He thought again of his mother’s hands digging into his shoul-
ders. His mother was so strong she could pull a drowning man out of
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the sea. She was so strong that she had pushed his father out of the
house.
“Why didn’t he say anything before?” said the detective. “About
being in the woman’s car.”
“What was he supposed to say?” said his mother. “He didn’t real-
ize the woman he met was the same woman on the news. He is only
a little boy.”
“Yes, but why didn’t he say something to his father? Why didn’t
he tell his father about meeting the woman?”
“I don’t know,” said his mother. “He was scared.” She looked at
Jesse, and he nodded. Yes, yes, he was scared. That much was also true.
The detective squinted at his mother. “Surely his father would
have noticed a car idling in the parking lot when he returned, pre-
sumably with his son sitting in it. Yes?” The detective turned to Jesse.
“No?”
“I got out of the car,” Jesse said, and that part was also true. “After she went after the dog. I got out of the car and I waited.”
Besides, he didn’t know what his father did or didn’t see in the
parking lot. It seemed impossible that the detective was asking him to comment on something he couldn’t possibly know. “I don’t know what
my father saw,” he said.
“Okay, so walk us through it one more time,” said the policeman.
“The woman called the police while you waited in her car, and then
what happened?”
Was this the moment that would divide his life into two? What
would happen if Jesse told the truth right now? What would happen
to him and his father? He imagined his father’s neck snapping as he
fell from the gallows. He imagined being next in line, the noose slipping over his head, the roughness of the rope.
But it was easy enough to lie. Play pretend, his mother had said.
You can do this, she had said.
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This day has never happened. This day has never been.
Pretend you’re in a movie, his mother said. Pretend you’re in a
play. It’s a role, she said. It’s okay to mumble. It’s okay to act scared.
It’s okay to correct yourself, to have to start again. Don’t worry, she said, they will believe you. It’s all going to be okay.
And so Jesse spoke in a low voice, slowly, as his mother had told
him to do. The detective and the policeman leaned in when he started
to speak, even though he had told them these things already. He
wondered how many times he would have to repeat himself. “She
called the police and I got scared and opened the door, and her dog
jumped out of the car,” he said.
“What were you scared of?” asked the policeman.
“I was scared,” said Jesse, “I was scared of my father.” Also true.
Always had been true. Still, why was it hard to say? Why were his eyes filling with tears?
“And you didn’t see the woman after that?”
“No. She ran after her dog.” He hung his head and watched his
tears land on his pant legs. “After a while my father came back. I got in his car and we drove back to my mother’s house.”
“Your father,” said the policeman, “why didn’t he go after her?”
“No,” Jesse said again, though at this point the lies were burning
through him like battery acid. He reached for his mother’s hand
under the table and it was right there, waiting for him. “He didn’t
see her. She was gone by the time he came back.” He squeezed his
mother’s hand.
“It has been such a long day,” his mother said, “and we are so very
tired.”
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C h a p t e r F i f t e e n
Leo
That night, Leo did not join Holly at her studio, and he did not
call her. He sensed that it was better if they spent some time
apart. He pressed his face into the cold fabric of his pil ow, and it smelled like peppermint—like Holly’s hair. He looked around the
room, grateful that he was not in jail. He opened a can of tomato
soup, not because he was hungry, but because he could.
Evelina knocked on his door at one in the morning, in her winter
coat. She kicked off her boots and said the boys were sleeping, would never know that she was gone. She scanned the wall for a place to
hang her coat, then dropped it on the floor. She looked as if she were about to take a dance class. A leotard, that’s what it was called. And jogging pants. He’d almost forgotten how muscular her arms were,
and he fought the urge to squeeze her biceps, which looked like they
were made of steel. She looked strong and she looked furious, but
she also looked tired. There was something funny she was doing
with her mouth. She took off her hat and shook out her hair, which
was shorter now, dyed and cut to her collarbone. He preferred it long.
“Is Holly here?”
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“No,” he said. He moved toward her. He watched her take in the
single, airless room: its barren white walls, his foam mattress and
navy-blue sleeping bag, the kitchenette. The bathroom, which had
only a toilet. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The one win-
dow barred, impossible to open. Nowhere to sit down, which hadn’t
bothered him until this very moment when it seemed like the only
thing to do was say, Will you sit down?
She stood in front of him and folded her arms across her chest.
He watched her skin prickle in the cold. “Jesse told me what hap-
pened,” she said. She stepped toward him, so close that he could smell the toothpaste on her breath.
“Everything?” he asked.
“Everything,” she said.
He thought of his blue paper boat sitting in the middle of the
frozen lake. He thought of the letter—his resolution, his wish—that
he had written on New Year’s Eve, Holly by his side. It could have
been discovered by the search and rescue team as they looked for the
woman. It could have fallen through the ice. Picked up by a curious
bird. Shredded and stuffed into a nest by a squirrel.
“What did you tell the police?” she asked. It was horrible to be
this close to her and to see the hatred she had for him in her eyes.
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing, Evelina. What
did you tell them?”
“That Jesse met the woman after you left him alone—”
“Jesus Christ—”
“But that her dog jumped out of the car and she went after him.
And Jesse never saw her again. And you didn’t see her either.”
“Okay.” He put his hands on his knees. He had to catch his
breath. He could live with that story, with that version of things.
“Okay,” he said again. “Look, I didn’t know Jesse had been in the
woman’s car.”
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“You couldn’t have known that,” she said, her voice rising. “You
left our son alone out there—”
“And I am sorry for that, Evelina.”
“I think, Leo,” she said, “I might kill you. I might kill you right
here in this grubby apartment.”
She leaned into him, her fists raised, and he felt a familiar flicker in his chest, a small pilot light of anger.
“Look, Evelina,” he started. He took her fists in his hands. “I’m
not all bad.”
He looked down the length of Evelina’s body and let go of her
hands. She could hit him right now, and he would deserve it. He
would let it happen. He would let her hit him, if that’s what she
needed to do. He waited for the blows.
But instead she looked around, as if the room might be bugged,
and he saw the seriousness in her expression—that she was, in fact,
worried someone might be listening. “The important thing is that
you say nothing further,” she said. “To anyone.”
She pressed herself even closer to him, until they were almost
embracing.
“I will keep your secret,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I think it’s the right thing to do.”
He could feel Evelina’s heart. He could feel the space above her
breast quiver, the rhythm of it. He wanted to touch her but instead
he took a step back, turned away.
“Is Dmitri okay?” he asked. He wanted to know, for instance,
whether she knew that he had hit Dmitri, or if Jesse was sticking to
their plan— their story—about Dmitri falling on the ice. How much did Evelina really know? “I mean, his face.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s healing.”
He turned back to her and looked in her eyes, but there was no
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way of knowing what she knew. He fumbled in his back pocket for
a cigarette but there was only a pack of matches.
“What about Jesse?” he said. He looked at his feet.
“I don’t know, Leo,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s okay.”
He moved toward Evelina again until he was inches from her face.
The question, of course, was whether the two of them had a right
to be happy. Given what had happened. But there didn’t seem to be
any way to ask that question.
Her skin looked as soft as velvet. He thought about what it would
be like to kiss her. “If I do one thing right in my life,” he said, “I want it to be this thing.”
But she moved away from him and started rummaging through
the sad offerings in his little kitchen. He watched her open and shut his cupboards, and he wondered why she didn’t tell him what she was
looking for—or why he didn’t ask. It seemed to both thrill and annoy
her, to rifle through his kitchen. She picked through his meagre cut-
lery until she found a teaspoon, then began inspecting his mugs.
Eventually she settled on his favourite mug, and he wondered if she
did this to be irritating. His tomato soup sat on the counter, cold now and untouched. Beside it, five empty cans of beer. She filled a little pot with water and set it on the stove.
“Jesus, Leo,” she said. “If I wasn’t so angry right now, I’d feel sorry for you.”
He was surprised she had found a teabag somewhere. Maybe
she had brought her own. He wanted her to leave, but he knew he
still had to talk to her about Holly. The wedding. And how he wanted
the boys to be there. It was the right thing to do. The boys should
see the Swami and be blessed. Have their pain washed away by the
Swami’s words. How could he get remarried without his boys?
“This may not be the right time,” he started. “But there’s some-
thing I wanted to say.”
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“Then say it,” she said.
The headlights of a passing car appeared on the ceiling, and he
watched the light with her as it crossed the room. Sounds from above, despite the hour: the clicking of high heels across a hardwood floor, water moving through pipes, the muted mumble of someone watching the news.
“Holly and I are,” he said, “making arrangements.” It seemed to
take him a long time to get the word arrangements out, but finally he said it, and he waited for her response. The water bubbled in the pot and she took it to the sink and sloshed it into the mug.
“We’re not even divorced,” she said and turned to him. She held
the mug of tea in both hands.
“That’s a paperwork thing,” he said. “That can be done.”
“Then do it,” she said.
“The boys,” he said, “should be present for the wedding.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. Not given what happened.”
“In April,” he said. “During spring break. I’ll drive them down,
drive them back up.”
“No,” she said.
“I’m not asking,” he said. He felt the pilot light of rage flicker in him again. “I’m not asking for your permission.”
She set down the tea and stumbled into her boots and coat. Her
mouth was tight.
“They’re my sons too, Evelina,” he said.
“And if I say no?”
He shrugged. “Think about it.” He supposed the trip would be
easier without the boys. Him and Holly. He supposed he could live
with any decision she made.
“You’re marrying her,” she said. “Holly.”
“I am.”
She shook her head. “Well, we’ll see how long that lasts.”
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He waited until he heard the sound of her car starting. He felt
something building in him, like electricity. He took her mug of tea
and whipped it against the wall as hard as he could.
There was no sound in his neighbourhood now. No clank of
dishes being washed in another apartment, no squeal of tires as
someone sped down the road, no jangle of a dog’s collar, no birds.
He waited to hear the familiar sound of the foghorn but it, too, was
silent. The world seemed to have emptied out. He was thirty-eight
years old.
He gathered the little shards in his hand and laid them softly in
the trash can. He filled a bowl with soapy water, and slowly cleaned the floor. He took a piece of the white mug out of the trash and considered it one last time, then dropped it back in with the other pieces, gathered the trash bag in his hands, and walked it out to the dumpster.
He had bought the mug years ago as a souvenir on a trip to Scotland’s Isle of Skye. That and a white sweater, knitted locally. Would he ever go back there? It was almost at the top of the world. Now here he was, at the bottom of it.
He let himself back into his apartment, then lay on his mattress
and stared at the ceiling. He felt he owed something to the woman.
At the very least, he owed her an apology.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
In the dead silence of his apartment, he told Vera Gusev that he
was sorry, over and over. The ceiling fell away until
there was only sky above him, the wind passing in waves over his body. High above the
clouds, he imagined Vera, her hand outstretched, the light reflecting off the gemstones on her fingers, blinding him.
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V e r a
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Overhead, the clouds were as thick and white as lambswool. She took in a deep inhalation of cold water that spread to her lungs,
and then another, and this one found its way into her stomach. She
sank twenty or thirty feet, past the phytoplankton and zooplankton,
her body moving more and more slowly, at times moving sideways
rather than downward.
She met a school of rainbow trout suspended in the water, and
she moved through their bodies as though parting them with her
hands. The fish regarded her with no interest, and rejoined one
another as soon as she had passed. Invigorated by the movement, a
few rose to the surface where there was more oxygen, and lingered
there, their bodies vertical, mouths open, gasping.
The snow had dulled the colours of the landscape, and Scout was
camouflaged by birch trees and low-lying shrubs. He was without his
leash. He was a good dog. He was waiting. He barked at the lake. He
barked again. If no one returned for him, Vera supposed he could
live off rabbits and waterfowl, chickens from people’s backyards. He
could wander into town at night and forage in garbage cans like a raccoon, then run back into the woods when gangs of children chased
him with sticks.
A sound in the distance. A whistle. Someone calling. Her dog ran
through the forest, breathlessly, desperately, toward the sound, away from her, his paws kicking up snow.
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A search party appeared some time later, beams criss-crossing the
snow-covered forest floor. It seemed to Vera that they didn’t spend
enough time looking for her, were hasty, hungry, bored, cold, eager
to get home. Things she thought were obvious—the thinness of the
ice above her, where she had fallen through—these things were invis-
ible to the searchers. At dawn, the search party returned and still they did not find her. The park reopened after a few days, but still some
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