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a cat from the dead. There were good things, though, living in Lesser. We had linoleum on the kitchen floor and I learned to play viola. You play an instrument?”
    “No,” Lizzy said. “My brother Everett does.”
    “’Nother beer?” Nelson asked again.
    “No, thanks, we have to get back.” She rose and stepped out the door and said to Raymond that they had to go. “Okay?”
    Raymond grabbed one of the chains on the swing and slowed it and as he did so he said, “Whoa,” as if he were talking to a horse. Fish said, “Don’t want to go.” He was looking at the cat and he went over to it and took it into his arms. He scrubbed at the cat’s ears and then held his head close to the cat’s chest and listened to her purr. “Bull,” he said, looking up at Lizzy.
    Raymond was standing by the open door to the pickup. He slipped behind the wheel. Lizzy walked to the pickup and got in. Looked back at Fish who was taking his time. She said, “Nelson thinks that Fish is my kid? Did you tell him that?”
    Raymond was looking through the windshield at the sky. “Nope, that wasn’t me. I didn’t say anything about Fish, or you, or you being a mother.” He seemed pleased with himself.
    “Well, that’s what he thinks.”
    “Like I said, Nelson can be full of shit. Anyway, you know what’s true and what isn’t.”
    Lizzy called for Fish. Then she opened the door and went and took Fish by the arm and hauled him back to the pickup. Bull, suddenly out of Fish’s arms and on the ground, went over and rubbed the side of its face against the corner of the cabin. Fish started to whimper. Then he said he was hungry. And thirsty. Lizzy put him in the middle of the seat, so his feet were touching the stick shift. Fish began to cry.
    Raymond started the truck and said, “He’s thirsty.”
    “That’s okay. He can drink at home.”
    Raymond put the pickup in gear and crawled down onto the trail. She looked out the window at the trees and the sky and thought about Nelson. She wondered what he had done wrong to be taken away, but didn’t want to ask. The sun had finally come out and the puddles reflected the trees. Above them, as if drawn against the sky, a falcon hovered.
    When they got back to the Retreat, the only person visible was Emma Poole, standing at the edge of the treeline in her butterfly-catching outfit. She was leaning forward, peering into the bush. It turned out that no one had known Lizzy and Fish were gone; they hadn’t been missed.

E verett was not happy. He yearned for where he had come from, the city, and he yearned for his clarinet lessons, taking the bus downtown to the apartment of his music teacher, Miss Douceur. She lived in a high-rise in downtown Calgary and her apartment overlooked the Bow River. There were large windows and from the balcony on the seventeenth floor you could see the river below and the streets and on the streets there were the small dark slashes that were people. Once, Miss Douceur had asked him out onto the balcony for a drink. They had sat on padded chairs around a glass-topped table and sipped at lemonade. The sun was falling onto their shoulders and their heads. Everett was facing the sun and he had to squint to see Miss Douceur, who was wearing a pale green dress that fell just above her knees. The dress was sleeveless and Everett snuck looks at Miss Douceur’s thin, tanned arms. She always wore shoes with heels, even in her apartment. She was married, he thought, because there were signs of a man in the apartment – suit jackets, loafers, a tie thrown over the back of a chair – though Everett had never met her husband and she did not speak of him. He loved her carriage and confidence. He loved her straight posture and theway she sat and kept time, tapping her hand against her thigh. He loved her apartment with the shelves filled with many different kinds of books and the wineglasses that hung from under the cabinet, as if in wait for a party. He imagined dinners in