Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
JAXON
The canoe was a mistake.
To be clear, the canoe itself is a perfectly good canoe.
Sixteen-foot Prospector, cedar strip, bought it from an old guy in Bragg Creek three summers ago for six hundred bucks and a case of Kokanee.
It's been across Lake Louise, through the Bow River valley, and down enough backcountry waterways to qualify for frequent paddler status.
The mistake was convincing Elise Boyd to get in it.
We're on a lake near Batchawana Bay, an hour north of Sault Ste.
Marie, because this morning over coffee at the rental I said, "The lake's calm, the light's perfect, let me get some photos from the water," and she said, "Absolutely not," and I said, "Twenty minutes," and she said, "You said thirty was the max," and I said, "So I'm under budget," and she looked at me for a long time and said, "Fine, but if I die in a canoe in northern Ontario, my ghost will haunt your truck forever. "
That was forty-five minutes ago.
The first fifteen minutes went well. Elise sat in the bow, rigid as a fence post, gripping both gunwales while I paddled from the stern.
The lake was glass. Mist sat on the water in thin white sheets, and the shoreline was dark spruce reflected so perfectly it looked like the world had been folded in half. I got six incredible shots.
Then Elise tried to turn around.
In a canoe, turning around is a whole-body operation that requires communication, balance, and a basic understanding of physics.
Elise has a thorough understanding of physics but absolutely no trust in any watercraft that doesn't have a motor, so when she pivoted to ask me if twenty minutes had elapsed, her weight shifted left, the canoe tilted, and she overcorrected right with the full force of someone who has never been in a boat smaller than a ferry.
The canoe flipped.
The water is cold. Not dangerously cold, but cold enough that the sound Elise makes when she surfaces is part gasp, part fury, and part a word I've never heard her use before.
"You're fine," I say, treading water three feet away. "We're in five feet of water. You can stand."
She stands. The water comes to her ribs. Her sleek bob is plastered to her face, her glasses are hanging off one ear, and her sweatshirt is ballooning around her midsection. She pushes her hair back with both hands and fixes me with a look that could curdle milk.
"Twenty. Minutes."
"We made it to eighteen."
"The canoe is upside down."
"Canoes flip. It's part of the experience."
"This is not an experience. This is a catastrophe."
"It's a Tuesday."
My camera. The thought jolts through me, and my hand plunges underwater before I remember: the camera is in the dry bag, clipped to the thwart. Standard protocol. I flip the canoe, check the bag, and everything is sealed. The relief is physical.
"Your camera?" Elise asks, and the fact that her second thought, after legitimate outrage, is concern for my equipment does something to my chest I'm not prepared for.
"Safe. Dry bag."
"At least one of us planned ahead."
Getting back to shore takes ten minutes of wading, dragging the canoe, and silently agreeing to never discuss the sound I made when a piece of lake weed touched my ankle.
Elise sloshes out of the water, yanks off her sneakers, dumps them upside down, and stands on the rocky shore looking like a woman who has been personally betrayed by nature.
"This is in the itinerary now," she says, wringing out the hem of her sweatshirt. "Day five. Canoe incident. Duration: forty-seven minutes. Outcome: total submersion. Notes: never again."
My laugh comes out before I can stop it, wet and genuine. She glares at me, but the corner of her mouth twitches. A millimetre. Maybe two.
"You're laughing."
"You're funny."
"I'm soaking wet and furious."
"Those things aren't mutually exclusive."
The twitch becomes a tremor. She presses her lips together hard, fighting it with visible effort, and then a sound escapes. Small, involuntary, reluctant. A laugh that surprises her as much as it surprises me.
"I hate this trip," she says, still half-laughing.
"No you don't."
She wrings her sweatshirt again, harder than necessary. "No. I don't."
* * *
We change at the rental, which is a converted garage apartment behind someone's house in Sault Ste.
Marie. One bedroom, pull-out couch, a shower with unpredictable water pressure.
Elise takes the first shower because she claims hypothermia rights, and by the time she emerges in dry clothes with her hair towel-dried and unstyled, I've laid our wet things over every available chair.
Without the sleek bob, her hair has a slight wave to it. Looser. Less controlled. She catches me noticing and tucks it behind her ear with a sharpness that suggests the wave is not intentional and not welcome.
"There's a Timmies on the main road," she says, consulting her phone. "I need food and Wi-Fi."
"Tim Hortons it is."
The Tim Hortons in Sault Ste. Marie looks like every other Tim Hortons in Canada, which is both comforting and slightly depressing.
We order at the counter. She gets a black coffee and a turkey club.
I get a double-double and a box of ten Timbits, and she watches me eat four in the time it takes her to unwrap her sandwich.
"Do you always eat like you're being timed?"
"Do you always unwrap sandwiches like you're performing surgery?"
She peels back the wax paper with deliberate precision, inspects the contents, removes one tomato slice, places it on a napkin, and takes a measured bite.
"The tomato was soggy."
"The tomato was a tomato."
"A soggy tomato compromises the structural integrity of the bread."
"You know that sentence is insane, right?"
"I know that sentence is correct."
The Tim Hortons is half-full. An older woman behind the counter is chatting with a truck driver at the register, and fragments of conversation drift over while we eat. My brain is half-listening, half-occupied with the way Elise holds her coffee cup with both hands, fingers laced around it.
"... I'm telling you," the woman behind the counter is saying, leaning forward with the energy of someone who's been waiting to tell this story all day.
"March, right? Middle of that blizzard that shut down the 17 for two days.
This couple pulls up in a little sedan. Kid's got no coat.
Just a hoodie and joggers. Driving on a spare tire through a whiteout.
And there's a girl in the passenger seat and a little dog in her lap, and the dog's name is Potato. "
The truck driver snorts into his coffee. "Potato?"
"Potato. Named after a vegetable. A dog. They drove from Saskatoon. On a donut tire. In a blizzard."
"That's either the stupidest or most romantic thing I've ever heard."
"Both, honey. It's always both."
My grin spreads before I can manage it. I look across the table at Elise. She's holding her coffee an inch from her lips, eyebrows raised.
"See," she says, setting the cup down. "That's what happens without a plan. You end up driving across a province on a spare tire in a blizzard with a dog named after a root vegetable."
"That's what happens with an adventure. A great story."
"A great story isn't a substitute for winter tires and a proper coat."
"But it's more fun at a Tim Hortons ten months later."
She opens her mouth, closes it, takes a sip of coffee. "I'll concede that the dog's name is charming."
"That's progress."
"That's an observation."
We sit for a while. She opens her laptop, answers three emails in the time it takes me to finish the Timbits, and sends Margaret Weston a dietary restriction spreadsheet she's been updating since Ottawa.
The napkin situation has apparently been resolved: Margaret settled on a fan fold after a two-day deliberation process that, based on the email thread Elise scrolls through, involved a colour consultant.
A colour consultant. For napkin folds.
"Can I ask about your dad?" I say it before I've fully decided to, but the canoe incident and the Tim Hortons and the wet hair have dissolved whatever filter was keeping me at a safe distance.
Her fingers pause on the keyboard. "What about him?"
"You said he moved to Vancouver after the divorce. Do you see him?"
"Twice a year. He flies to Toronto at Christmas. I fly to Vancouver in July." She closes the laptop halfway, not all the way. "It's scheduled."
"Scheduled?"
"Second week of July. Second week of December. We confirmed a year in advance."
"You schedule visits with your dad a year in advance."
"It ensures neither of us cancels. If it's in the calendar, it happens."
The Tim Hortons hums around us. Someone's kid is crying at the drive-through window. The woman behind the counter is telling the blizzard story to a new customer.
"My dad's the opposite," I say. "Texts randomly. 'Thinking of you, bud.' 'Let's grab dinner when you're in town.' But he moved to Kamloops with his girlfriend six months after Mom died, and the dinners never happen."
"That's worse."
"Yeah." My thumb traces the rim of the coffee cup. "The vague stuff is worse. At least your dad shows up when the calendar says to show up."
"He does. He's reliable in a performative way.
" Her voice is careful, measured. "We eat at the same restaurant.
He asks about work. I ask about his golf game.
We don't talk about the divorce or the salad bowl or the fact that he left and started a completely new life like the old one was a rough draft. "
"Do you want to talk about those things?"
"I don't know." Her fingers tap the laptop case. Three precise taps. "I've never tried."
The admission sits between us, and I resist the urge to fill the space.
Some things need room to breathe. Mom taught me that.
She could sit in silence for an hour, beading at the kitchen table, and when you finally said the thing you'd been holding onto, she'd look up and say, "There it is. " Like she'd been waiting.