“Want to see Devi’s stuff?” Phil asks. He and Sid are sitting in the overgrown garden between the garage and the main house. It’s midafternoon and there’s still no sign of Wain. Sid has spent the morning sleeping and drawing while Phil sawed and sanded in his studio. Lunch was cream cheese on a stale bagel. A wrinkled peach. A glass of tap water. Sid wonders if he should offer to go grocery shopping. Or mow the lawn.
“Her stuff?” For a minute Sid isn’t sure what Phil means. Why would he want to see anything of Devi’s? He has no intention of getting to know her—he doesn’t even want to meet her—and what would her stuff tell him about her anyway? That she likes bright colors? That she reads vampire novels? That she doesn’t care if her dishes match?
“Her studio,” Phil explains. “I thought you might like to see what she does in there.”
Sid looks at Devi’s house. The studio windows run the entire width of the back of the house. North facing. Perfect light. Despite himself, he is curious. And a little freaked out. He’s thought about it a lot since he’s been here, that artistic ability could be inherited. And so could craziness. Maybe they are one and the same. He shivers and says, “Okay.” Devi is a stranger, he thinks. A stranger connected to me by a loop of DNA. Might as well check it out.
As they cross the back porch of Devi’s house, Sid notices that Wain’s bike is gone. He’s not sure if this is a good sign or not. It probably means he hasn’t gone back to Jimmy Chicken, but beyond that, Sid can only guess. Maybe Wain has sold his bike on the street and jumped on a bus for parts unknown. He looks older than thirteen. Would anyone stop him—a kid in the summer, taking a bus to visit his grandma in Alberta or Ontario? Except his grandma is here. That must count for something, even in Wain’s messed-up head.
Phil leads him through the unlocked back door and into the studio.
“Guess she hasn’t been in here for a while,” Phil says. “Usually there’s a work or two in progress.”
Sid looks around. Everything—the long scarred wooden worktable, the jumble of tiler’s tools, the jars of shells and stones and sea glass, the huge cork board covered in layers of curling, yellowed sketches—is shrouded in dust. The windows are so dirty they are almost opaque. The light is sepia-toned, like an old photograph. Sid walks over to the cork board and stares at the drawings, which look as if they were done in India ink with a nibbed pen. The lines are strong, almost savage, and the paper is torn in places where the artist—Devi—used too much pressure. He lifts the top drawing to look at another, and then another. All the drawings are of crows: crows in flight, crows in trees, crows on power lines, crows fighting over garbage, dead crows on the road, crows on picket fences, crows popping out of a pie, crows dive-bombing a short woman with gray curls. Self-Portrait with Crows, Sid thinks. Another version of this drawing shows the same woman lying on the ground; crows are pecking out her eyes, there is blood on the ground. The woman is smiling. At the top of the drawing are the words My Murder by Crows.
Sid’s stomach churns and he looks away, but not before he sees a scrap of monogrammed notepaper at the top of the board. The gold-embossed initials are plain but elegant. E.E. Elizabeth Eikenboom. The handwriting below is angular and upright. “Arrange whatever pieces come your way. Virginia Woolf,” Sid reads.
“Devi used that as the inspiration for one of her best pieces.” Sid jumps at the sound of Phil’s voice. He has forgotten Phil is in the room. He moves away from the cork board and stands at the worktable. He doesn’t want to think about crows, but there are two in the apple tree outside the window. Not fighting or pecking out anyone’s eyes. Just sitting, probably thinking about how to achieve world domination.
“It’s a cool quote,” Sid says.
“She made the piece from Cowichan River stones. It weighs a ton. I framed it in cedar and helped her hang it over her bed. Elizabeth said it would kill her in an earthquake and Devi just laughed and said, ‘That’s the idea, Mom.’”
“River stones,” Sid says. “Isn’t that how Virginia Woolf killed herself? Filling her pockets with river stones?”
Phil nods. “I’m impressed. You know about Virginia Woolf?”
Sid shrugs. “Megan’s book group had a Bloomsbury phase. I eavesdropped.”
“You’re a funny kid,” Phil says. “Devi has a strange sense of humor too.”
“I’ll say,” Sid replies, although he’s tempted to tell Phil he’s full of shit. You can’t inherit a sense of humor. But he does see Devi’s point. Killed by your own art. It is kind of funny.
“Most of the work she does now is on commission. Memorial stones. For gardens.”
“Memorial stones?” Sid can’t imagine what these might be. Surely people don’t put mosaic tombstones in their gardens. Then again, some people keep their loved ones in decorative urns on the mantelpiece. Anything is possible when it comes to the dead.
Phil pulls a black binder off a shelf and opens it on the table. Sid leans over and looks at a page of photographs of tiled paving stones, none bigger than a couple of feet across. Each stone has the dead person’s name and dates woven into a design made with stones, beach glass, shells, shards of glass tile, specks of gold and silver. The images—a stand of deep-purple hollyhocks, a sailboat with a rust-red sail, a black dog with a blue bandana around its neck, an ancient tree, an old green pickup truck, a pink bicycle with training wheels—are detailed and exquisite.
“They’re meant to be outside—catching the light, withstanding rain and snow—but they’re not meant to be walked on. Too delicate. Some people bury the ashes underneath. Devi always said she wished people would let her mix the ‘cremains’ with the grout, but she only ever did that with her dad’s ashes.” Phil sighs. “She always got way too involved. I told her it wasn’t healthy—interviewing the clients about the deceased for hours, looking at old photos, watching videos, searching for the perfect image. Sometimes—if it was a dead child—she would spend days in here. Not eating, not sleeping. She had to get it right. And she did. She has—had—more work than she could handle. I had to call all her clients a while ago. Even before she took off, she wasn’t working.”
Sid closes the book. He feels as if he’s suffocating—from the dust and from Devi and her ghosts. He strides out of the house and into the garage, scrambles up the loft ladder and throws himself facedown on the bed. Tomorrow he will go home, Wain or no Wain.
Sid wakes up to the sound of someone pounding on Phil’s door. It’s still light out. He guesses it must be about nine o’clock. He has a headache and he’s hungry, but he isn’t ready to face anyone: not Phil, not whoever is pounding on the door. He wouldn’t mind seeing Elizabeth, but he doubts whether she’s the source of the pounding. He stares up at the skylight and listens.
First Phil’s footsteps, then the door opening.
“Jesus, Wain!” Phil says. “What happened to you?”
Another man’s voice. “You Phileas Phine?”
Sid imagines Phil nodding.
“He says his mother’s away. Is that right?” A female voice this time.
“Yes,” Phil says. “She’s, uh, out of town, officer.”
Officer. So Wain has been returned by the cops. Sid slides off the bed and peers down the ladder into the room below. Two cops take up almost the whole small room. Wain is standing between them. There is an open cut under his right eye and his lower lip is swollen and bleeding. He is holding his left arm close to his body and taking shallow breaths.
“He says you’re his guardian, sir,” the woman says. “Is that correct?”
“His guardian?” Phil sounds surprised, but he recovers quickly. “Yeah, I am. And his grandmother is here in town too. We’re looking after him.”
“You sure about that?” The male cop sounds a bit aggressive, as if he’d like to pick a fight with Phil. “He was downtown, hanging with some pretty rough guys. He got beat up when someone tried to steal his bike.”
“Assholes,” Wain mumbles. “I kicked their asses.”
“Language,” the woman says. “Mr. Phine, this isn’t the first time we’ve picked Wain up.”
“Pigs,” Wain says.
The woman sighs. “If he gets into trouble again, he might end up in juvie. You don’t want that, Wain. Really.”
“Bitch,” Wain says. Phil grabs him by his elbow—his left elbow—and Wain screams. A high-pitched, girly scream.
“Apologize to the officer, Wain,” Phil says through gritted teeth. “Now.”
“You’re hurting me,” Wain whines.
“Now, Wain,” Phil repeats.
“Sorry,” Wain whispers.
“Louder,” Phil says. “She can’t hear you.”
“It’s all right, sir,” the woman cop says. “I’ve been called worse.”
“It’s not all right,” Phil says. “Louder, Wain, or they can take you back and throw you in a cell.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.” Sid can tell Wain is almost in tears, but Phil is unmoved. He simply lets go of Wain’s arm and shoves him into a chair.
“Thanks for bringing him home, officers,” he says. “I’ll take it from here.”
“He may need a doctor,” the woman says. “Might have some broken ribs.”
Phil nods and repeats, “I’ll take it from here.”
The cops turn to leave and Wain gives them the finger. Only Sid sees.
When the cops have gone, Sid climbs down from the loft and sits opposite Wain at the table while Phil cleans his cuts, applies a couple of butterfly bandages to the gash under his eye and wraps his ribs in wide adhesive tape.
“No way we’re spending the night at Emerg,” Phil says. “Waste of time. These are all surface cuts, and the ribs? All they’ll do is tape them anyway. I’m going to phone Elizabeth from Devi’s house. You two okay here?”
Sid nods. “What happened to the Green Knight?” he asks after Phil leaves.
“Assholes took it,” Wain says. His speech is slurring and his eyelids are fluttering. He’s only thirteen, Sid thinks. A kid. A tired, angry, confused kid.
“The guy who beat you up?”
Wain nods and a tear falls on the tabletop. He scrubs at it with his sleeve. “Two guys.”
“Harsh.”
More tears.
“I had an idea,” Sid says. “About you. And me.”
Wain sniffles and wipes his nose on his sleeve, which Sid takes as encouragement. At least he hasn’t told him to fuck off.
“You could come back to the island with me. Hang out with me and my friend Chloe. Megan and Caleb will be cool with it. We could do some biking, go to the lake, maybe go out on Caleb’s boat…” His voice trails off.
“Sounds awesome.”
Sid can’t tell if Wain is being serious or sarcastic; his nose is too stuffed up.
“Maybe Elizabeth could come too,” Sid says.
Wain nods and puts his head down on the table. “So tired, man.”
Sid considers dragging Wain up into the loft, but decides instead to let him sleep in Phil’s bed. He’s not sure Wain can make it across the yard to his own room, and Sid doesn’t want to go back inside Devi’s house.
“Come on, buddy,” Sid says, pulling on Wain’s good arm. Wain stands and, leaning heavily on Sid, staggers into Phil’s room and collapses onto the bed, pulling his knees to his chest and moaning. Sid pulls off his runners and covers him with a blanket. “Sleep tight,” he says.
Wain whispers something as Sid shuts the door. It’s either “Fuck you” or “Thank you.”
Phil comes back while Sid is on the phone with Megan. He looks panicked when he doesn’t see Wain but relaxes when Sid points to the closed bedroom door.
“Not sure exactly,” Sid says to Megan. “Tomorrow sometime though. You sure it’s okay?”
He watches Phil make tea as he listens to Megan tell him how glad she is that he’s bringing Wain to the island. He hopes she feels the same after she meets him.
“I told Wain he could come home with me,” Sid says after he gets off the phone. “Hope that was okay. And I let him sleep in your bed too. He was dead on his feet. I took his shoes off.”
Phil smiles for the first time that evening. “You’re a good kid, Sid.”
“Do you think Elizabeth would like to come? To the island?” Sid asks. “Megan says she’s welcome to stay as long as she likes.”
Phil nods. “Elizabeth loves road trips. Loves to drive. But you can ask her yourself. She’s on her way over. I’d like to go to the mainland to look for Devi—maybe she’s gone back to her old stomping grounds in Vancouver.”
“Do you think Elizabeth would stop at McDonald’s on the way over and get me a burger?” Sid says. “I’m starving.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” says Phil. “One kid injured, the other hungry. Not much of a guardian, am I?” He dials Elizabeth’s number and asks her to pick something up. When she arrives she has hamburgers, yam fries, two kinds of salad and blackberry pie—enough for all of them, including Wain. It’s definitely not from McDonald’s.
“I have friends in high places,” is all she says when Sid asks where the food came from. The burger is the best he has ever had. The pie is amazing—almost as good as Megan’s.
When he finishes the last bite of pie, Sid says, “Wain wants to come home with me.” He pauses and adds, “Well, he didn’t say he wouldn’t. And Phil wants to go to Van to look for Devi. Anyway, I wondered if you’d like to come too. To the island, I mean. Megan says it’s okay. And I’d like you to come.” He stops. He’s babbling, but Elizabeth is smiling.
“A road trip,” she says, her eyes shining. “Now that’s something I haven’t done in a long time. And I want to see your island, so yes! I accept your invitation, kind sir. When do we go?”
“Tomorrow?” Sid says. “I told Megan we’d come tomorrow.”
“Excellent plan,” Elizabeth says. “We’ll whisk Wain away before he has a chance to change his mind.”
“Change my mind about what?” Wain is standing in the doorway to Phil’s room. “You guys woke me up.”
He looks so much like a sleepy toddler after a nap that Sid can’t help but laugh. “Dude, you need a shower,” he says. “Especially if we’re gonna be in a car for six hours.”
“What car?”
“Mine,” Elizabeth says. “We’re going on an adventure.”
“Screw adventures,” Wain says. “You got any food?” This time everybody laughs, even Wain, who gasps, “It kills, man,” as he clutches his ribs.