“Huh?” He blinked at her again.
“You were yelling in some weird language.”
He flushed, remembering the deer, the dream. He said, “It’s not weird. It’s Anishinaabemowin.”
“Seriously?” she said. “You speak three languages?”
He nodded. “I kind of suck at it, though. It’s not like it’s taught at school or anything. You gotta rely on family to keep it sharp, and we don’t see my mom’s side so much.”
“It sounded pretty good to me,” she said, and he smiled.
His heart had settled a little, the dream fading. He took another breath and told her, “My father’s side are all from Rivière des Outaouais. They mostly speak joual—that’s old-school Quebecois, not the French you learn at school. And my mom’s side all speak Anishinaabemowin, with only a little French. You should see our family get-togethers. They’re kinda nuts.”
He shook his head, thinking of the chaos of two totally different languages, religions, cultures and traditions smashed together in one house, and the five wild, tough brothers it had made.
“Know how they say ‘you’re talking gibberish’ in joual?” he asked. “T’parle Algonquin. ‘You’re speaking Algonquin.’ My mother’s language. How fucked is that, huh?” He shook his head again. “Talk about a culture clash.”
They sat in silence for a while, cricket song rising from the empty field, sun almost down. “It’s peaceful here,” Ré finally said. “My place is so crazy.” He thought of his bedroom, his only sanctuary. Even that never got as quiet as this. It was way too easy to feel good here.
And then she said, “My mom’s an ER nurse. She takes the worst shifts, the bloodiest ones, ’cause the pay is better. Drunk drivers. Bar fights. Beat-up wives.” Her eyes fell down to her hands. “That’s why she’s never here.”
Ré pictured her here, night after night, all alone. He stayed put at his end of the couch, though he wanted pretty badly to slide over to hers, tell her, J’suis là. I am here.
She shifted, stretching her leg out, and he flicked a look at her, worried she was moving to sit closer, but she was only reaching into her pocket.
“What do you think this is?” she asked, opening her hand to show him a little silver ball. “I found it at the Grains.”
He picked it up and rolled it between his finger and thumb. It was perfectly round. “It looks like a ball bearing,” he said. “Like, from a wheel.” He gave it back.
“Like a skateboard wheel?” she asked, examining it.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
He sat back, resting his elbow on the couch, his cheek on his fist, watching her while she wasn’t looking. Her wet hair had made shadows on her faded-soft plaid shirt, and her T-shirt just covered the rise of her little belly, poking out over her cut-off jeans. She looked cute, pregnant, but he’d never say that out loud.
He closed his eyes, thinking of her dangerously as his girl, that baby as his own.
Câlisse, it was easy to see…
Her toes pressed into his leg, and he opened his eyes, saw her grinning at him.
“Don’t fall asleep again,” she said. “I’ll get bored and ditch you.”
He smiled drowsily. “Where would you go?”
She looked out the front window, wiggled her fingers at the field. “Out there, somewhere,” she said.
He looked down. Her toes looked like a little string of painted pearls pressed into his leg. His hand closed over them. “I’d just wait for you to come back,” he said.
28
E
Alex’s house was nothing like she’d imagined it would be. Nothing like Shaun’s or even Sunny’s. “Holy shit,” she said, looking up through the cover of trees that hid it from the long driveway. “Is Alex rich?”
Réal laughed under his breath. “You could call it that,” he said, ducking a little to look through the trees himself.
The house was a twenty-minute drive from town, east of the lake on a twisting, climbing, countryside road you might never find if you didn’t already know your way.
It was after dusk, the woods just dark shadows, but winking between the trunks of oak and silver maple and birch were yellow lights from a house that seemed to go on for a mile. As the Buick came around a bend, she saw a massive triangle of windows, like an alpine lodge, that looked in on a double-height living room. Eerie blue light flickered up the endless walls from a flat-screen TV as big as a dining room table.
A huge wooden deck circled the house, and a few people were gathered there, drinking beer from tall cans. Evie didn’t recognize them. They weren’t from school. They were older, and they looked pretty tough—long hair, beards on some, dirty ballcaps. Even in the dark, Evie could see the ink decorating every inch of their arms. Their eyes all seemed to track the Buick as it came around the back of the house. Evie shivered and looked away.
Farther down the driveway stood a barn-shaped building with its doors flung open. Music and low light and voices spilled across the gravel drive, where cars were parked alongside a row of slick, black Harleys. Evie could see kids from school hanging out on a sloping lawn on the other side of the barn. A bonfire pit stood in the grass, but it was not yet lit.
Réal parked the Buick and they got out. Now that she was standing outside the car, Evie could hear the high, unsteady whine of dirt bikes not too far off. “Geez,” she said, “they really like motorcycles, huh?”
Ré was bent into the back seat, grabbing a bag he’d picked up at the liquor store on the way, and as he straightened he gave her an amused look. “Just a little,” he said, heavy on the sarcasm. He’d obviously been here many times. The place didn’t seem to surprise him one bit.
She came around the back of the car, hoping he’d take her hand, knowing he wouldn’t. For a second they just stood facing each other in the dark, nearly touching,
