THAT SAME DAY TORRY PETERSON TRAVELLED DOWN TO Fredericton. On the way back he picked up a hitchhiker. She had a small white suitcase, wore a light blue dress, with a thin jacket, and high heels though there was snow on the road. She got into the back seat with the suitcase beside her. He drove off and she sat silently, staring out the window. Her face looked resigned and toughened through resignation; a strange beauty still pervaded her. He asked her her name.
“Eva.”
“Eva what?”
“Eva…Mott.”
“Oh! Are you related to Ben Mott?”
“Yes.”
“How are you related?”
“He’s my father.”
“Oh! Is he still alive?”
“Last I heard.”
Silence followed for quite a while. The sky was bright blue.
“So where are you going, Eva Mott?”
“Going to Arron Brook Road.”
“Arron Brook! All the way there. Why?”
“Tipping,” she said. “I could make up some money tipping if I can get there.”
(Tipping was the art of collecting boughs for Christmas wreaths, and it was already the second week of Advent.)
“Well,” he said, “maybe we could do it together this year. Then we could sell them at the market next week. You could if you want have lunch with me. Just up here at Burke’s Diner.”
“I don’t think so, no, no.”
“Why not, Eva Mott?”
“I just got here from Ontario. I just got out of jail, if you wanta know,” Eva said. She seemed distracted now. When he caught her eyes in the mirror she looked away in fear.
“Yes. I am aware of that. You got your BA in jail. I am very proud of you. Today you had a plane ticket. I knew that too, I didn’t expect you to be hitchhiking with high heels back to the Miramichi in winter.”
“Well then, tell me this. Who in hell are you?”
“I’m your husband, Eva. My name is Torry Peterson. You remember me?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. You got older some. You didn’t get married again?”
“No. I did not.”
“Have any other women?”
“Of course—”
“Not one to marry?”
“There is only one girl for me.”
He stopped the car, he got out and opened the back door, took her by the hand and put her into the front seat. Then he spontaneously kissed her on the forehead, and gently closed the passenger door.
As he walked to the front of the car he looked in at her and smiled. She smiled just so slightly back.
“It is you, Eva,” he said when he got into the driver’s side again. “It has always been you, Eva—always you.”
“Why?”
“Ha! What a question—why? It’s what Oscar said, when asked by the miserable Dews why he brought me up alone, when I wasn’t his son and tormented him, and tried to shame him as they called him down for not doing a good enough job, as if any other had ever done a better one.”
He paused, tears came to his eyes, and the highway spread before them.
“Well whatever did he say, Torry? Whatever did he say?”
“Love, Eva. Oscar said, with his voice I remember, both humble and shaking, love.”
“You still even love me?”
“As the sky is blue, Eva Mott, as the sky is blue.”
She glanced at him, saw tears running down his face.
“Oh please,” she said, and reaching out took his rough and time-worn hand. “Please don’t cry.”
Then she looked up. Yes, the sky was indeed so very blue, and too those trees stretched with the afternoon light across the snow-packed highway. She was no longer cold, for the car was warm, and forever and ever there was a fulsome chance at a new life, a new beginning, a new and holy destiny, here as well as in all the world.
And Torrent and Eva were going home.