the living-room window. A child of the sky had taken a thick marker and looped a line of gloom around the base of each cloud.

“Do you remember,” she said, switching topics, “when we drove to the cabin on the Gatineau River? An hour’s drive from here.” She spoke as if it had been years ago instead of only a few weeks. “We took the cooler with us—the one with the green lid. I packed the oilcloth with the red-and-white squares, hoping there’d be a picnic table at the place.”

I continued where she left off.

“Another couple arrived, and stayed at the only other cabin. They were accompanied by two young girls: their daughter, Florence, and her friend Lise. There was a softness to the distant hills on the other side of the river. That was the view we saw from shore. The visual suggestion was one of a series of far-off valleys, each folded to the next, the muted wrappings of red and gold.”

“Say that again, will you?”

“Which part?”

“The visual suggestion. I want to hear you say it.”

A moment preserved.

We were both silent, and then she said, “That was the night you told me about the fates.”

“I remember how you laughed.”

“I’d never heard any of that before. You’d been holding on to secrets. What else haven’t you told me?”

“If I’d known the fates would amuse you so much, I’d have told you earlier.”

“I’m glad nobody ever tried to predict my fate,” she said. “I’d have been menaced. I am menaced. My head feels as if there are lines criss-crossing inside my skull. Slicing up my brain. Sorry,” she said. “Sorry for that unnecessary dark moment.”

Basil chose this moment to do a circuit through the room, dragging his mattress in his teeth. The past few days, he’d begun to lift the mattress out of his basket and drag it around, ensuring that he’d be seen.

Lena called him over for a pat.

“Come here, you outrage,” she said, and he dropped the mattress in the doorway between living and dining rooms. He took up position beside her. She tried to reach for him, but her arm wouldn’t move.

“What’s wrong, Lena? Have you seen the doctor?” Something inside me had gone still.

“I called,” she said. “I have an appointment first thing Monday, before classes.”

But the words came out slurred, and she closed her eyes and I saw what was happening, and I ran to the phone.

Emergency response was fast. Miss Carrie stood at the top of her veranda step when she saw the flashing lights, but I had no chance to speak to her. Other neighbours had come outside and were standing on the sidewalk as Lena was carried out of the house on a stretcher.

I was told which hospital she was being taken to, and followed in my car. My heart was racing; my throat was dry. I hadn’t stopped to phone Greg, or leave him a message. Everything that was happening—Lena’s faltering attempts to speak, Basil’s frantic barking, the solemn faces of neighbours as I pulled away from the house, the streets through which I drove, which suddenly seemed hostile and unfamiliar—everything was telescoped, as if each part of the emergency had conspired to occupy less space and less time than real space and real time. The ambulance left me far behind and Lena was already in Emergency by the time I parked my car and ran to the entrance.

It took me a few minutes to find her, to find out which curtain she was behind, and another few minutes before I was permitted behind the curtain with her. The doctors on duty were blunt. From the Emergency Room, I phoned Greg and told him to come home at once.

A bleak smile from her hospital bed. A grim one from me, in response. Bleak information delivered and received. She moved her left hand, gestured towards her body beneath the covers. There was an IV hooked up to her arm.

“Look at me. I’m pulled down in a heap. Like one of your fractured and broken smalls.”

But I wasn’t protecting her now. I hadn’t kept her safe.

She had difficulty speaking. “I have so much to give up,” she said. Tears running now, unchecked. “You and Greg.”

“He’s on his way,” I said. “He’s coming. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“He’ll carry on doing what he’s already begun,” she said. “He loves his life.”

I leaned my forehead into the sheets, felt the ridge at the edge of the mattress. Closed my eyes. I wanted to banish the encompassing gloom.

“Don’t give up hope, Lena. Please don’t,” I said.

I felt her drifting.

She brought herself back. But her look was so distant, any bit of hope I’d had now drained away.

Her condition changed quickly. There was no time to think of what more to say or not say. A word once uttered is beyond the reach of four galloping horses, Okuma-san had always told me. But I had no words to utter that could save her.

In the morning, I went home to feed Basil, to change clothes, to speak with Miss Carrie and to pick up Greg at the airport. Lena was now in Intensive Care. Miss Carrie immediately took a taxi to the hospital and said she would stay on the unit until Greg and I arrived. At home, Basil had taken up position at the top of the stairs, his head over the top step. He was keeping watch over the front door below, and he was upset. He hadn’t kept his pack together. His disintegrating pack. I knew how that felt.

While I was collecting the few items I needed to take back to the hospital, Basil began to drag his mattress again. It seemed that no matter which direction I looked, he was crossing a room or passing through a doorway, the mattress in his teeth.

Before I left for the airport, I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment and looked at a framed photo of Lena on the dresser. I stared, but what I was seeing was fragmentation. Because of the lighting at the time the photo had been taken, only half of her face was visible, the left. It was obvious that she was ready to explode in laughter. How could I tell, from her left eye, from the shadow of her lip, from the vertical line of her nose to her darkened chin?

I could. I just could. I removed the photo from the frame and stored it. The Lena I had left at the hospital had no laughter, no smile. And I wanted her refocused; I wanted to make her whole.

When Greg and I returned from hospital that night, after Lena had become unconscious and had not reawakened, after she had died of a massive stroke, we saw the lights on at Miss Carrie’s and we went there first, to tell her. The three of us stood inside Miss Carrie’s front entrance, next to the hellhole, and held one another, and wept for what we could scarcely believe, wept for what each of us had so suddenly lost.

Greg and I let ourselves into our own home. When we turned on the lights, we saw that Basil had methodically ripped every bit of his mattress to shreds. Pieces of white wadding were scattered in every room over the entire main floor.

CHAPTER 29

1997

Keep river as your focus, Lena always told me.

And there it is. The deep canyon, the great Fraser River on my left, teeming with its own life, cutting its way through mountain, rock, soil, eroding as it flows.

I’ve decided to take a long route from Kamloops, and I approach from the south. The highway has been narrow and winding, hugging the side of the mountain for miles. Warnings of rock slides have been posted along the way, and I grip the wheel and glance up, wondering if I’d be able to shoot ahead, even if I had warning. It’s easy to imagine tons of loose boulders up there, hanging by threads.

I have been listening to what Okuma-san described as the last masterpiece written by Beethoven, the last

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