I’ll walk down to the mall,” Donna said. “But you don’t have to come with me. I need some time to wander around by myself.”

Pam nodded. “I can give you a ride if you want,” she said. “I’ve got a few errands that I can run.”

“No, it’s okay,” Donna said. “I can walk.”

After breakfast and a shower, she put on her parka and boots and started the trudge towards the mall. There were a lot of cars on the road. Probably people getting their Christmas shopping done early. How different her life would be if she had stayed in the city. She still couldn’t imagine Gord here. He moved and talked in a way that was wrong, out of place. The kids would be different people if they’d grown up here. The air nipped at her face as she walked. The smell of car exhaust hung in the air. There had more trees along these streets when she lived here. Had the city cut them all down?

She arrived on 2nd Ave and wandered through the shops. The Saskatoon Bookstore looked a little worse for wear. Its shelves used to be full but now there were empty pockets where books were once crammed. She walked out of the store without buying anything and continued down the street, noticing the changes around her. Every time she walked down this street, there were new shops. The city changed so fast. Or maybe she just noticed the changes more. She walked along a side street, past the bank, up to the Midtown Plaza. The air outside was colder than she’d anticipated, and she shivered as she pulled open the doors and stepped inside the mall. Tinny Christmas music played over the loudspeakers. A Starbucks had replaced the A&W in the corner. Maybe she should have a coffee to warm up. She walked towards the counter and stood in line to order.

“I’ll have a small coffee,” she said.

“Do you want the Pike Place roast?” asked the server. She was a dark-haired girl with a nose ring that was too big for her face.

“Just regular,” Donna said.

“You want the tall?” the server said.

“Just small,” Donna said. “A small regular.”

“So tall Pike,” the server said.

“Sure,” Donna said. What was wrong with small, medium and large? She looked at the menu board. What was wrong with a medium coffee? When did ordering a coffee become so complicated? The server came back with a steaming cup of coffee and Donna paid. She sat down at a table with her coffee, and watched as the servers made elaborate, foofy drinks, calling out names as they finished each creation.

Three girls around Allyson’s age picked up their drinks and sat at a table near Donna. As they arranged themselves around the table, Donna felt a pang of guilt.

Allyson might be like those girls, with their lipsticked mouths and kohl black eyes, if she’d grown up in the city. Maybe she’d be happier. One of the girls moved her hands as she talked. Her bright red nail polish caught Donna’s eye. She looked down at her own nails, which were jagged, unpolished and short. She should get a pedicure and manicure. Take care of the things she’d been neglecting. Pay more attention to these types of things.

She took a sip of coffee as she watched the teens. She missed Gord. She’d been away from him for short periods, had even come to Saskatoon to visit without him for a couple of weeks. She’d taken the kids to Vancouver Island when they were small, when she and her parents were still trying to act like a family. As she sat alone, drinking coffee so hot it threatened to burn her mouth, she missed him. She’d actually been missing him for months. She’d been missing the man he was, the one she had fallen in love with, the man she’d been married to for over twenty years. Without him, she’d be like those teenagers at the next table, working a low paying job, living in an apartment.

Her head hurt and she rubbed her temples. She was still wearing her coat, and starting to overheat. She took a sip of coffee. Gord had been to Starbucks a couple of times in Edmonton. He hadn’t liked it. He said the coffee was overpriced and tasted burnt.

“Why would someone pay so much for a simple cup of coffee? Why not go to Timmy Ho’s or a gas station? People just think it tastes better because they paid more and it’s a fancy chain.” She could hear his voice in her head.

She’d been fooling herself by even thinking she could leave Gord or the farm. If she left, she wouldn’t be helping anything. She’d be even more of a failure. Their problems wouldn’t go away; they’d just get bigger. She would be carrying the burden of knowing that she was the type of woman who couldn’t stand by her man, who left him when things got rough. She couldn’t be that person.

She needed a therapist. Something. Anything. Someone to help her through this mess. Her family was a tangled ball of yarn, with threads snarled around each other. They all had to help untangle it.

She took another sip of coffee. The teens at the next table talked about some party they went to the night before and how Jordan was going to come meet one of them later. Watching them made her miss her girl. She drained the dredges of her cup and stood up. Out in the main hallway of the mall, she surveyed silver and gold Christmas balls and bells hanging from the ceiling, and looked down at the row of stores. She didn’t want to be here. It was time to go home and talk to Pam. Figure out what she needed to do to go back home. She needed to go back, but she couldn’t go back to the same place. Something had to give.

She trudged through the cold and snow back to Pam’s. When she opened the door to the house, she was greeted by the warm, homey smell of chocolate chip cookies. She took off her boots and parka and went into the kitchen, where Pam stood at the sink, washing dishes.

“Cookies will be ready in a bit,” Pam said.

Donna slumped down at the table.

“You weren’t gone for very long,” Pam said. “You okay?”

Donna looked at her sister. “I can’t leave the farm,” she said.

Pam took her hands out of the dishwater. “I know.”

“We need to make things better out there,” Donna said. “And I need to be the one who starts it.”

Pam left the sink and sat down at the table. “We’ll make a plan,” she said. “It’s been hell for me to watch you suffer like this. It’s going to take help to make things better. And time. And the whole family on board.”

For the rest of the day and part of the next, Donna and Pam talked and discussed plans for what Donna could do. She used Pam’s computer to look things up on the Internet. When Donna got home, she would look for the name of the therapist she’d met at the multiplex, and make an appointment with her. She called Gord to check how he was doing.

“When are you coming home?” he asked.

“As soon as I can,” she said. “But I need you to do something for me. I need you to call a family meeting. We need to talk about things. If we’re going to keep running the farm together, we need to start talking and come up with a plan, even if Craig and Linda have already signed that paperwork to take the title. We need to sit down and discuss everything. Really start talking.”

“You want to get everyone together?”

“Everybody,” Donna said. “Even the kids. We all need to be there.”

“I’m glad you’re doing this,” Clay said, when she called him to check in. “I’m glad you’re finally going to try to take charge.”

She consulted with him and Pam. The Klassens might need a mediator. Counselling. Any services that Alberta Agriculture could offer to help them. They’d been trying to do it alone for so long, and if they kept trying, it was going to be the death of them. They’d been through too many deaths. She’d learn how to keep the books. Quit letting the world happen around her. They’d have family meetings. She wasn’t sure if this plan would work, but it was worth a try. There were people to talk to. Banks and lawyers. She might not be able to handle the cows, but she could learn how to run the business. It was time for her to step up. Pam, Clay and Gord would help.

Later that night, she sat down at Pam’s kitchen table and called Linda. Craig answered the phone.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s me.”

“You coming home soon?”

“Yeah,” she said. “How are things?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ve started getting some things done around the farm. Some cows got out and we had to chase them down together. Gord seems calmer.”

“Can I talk to Linda?”

“I’ll put her on,” he said and the line went quiet for a few minutes.

“Glad to hear from you,” Linda said, when she came to the phone. “Craig says you’re coming back.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Linda, I need to talk to you. We haven’t been doing a good job of things since Al’s accident and everything that’s happened lately has been proof. We need to start talking and change things and we’re all going to have to help. We’re probably going to have to get help from the outside. All of us are going to have to work together, or it’ll end up just the two of you out there. Do you really want that? Do you think Al would want that?”

She was nervous saying these words, but she felt safer somehow, standing in the warmth of her sister’s kitchen, far away from the farm. This was the first of many steps that she would have to take. And part of her was doing it for Al. And for Abby. And for what they would have wanted and dreamed of. The dreams they had of keeping their farm alive.

“I’ve been waiting for you to call,” Linda said. “We’ve just had our heads down for so long, making decisions that were best for us, not talking about them with you. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. When I heard about what happened with Gord, and Craig and the gun, well, it nearly did me in.”

“I have some ideas about what we can do,” Donna said. “But I want everybody to hear them.”

“Gord told me about the meeting. We’ll figure it out,” Linda said. “I’m as tired of this as you are.”

The next day, Donna drove back to the farm. The whole way home, she went over the plan and thought about seeing everyone. Darkness had settled by the time she pulled into the yard. It was cold outside, but the lights were on in the house. She would be able to sleep in her own bed, take a bath in her own tub, and cuddle up with Gord while they watched television. As she got out of the car, Maggie and Rascal came to greet her and she bent down to pet them. Donna went to the trunk of her car to get her suitcase. The rifle was still there, and she decided to leave it. The air was calm and still, with a bite of coldness to it. She heard a car behind her, and turned to watch as her daughter and Jeff drove into the yard. Jeff stopped the car and Allyson got out.

Donna looked towards her house. She could see Linda, Craig, Chloe, Gord and Clay in the window of the front room. She saw Gord disappear. A minute later the front door opened, and he came out and stood on the porch. As he stood there, waiting, Allyson caught up to her mother and together they walked toward home.