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stone’s throw apart, and that Gran and Mother were tighter than blood, Mother was as much a daily fixture in my life as Gran was. And I grew happy and warm, never knowing but that Mother was happy and warm too. Till I saw her coddling Chris that first time. The way she smiled into his eyes as he suckled her breast. Such a change, such an incredible change came upon her, a glow that touched her eyes, her skin, dissipating a form of darkness from her face that I hadn’t before noted.
    Naturally I can’t recall these things. But some part of me did. It watched now as Mother clung to Chris in the small chapel, caressing his cheek. It remembered how she used to smooch him with kisses when he was a baby, how she used to squat beside him on the shoreline, watching and smiling as he scooped up wriggly-tails from amongst the rocks, but then one day when I scooped up a worm and brought it home she brushed it from my hand, squished it on the stoop, and then scrubbed my hands, gently but firmly, with a bar of soap, chiding me about dirt.
    Mother put Chris aside, reaching for me. “You’ve seen him?” she asked, putting her arms around my neck. I nodded, and clung to that familiar scent of lavender, all warmed and fused into my mother’s skin. “You’ll not let him see that,” she said as I started to cry. She pulled back, the sharp blue of her eyes piercing through the tears in my own. “He thinks he’s getting better, and that’s what we’ll let him think—he’s getting better …” She faltered, turning towards the altar.
    “Isn’t he, then—isn’t he getting better?” I choked.
    Mother looked at me, then at Chris who was paling visibly. “Yes, oh, my yes, he’s getting better, of course he’s getting better,” she cried, both hands reaching for Chris. “But—oh,” she said, her voice dropping with a sudden realization, “you don’t know, you never talked to Gran, or, or Kyle.’Course you didn’t, how could you,” she added with a silly laugh, “when they only just left—”
    Chris broke in. “Don’t know what? What is it?”
    “He’ll not work again. Your father will not work again.” She spoke with such conviction it was as though she herself were commanding his fate.
    “The doctors—?” I asked. “Is that what the doctors are saying?”
    “Yes. No. They don’t rightly know yet, but he’ll never be the same, they said he can never work in the woods again.”
    “There’s other things, he’ll work at other things,” I said, infusing my tone with hope.
    “Sure, other things,” said Mother. “What other things, Sylvie? There’s the woods and fishing on the trawlers. Your father won’t do that, he’ll never fish offshore on them trawlers.” She looked around emptily. “Might as well have killed him, he can’t work the woods. No, no, don’t take it like that,” she pleaded as Chris sank onto a chair, hanging his head. She sat beside him, her tiny, pale hands cupped around his like a clamshell. “He’s alive, thank god he’s alive. Be grateful for that. And we’ll keep him alive, keep him home, resting. There now,” she soothed, drawing Chris’s head to her shoulder, “there now.”
    I sat next to her, speaking in the same soothing tones as Chris leaned forward, hanging his head again. “He’s strong, Father is. Chris, he’ll get past this. He’ll find his strength again, and he’ll find other things to do.”
    “Sure. Sure,” Mother repeated, her tone becoming lifeless. “He’ll get past this. Live another twenty years if he don’t go dragging about chainsaws.” She rose, wrapping her arms around herself and crossing the room in short, quick steps. “How are we going to do that,” she demanded of the air around her, “how are we going to keep him from the woods? He gave up fishing, it’ll kill him to give up the woods, too. Damn old fishing— that’s what done it to him—working the woods all day long, then coming home to them damn old nets. And if he