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this, too old and worn out. God forbid she sees another of her boys die. She’ll be glad now that you’re here, Sylvie, she’s been watching planes, wondering if that’s the one you’re on— will you go, sit with your father—Chris, perhaps we can have tea, did you have supper?”
    “I’ll sit with Dad—” Chris began, but I silenced him with a sharp look. After waving him back to his seat, I gave Mother a quick hug and left the room.
    A series of wrong turns and I found my way back to the unit. Quietly I stepped behind the curtain draping Father’s bed. He was sleeping, his face grey upon his pillow, and with his eyes shuttered behind thin, crinkly lids, he looked like an old weathered house without light. I laid my hand on his heart, feeling its faint pulse beneath the rise and fall of his chest. His mouth twitched.
    “Dolly,” he mouthed, without opening his eyes, and in the quiet of his love my heart broadened. I sat, folded my arms onto the cool white sheet covering him, and cushioned my head, my cheek touching the warmth of his hand. Through the oxygen tubes his breathing sounded loud and deep. I slowed my breathing to match his and must’ve fallen asleep, for I awakened to slobber on my arm and Mother talking lowly to Chris about the long flight from the prairies, how tired I must be.

    “ YOU LOOK NICE ,” said Mother at the hospital doors as Chris and I were leaving. “Your face is nice.”She touched a hand to my cheek. “Must be that prairie air—nice and dry. No salt chafing your skin,” she ended with a smile.
    “Perhaps you can visit sometime,” I offered. “You always talked about travel.”
    “Talked lots of foolishness when I was young.” She looked at Chris, who was pushing out through the doors. “Be sure you drives, Chris—your sister’s tired. You let him drive now,” she called after me, and followed as far as the curb. “Chris, you drive now. Watch for moose—be careful.”
    I stood beside the car, raising my face to the darkening evening sky. A faint drizzle dampened my brow and I closed my eyes, grateful for its coolness.
    “You all right? I can drive,” said Chris.
    But I motioned him towards the passenger seat and slipped behind the wheel, lowering the window. I drove slowly past the hospital doors, and Mother was still standing outside, her eyes wearing the same wariness as when I used to trot from Gran’s house to hers, clamouring for Chris to come play. “Take his hand, take his hand,” she’d call. And me, just two years older than Chris, guarding his every step as we mucked about the meadow, forever steering him away from the cliffs, from rotting jelly fish, rotting capelin, dead birds, dead anything that might hurt him, forever mindful of Mother’s eye watching after us.
    “Worse thing ever happened, she got pregnant with Kyle,” I said sulkily.
    I felt Chris’s look of surprise. “What’s that suppose to mean?”
    “She got sick and I had to care for you, is what it means. Like she was jealous every time she seen me walking off with you. Like I was taking you from her.”
    “Whoa, Sis, now how foolish is that?”
    “Not foolish at all. I can still hear her singing after me every time I led you along shore, Don’t go too far, don’t go too far —it was Cooney Arm, for gawd’s sake! Six boarded-up houses. Where’d she think I was taking you?” I lapsed into silence, hating the sulkiness of my voice, hating even more that I’d spoken out loud and Chris was staring questioningly at me. Not at my sulkiness, though, for he understood that, and was always apologetic in the face of it, as though a part of him also remembered our mother’s breasts milking for him but not for me.
    “Jealous!” he exclaimed. “Now, how’d you come up with that—jealous of who, of what?”
    “Of me, you—that it wasn’t her out running about with you.”
    “Cripes, Sylvie, now that’s foolish.”
    “What would you know—you were lots younger, and always