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Antony said, counting it out. “How’s that?”
    “That’s all right,” Nevin said.
    Vera and Nevin both nodded to him, and then at each other.
    “You were over the other night but I couldn’t see you,” Antony said. “I couldn’t bring myself to come outta the room, and Daddy give me an awful time when you left.”
    Nevin didn’t know what to say, so he only nodded again.
    Again, Antony believed that everything he had said was true, when, ten minutes ago, he hadn’t known what it was he was going to say. But it seemed that everything he said was said for a reason, all of which would become clear.
    He walked back home, feeling somehow discontented with himself. He had planned to just give the money back and go away, but, as always, his nature to talk and to show himself in the best possible light no matter which direction it took, had overcome him, as it always did with people he secretly felt inferior to. And as always he felt discontented with himself afterwards.
    “Well – I don’t care what they think,” he said to himself, as a man who always cares what people think will say. “I had to do everything since Gloria left – I always did.”
    He lowered his body to go under some brush and walked into his father’s yard.
    Valerie, who’d just gotten off the school bus, came into the house behind him. She took her tam off and folded it and put it on the table, and took her book bag and hung it up behind the door.
    Antony’s mother was peeling potatoes. The day was warm and Antony was walking about with his coat open, which was a sign of a warm day for everyone. Music came from the radio and old Allain was on the couch in the living room with his hand over his face. His head looked frail and tufts of grey hair stuck here and there, a final call for justice it seemed for a man who had worked by brute strength for seventy-five years.
    Antony stopped and turned about in a complete circle, as if expecting somebody. Then he looked out the window at the highway.
    “Where is Ivan?” he said.
    His mother shrugged.
    “Well, there’s another big scrape he’s into,” he said. His little girl, who had poured herself a glass of milk and had a milk moustache, was busy sorting out which drawings she was going to pin on the fridge, and which of her last week’s drawings she was going to take off the fridge and throw away, with the equanimity of a person who controls her own destiny.
    “Beats up Cindi, who’s knocked up as high as the proverbial kite, and then leaves her for me to take care of,” Antony said.
    As soon as he sat down, Valerie put her milk down and went over to the counter. She climbed up on it and got a cup. Then she walked on her knees along the counter to the oven mitts, which she put on, and picked up the huge glass teapot. Then after she had poured the tea, she jumped down and walked very carefully towards him.
    He took the tea and blew at it, deep in thought. Then, without looking at her, he took out an Extra Big chocolate bar and handed it to his daughter. He stuck his tongue in his cheek to push it out and leaned into her for a kiss, all the while not looking her way.
    “I gotta go up and see Gloria,” he said.
    And, after adjusting his ever-present welding cap, and with his hands in his pockets, he motioned with his head for Valerie to grab her coat and follow him.
    They backed out of the yard in the truck and proceeded up the road, past the bootleggers’, past the church lane, by the woodchop and the black spruce trees.
    Every month Gloria gave him two hundred dollars, and every month he scrupulously took not a penny for himself but put it aside carefully for his daughters’ needs.
    There were teeth to be fixed and clothes to be bought, and allowance, and he scraped and saved and penny-pinched to get all of this done.
    Now, after telling his ex-wife that he was trying to straighten their son Ivan out, and looking at her for a sign that she might be pleased with him because of this, she