“Sophie? What’re you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you—”
“Papa—Can I stay with you? I am not going back to that apartment. With. Him. I am not.” She gasped the words out between sobs.
Roméo watched as she dropped her coat on the floor and kicked off her boots.
“Sophie, I was just literally heading out the door—”
“In this? I just drove here from the city—it’s starting to get bad out there.” Her voice drooped in disappointment. “Oh. You’re going to Marie’s place.”
She dropped onto Roméo’s sofa and collapsed into tears again. “He’s just become a different person—a real asshole. I don’t know what happened!”
Roméo had warned her about moving in with him. Her mother and stepfather had not opposed it, but Roméo had. She was too young, and from what Roméo witnessed, his great passions were video games and bottomless bowls of spaghetti with meat sauce. He had often wanted to smack the boy’s baseball cap off his head when he wouldn’t even look up from a game long enough to say a proper hello. They were like two kids playing adults, and that rarely ended well. Even adults playing adults often didn’t pull it off.
“Why didn’t you go stay chez maman?”
“They’re in Mexico, remember?”
Roméo couldn’t keep up with the life of Riley his ex-wife, Elyse, had found for herself with her smug and perpetually partying husband, Guy. Sophie returned from the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper and loudly blew her nose. “I needed you, Papa.”
“Sophie, you can stay here, but I have to leave now. Will you be okay? I think there’s some pizza in the freezer. I’ll be back tomorrow evening, okay?” He hated being caught between his daughter and Marie. Still, Roméo could see Sophie was suffering and couldn’t bear it. He never could. But he would have to this time. He grabbed his car keys and headed for the door.
“He pushed me.”
Roméo stopped in his tracks. “Quoi?”
“He pushed me. Up against the wall. Hard. I thought he was gonna hit me, Papa.”
Her admission prompted another burst of tears. He felt like he’d been punched. In the heart. Roméo dropped his bag and returned the keys to the antique Gauloise ashtray where he kept them. He sat down next to Sophie on the sofa and held his sobbing child in his arms. He’d have to let Marie know he’d miss supper and their Saturday night together. Now why did he feel a bit relieved?
Six
ROSIE HAD TO GET AWAY from the road. Pulling herself along by her one good hand, she managed to crawl and drag herself over the low concrete barrier and rest against the steep embankment. The snow and wind whipped around her, and at first she hadn’t felt much. But now, the pain somewhere in her hip and right leg snatched her breath from her. She desperately tried to get air into her lungs, but the pain was so excruciating she could only gulp small, shallow breaths. As she dragged herself up the embankment, she felt the wind tear at her body again. She had to move a bit more—if she could get out of the wind she might survive the night until she could get help. When she turned on her stomach to crawl, her head exploded in pain. She lay on her back. No. Her side. No, her back. She had to keep breathing. Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake. She tried to pull her legs up in the fetal position to keep the heat in, but the pain was so intense and shocking she felt herself losing consciousness. She tried to open her eyes, but she couldn’t seem to. She tried to move her legs, but now she couldn’t feel them at all. She clutched at her stomach. Was he still there? She couldn’t feel him. Nothing at all. And then, a warm and beautiful image came to her. The sea smell of the bay. Her grandmother’s hands plucking eider ducks. A few feathers lifting away in the gentle summer breeze that kept the bugs away but wasn’t too cold. Perfect. Just perfect. Her grandmother’s hands. Brown. Wrinkled. Skilled. So fast. Her mother lighting the fire. Delicious smell of dripping duck fat. The summer sun strong. Her sister, Maggie, playing the piano. No, that’s something else. Another day. Piano Day. The eighty-eighth day of the year, for the instrument’s eighty-eight keys. She and Maggie playing “Heart and Soul.” Rosie and Maggie. Maggie and Rosie. Maggie played the one-hand part, she played the two-hand. They did it real serious for the show, then after they were laughing and laughing, so pleased with themselves. People clapping. Maggie never played anymore, but she did. She could play a hundred songs. Make them up, too. Now she couldn’t breathe at all. Breathe. She didn’t want to die like this. Like a…like a dog. Her grandfather had to shoot them all—all his dogs. He couldn’t take them in the relocation because they couldn’t go in the canoe. Didn’t want the whites—the RCMP to do it, like they did all the others. Had to shoot them all. Grandmother still cried and cried when she told it. Everything changed after that. She didn’t want to die. Breathe. Maggie. They would get a piano, they promised each other. Play “Heart and Soul” every day.
“What happened to you?” A voice. Ecstasy of relief. A voice. A face. Not a face. Eyes and a mask. A scarf. A man. Was speaking to her, asking her if she was okay. She tried to move, but the pain was so knife-intense she retreated from it and tried to breathe again.
The voice was drowning now. Far away.
“Help me. I. Can’t.” Her voice now. She felt something under her head, holding her head. Something heavy over her. It was warm. Warmer. She tried to open her mouth to breathe, but there was no air. No air.
“I will help you. Don’t be scared. Help is coming. Help is on the way.”
And then. There was nothing.
Seven
Monday morning
January 28, 2019
MARIE QUICKLY CHECKED her watch. Two minutes left. Her timing was impeccable. She looked out at the forty or so faces and knew that almost every one of them was actually listening. Although she wished this was all due to her gifts as a teacher, she knew that in fact, it was the subject she was discussing. “In 1967, Roger Payne and Scott McVay recorded humpback whales singing—yes, singing—off the coast of Bermuda. Four years later, they released a record of those songs. Amazingly, it became a bestseller. More importantly, it altered the fate of the humpback whale, hopefully forever. Now. Can anyone think of why?”
A few tentative hands were slowly raised. Marie called on a very shy girl in the second row. It took a lot of courage for her to speak up in class at all, and she blushed a furious fuchsia. “Is it because they were able to talk to us?”
A few of her classmates erupted in laughter. Marie overheard one boy say, “I speak whale. Don’t you?” His cronies snickered again. The second-row girl wouldn’t answer another question for a long time now.
“Actually,” Marie hesitated as she tried to recall her name. “Katie. You are absolutely right.” Marie looked directly at the sniggering gang of four in the back. “Can any of you expand on that?” The class went silent, puzzling over the question. “The whale songs were so strangely beautiful and haunting, they completely captivated the public’s imagination. Although humpbacks were the ‘musicians,’ this fascination and urge to understand them carried over to most whale species. Suddenly, these animals that were hunted for over four-hundred years to near extinction for such things as lamp oil, soap, corset stays—I’ll explain what those are later—margarine, and even for perfume from whale poop, were seen as something we could relate to, to have compassion for, because as Richard Ellis explained—it was like they were singing their own dirge.” Marie checked her watch again. “Okay! That’s all for today. Please read and take notes on chapter four of your course pack on whale vocalization. See you all right back here on Thursday!”