by Sheena Kamal
The seaside town in the Canary Islands is empty of everyone but locals, and the night is quiet. He adjusts the settings on his telescope while he waits for the stars to come out. The little apartment cost him next to nothing. He can live here for the rest of his life with what he’s made from Bernard Lam. He might be comfortable doing exactly that.
He didn’t get to Alberta, after all. But there are other places to go to see the Northern Lights.
To pass the time, he opens up his laptop and plays the video clip he’s been watching on a loop. Nate Marlowe, a different kind of star, no less compelling, is doing a filmed acoustic session for a Seattle radio station. It’s just him, another bass player, a woman at the keyboards, and a backup singer.
Nate starts playing. The intro is long, hypnotic. When he begins to sing, his voice is like sandpaper. The backup singer steps forward. She hasn’t yet lost her tropical tan, so her skin is the color he’s become used to seeing. She’s dressed in jeans, a loose sweatshirt, and a baseball cap. She looks like she wandered in from the street until you notice the mic in her hand.
When she sings the second verse, it brings tears to his eyes. Every time. It has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song, nothing to do with the arrangement or the haunting chords Nate Marlowe is playing. It is the pure, unadulterated emotion that her voice wraps him up in.
He has known Nora for a long time, but watching her sing is when he begins to truly see her.
The first time he met her was during an AA meeting. There was a thunderstorm raging outside and the church basement was almost empty. Only a few stragglers came in, some more for warmth than for anything else, and Nora. Whisper was at her side, and when someone mentioned that all pets should be left outside, Nora slapped the woman with a stare so cool the woman turned away and didn’t speak to anyone else for the rest of the meeting.
She holds so much of herself back, except when she’s singing. Embracing this raw, striking talent of hers. He wishes she would have shared this side of herself with him.
On-screen, the last chord is still reverberating through the air when a look passes between the two singers and Nora slips out of the room.
Brazuca searches daily, but there are no more videos of Nate and Nora singing. It is the best version of the song, with seven times as many views as the studio recording. The number is in the millions. It climbs every day.
The video feels like an absolution between Nate and Nora. It swims with emotion. They are holding grief at bay, the both of them. It is so beautiful and raw it’s uncomfortable.
When the song is done, Nora simply leaves without fanfare.
It’s over.
Good-bye.
72
Whisper and I head farther away from the border, leaving the blues behind us as we go.
We don’t look back.
Well, she does, but she’s fickle like that.
It’s early, the sunlight just breaking through the dim Pacific Northwest slate. An endless sheet of gray broken only by the shadowed mountain peaks that watch over this landscape. Weary sentinels that seem to have been there since the dawn of time.
I’m feeling poetic. I’m feeling not like myself.
Behind us, at the end of a treacherous highway, a mother sits in a kitchen with her daughter. While snow falls on trees beyond the window. They tell stories, slipping into each other’s memories. What they are looking for they find in each other. Another woman enters the room, and the shimmering thing between them grows to include her. So domestic, so banal, this scene of three women in the kitchen together. Though one of them is not yet an adult, she’s not a child, either. She is her own thing, coming into her skin more and more as the days pass. She is the best thing the world has to offer. Kind eyes, unlike any other pair the adults in the room have seen. A love of dance and art.
In that kitchen with a dog sleeping on a rug by the door, they are a family. Like something out of book on a shelf that no one has read. A memory like a secret.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the indigenous territories upon which I live and work.
Thank you to Lyssa Keusch, Liate Stehlik, Kate Parkin, Katherine Armstrong, Kaitlin Harri, and Danielle Bartlett.
I’m grateful for the expertise of PH, Dave Pledger, Sunni Westbrook, and Josette Calleja. I would also like to thank Sam Wiebe, Lori Rader-Day, Alix Hawley, Lou Berney, Elizabeth Little, Steph Cha, and Linda Richards for their support, and my family for being the reason I’m able to do this at all.
About the Author
SHEENA KAMAL holds an HBA in political science from the University of Toronto, and was awarded a TD Canada Trust scholarship for community leadership and activism around the issue of homelessness. Kamal has also worked as a crime and investigative journalism researcher for the film and television industry. Her academic knowledge and experience inspired her debut novel, The Lost Ones. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Sheena Kamal
The Lost Ones
It All Falls Down
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
no going back. Copyright © 2020 by Sheena Kamal. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Yeon Kim
Cover photograph © 2p2play/Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition APRIL 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-286978-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-286976-0
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
