“We could cut down those trees there, I guess,” Leslie says, pointing to the left of the bulldozer. She looks out at the land, indifferent, uncommitted. She can see it, but he guesses she isn’t sure she likes it. “I don’t know. It’s kind of a long way to come,” she says.
“You think?” He knows she’s becoming a smart young woman, albeit slowly — but sooner than he probably realizes, she’ll be smarter than him. She lies back on a large stump and looks up at the sky. “It’s kind of far for a weekend place.”
“Hm,” he thinks, sitting down beside her. “You’re probably right.”
“Maybe look on Salt Spring.” She smiles at him. “Sorry, Dad.”
“What are you sorry for?”
She sits up and tugs self-consciously at the back of her sweatshirt, trying to cover the gap of bulging flesh above the waist of her jeans. She’s dwarfed by the sawed-off tree, sitting like a little girl, with her knees tucked into her chest. He gives her a gentle pat on the back. She shrugs her shoulders. “Nothing, I guess. I wanted to like it too.”
He rests his arm across her shoulder for a moment and then pulls her close in a hug.
“Dad,” Leslie says, laughing uncomfortably, “you’re squishing me.” He pulls away and they sit quietly.
A wind passes through the trees, picking up Leslie’s hair as though she were sitting at the bow of a boat. It moves the branches of the huge firs and gives the two of them a better view of the ocean.
THEY DECIDE TO GO home early. Anna stays in the bathroom until Ted is outside honking the horn, and when she comes out they barely exchange a glance. The girls sleep during the ride back to the harbour. The thick smell of a night of drinking hangs in the car and Ted rolls down the window for some fresh air. The ferry shakes as it pulls away from the dock. A tugboat presses along beside them, a sort of sentinel, heaving headfirst into the oncoming waves. It rides each swell to its crest, suspended for a moment mid-air before plunging down the other side in a wake of white foam. The island is still covered in mist, still circled by a grey ocean. The fog has lifted slightly and the rocky shores are visible, littered with washed-up logs; their gnarled branches and stumps look like limbs and torsos in the muted light.
Ted looks up into the rearview mirror and catches Anna watching him. Fear flickers across her gaze, changes her entire face for a quick second, and scares Ted enough to catch his breath in his throat. He looks away, and when he looks back Anna’s eyes are closed. Her face is new in a way he can’t identify; there is something unrecognizable there. He can hear the nasally inhale of her breath, the feather-light rasp he’d never detected before, the sound like an engine rattle to him now, a broken-down thing. She looks so serene he can almost convince himself he imagined her eyes opening and all along she’s been sleeping peacefully.
As they unload from the ferry, Ted holds his breath.
BACK ON THE ISLAND HIGHWAY the rain starts again. Ted turns on the windshield wipers and the CBC. He opens the window a little wider and takes deep breaths of the wet, evergreen-filled air. The mountains are still covered in patches of snow, but the poplars are dripping with red catkins. He decides not to tell Heather about the weekend, about Anna. He’ll tell her the property was a dud. He’ll tell her the girls enjoyed the fresh air, they should get away more often, next time Heather should come. The rain turns hard and Ted rolls up the window, clicks the windshield wipers to their top speed. He’ll say those things, but he won’t believe them. This will be the last time.
A transport truck approaches in the rearview mirror and passes them on the left. As it overtakes them, the car rattles gently. He’s aware of the weight of the steel chassis, the spin of the tires, the phantom feeling of impact. The truck’s wake kicks up a slap of water against Ted’s windshield as it shuttles past. Even though he anticipates it, he still jumps. He’s blinded for a few seconds. The wipers go swoosh, swoosh across the glass. And just like that, everything slips away.
WHALE STORIES
THE SCRATCHING OF THE pine needles on the roof woke William from a dream that left his armpits damp. The wind crawled through the trees, weighing down the boughs, forming fierce patterns on the wall above his bed. An empty pillowcase tacked up with two pushpins covered the bedroom window. His mom hadn’t found time to buy curtains yet. They didn’t have a kitchen table or a TV or a couch or a doormat. The bed and breakfast was bigger than their house in the city, and for now most of their furniture went into the guest rooms.
There was something else — another noise, some sort of animal snuffling and pawing at the side of the house. Shaking himself out of his covers, William flipped on the bedside lamp and checked the alarm clock. It was already nine-thirty. He pushed the pillowcase aside and opened the window an inch. The wind cried through the crack, spitting salty air into his face. There was a clatter of garbage cans below and he caught sight of a scruffy tail disappearing under the porch: one of the wild dogs again.
At the end of the yard, the huge arms of the pines rolled like they were trapped in an underwater storm. The clouds collected in dark barrels along the mountainside. He could see a small section of the beach through the thick cover of pine trees, the waves reaching up, breaking, and then dropping onto the grey sand. William yanked the window shut, rattling his rock collection, which sat in a tidy line on his windowsill. The rocks came from Australia, Africa, South America. His father was a geologist and travelled all over the world collecting samples from the different continents. The travertine rock — William’s favorite — fell to the floor, ricocheting under the bed, but he had no time to find it this morning. He dressed quickly, pulling on his dark blue sweatpants and a grey sweater. He had planned to be up hours earlier, before his mom and his sister, but he hadn’t slept well last night. He kept hearing footsteps and voices in the upstairs bedrooms. He still wasn’t used to the B&B, the strangers in the house moving around at all hours. The floors were rough and creaky, and it took him a while to figure out how to sneak around soundlessly. When the guests left for their daily outings he would open the doors to their rooms — something his mother had warned him not to do. He only ever took two and a half steps into the room and from that point craned his neck to get a look inside their suitcases.
In the mornings, William’s mom left their breakfast on the kitchen counter or in the oven to keep warm while she bounced back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, serving the guests. Her cheeks were always pink and she smiled widely, with only a small crinkle of concentration on her forehead. She did look happier to William, but only when she was working, cleaning up or listing the best spots to go kayaking. The guests came from all over — Ohio or Toronto or Oslo. His mother told him once that instead of opening their home to one traveller — his dad — she could now open it to all of them. William sometimes felt like one of his own rocks but much bigger, rooted in the middle of the ocean, with people from interesting places drifting past on their way to somewhere better. His mother kept saying this was her dream, something she never could have done if she was still living in the city with William’s father.
In the kitchen his younger sister, Miriam, sat on a chair, her plate of waffles balanced on her knees, the plate looking dangerously unstable each time she cut herself a bite. William could tell Miriam had already spent most of the morning outside. Her jeans were grass-stained and she was wearing her yellow rain hat. This was probably her second breakfast.