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  In that very moment, a grey and red swallow boomed against the glass of Valhalla’s tall windows. The stunned bird plopped to the ground. Noah pulled away from his mother as if called to duty and rushed away.

  Jack and Catherine sat together on the living room couch, watching Noah run out through the rear doors. An instant later, he reappeared outside, his jacket on, but unzipped, wind blowing in his hair. One hand wiped tears from his eyes as he scanned the ground for the fallen bird.

  Jack and Catherine watched him.

  Noah spotted the bird, leaned in slowly and picked him up in his small hands, cupping him like water that might seep away. Gently, he moved off toward the grass field that would lead him to the woodpile, where he had so often watched his father do the same with dizzy or injured birds.

  Jack turned to Catherine.

  “He’ll be okay, Mom. He’ll be okay.”

  “I love you so much,” said Catherine.

  She was thinking of Paul, who had lost the greatest battle of this life now, thanks to an inexplicable stray bullet. She was now a single parent to these two amazing boys, with only memories of a complicated marriage with a complicated man. Gone was the sadness for the failed union. Instead, she felt an insurmountable need to accept a role she had never thought she’d have to play.

  Jack and Noah were riveted by Blake Pelletier’s presence at the funeral. They watched his every move during the mass in Sainte Claire Church and then at the Carignan family plot on the edge of the old Beaufort Cemetery. The seventy-three-year-old businessman and former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake took three of five feathers, black, brown, green, slowly from his charcoal grey fedora and tossed them gently, one by one, into the small opening in the earth where Paul’s urn was to be buried. Two dark blue feathers remained on his hat. His heavy-boned, weathered hands stuck out like mallets from his grey business suit. He reached up and took the last two feathers, one in each hand. He stared at the hole and then at the urn and stood up again. He looked in Jack and Noah’s direction. His face was rectangular, handsome, intimidating. The boys both turned quickly away, trying not to be noticed.

  Pelletier’s gesture, carefully timed after Father Levy’s monotone oration, caught the attention of most of the other people at the ceremony, too. For a long moment afterwards, no one spoke. Even Father Levy, rarely at a loss, searched for words to close the ceremony.

  Catherine had been watching, too. Chief Pelletier’s simple and moving sign of respect helped her anchor her sadness, and it felt all the more meaningful considering how Paul had guided Chief Pelletier through many difficult business transactions over the years. Until that moment, the whole sad ritual had been a sweeping blur. The condolences, the softly spoken offers of help, were just noise, a muted, annoying buzz. Everyone was too close. She wanted space, for herself, for her children. And air, more air. There was no air in the church, and there was no air outside now, either. The whole day, the slow clouds, the cold land, the dull light, everything choked her, and nothing was as it was supposed to be. Paul could not possibly be in that ceramic urn, set on a velvet-draped podium, next to a twelve-inch square hole in the ground. His life couldn’t have come to just this.

  Catherine looked away from the Carignan family plot, though the familiar names on the monuments did their best to pull at her. She knew some of them from Paul’s stories. Many were unknown to her.

  She squeezed the boys’ hands and kept her eyes turned to them. They were so sharp in their black business suits and ties, their shoes gleaming, their hair combed carefully. They were her solace.

  “Why did he do that?” asked Noah.

  “It’s a symbolic thing,” said Jack.

  “I know, but of what?”

  “Does it really matter?” Jack said, softly.

  Catherine pulled them closer. Jack wanted her to let go. She had squeezed him enough through the day. Quota filled. But she didn’t let go, and he fought the urge to pull away. Noah let himself get squeezed and hugged as much as his mother wanted, that was his way of supporting her. Not such a bad thing, he thought. He missed his father so terribly, and so did Jack. The three of them were in that fragile space where nothing seemed real, and it felt as though the present must fall away to reveal another reality. Paul would appear, just walk up to them, from somewhere, nowhere, and hold them, whispering in his familiar voice how all would be okay.

  Jack could see that there were far more of his dad’s friends and business associates here than family. His family, some of whom Jack had met a few years back, lived in England and had not been able to come. A cousin from Montreal was here, Carl Carignan. He was quite a lot older than Paul and was going through hard financial times, having owned a flower shop that wasn’t profitable. Jack guessed that this had been a source of resentment between the two. He remembered his father saying, “Never invest time or money in retail or restaurants, ever, no matter how good the business plan, or how much the entrepreneur loves his idea—because they all love their idea and think they can do better than the last guy that lost his shirt with the same project in the same location! All the love money in the world won’t make a bad idea any better.”

  Love money? Jack had asked his dad what that meant. Paul had told him about a boy who starts a lemonade stand on a hot summer day, but has no lemons. The boy’s mother goes off to buy the boy lemons so he can make lemonade he can sell to the neighbours, usually for less than the cost of the lemons. That was love money. Noah, who’d been listening, had asked if that applied to their allowance. “Not really,” said Paul. “Love money is a type of investment, often with zero return, injected directly into a project to finance it. There’s no project or business between us. Nothing given, nothing owed.”

  “You don’t give us anything?” Noah was now confused.

  “No, never.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How can I give you what’s already yours?”

  “So, I can use your laptop anytime I want?” asked Noah.

  “Nope,” answered Paul, “that’s mine.”

  “But you just said!”

  “Smart guy, figure it out!” said Paul, pushing Noah on the shoulder, playfully. “You know what I meant.”

  Noah had smiled, thinking about everything his father had that was normally off limits—computers, watches, tools, knives, phones, pens, his Stetson, rare coins, sculptures, keepsakes, many things. He and Jack had never lacked for anything, but they knew that what really mattered was the love.

  What was left of their father was in a polished jar, sitting on a felt-covered podium. How could that be their father? Reduced to that? It was hard to accept, even for two smart boys. This was a lesson they rejected. That they hated.

  Their hate was thick like lava, flowing up inside them.

  Jack was fascinated by Chief Pelletier and the small crowd of mourners. Leonard Singer, one of Paul’s lawyer friends, Linda Finklestein and her husband Mort, friends to both Paul and Catherine, Pierre-David DuClet, Paul’s trusted senior banking advisor, who was originally from Jamaica, Alessia and Gianni Martucci, investor friends, the Sheehans from Ontario, and others—Lebanese, Vietnamese, Indian .... The group of mourners looked like a sampling of the whole world. Jack had always known of his father’s open-minded approach to people, but it had never before been so apparent. What a lousy occasion to learn something fascinating about your father.

  “There’s no one here from Beaufort, Mom,” Noah said. “No one. How come?”

  Catherine answered him by squeezing his hand harder.

  It was Jack who answered, bitterness in his voice. “We have no friends in Beaufort.”

  “Jack, don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. Where’re Zeph’s parents? He’s our friend, and his parents don’t bring him to our dad’s funeral? Is it too far? What? And where’s the Mayor? Dad did so much for her, didn’t he, when she wante
d to build the Benedict Road factory outlets? Where’s Mr. Lanthier that Dad saved from bankruptcy last year? Where’s Councillor Vanier who always came to Dad for advice?”

  “People are busy, Jack, they have responsibilities.”

  “People are full of shit,” he said, under his breath.

  “Don’t say that. That’s not the way your father would want you to think.”

  “Well, he’s not here, is he.”

  Catherine spun to face her son square, grabbing his face with both hands and bringing her face immediately in front of his, not threateningly, not angrily, but with a sudden burst of authority, making Jack the total focus of her being for that instant.

  “No, he’s not here, Jack. Your father’s gone. You may think that you have no friends out there, right now. But that’s not how your father raised you. He was an optimist, and he was successful and respected because he was a really smart man who fundamentally believed in people. Don’t take Beaufort as an example of anything. There are good people who came here today to say goodbye to your father. He loved you so much, and you know that, too. It’s our time to say goodbye. Can you help me do that today, Jack?”

  “I’m so angry,” confessed Jack, his face filled with agony, close to hers.

  “I know. But your father earned a proper goodbye, regardless of who’s here and who isn’t. Your father is what matters, and this last event in his life will never come again. How about we say goodbye together, as we should?”

  Jack felt his eyes water, but held it in. Catherine could see the deep sadness forcing its way through him. He finally nodded his head, his face still tight in Catherine’s loving hands.

  Noah hugged both of them. Catherine kissed Jack hard on the cheek and let him go. He straightened up next to her and squeezed her hand hard. A weak smile came to her face.

  Chief Pelletier approached the threesome. He was taller up close than Jack had thought. Pelletier held up both of his huge hands to present one blue feather to Jack and the other to Noah. Slowly, each boy accepted a feather. Pelletier then held his hand out to Catherine.

  “Mrs. Carignan, my sincere condolences. Let me tell you that without Paul I would not be where I am today. I would most certainly have lost everything. Instead, I’m a wealthy man, and I continue to prosper because of the guidance and support he offered me. If you, or your family,” he said looking at both boys in the eye, “ever need anything, it would not only be my honour to help, it would relieve me of the burden for what I feel I owe your husband.”

  “Thank you,” said Catherine, touched. “That’s very kind of you.”

  Pelletier smiled, his face crackling with a thousand weathered lines. He handed her his business card. She took it, somewhat unsure what to do with it. Jack took the card from her and gave Pelletier a look.

  “What’s your name, son?” asked Pelletier.

  “Jack.”

  “Pleasure to meet you again, Jack. What happened to your face?”

  “Nothing,” said Jack.

  Chief Pelletier and Catherine exchanged a knowing look.

  “You don’t remember me,” he said to Jack, “but we first met when you were very small. You’re a big man now. Take good care of your mother and your little brother, and if you ever need to, you call me at that number. I will be there, my entire family, will be there for you. Sometimes ‘nothing’ can be something and needs to be stopped.”

  With a tip of his grey fedora, Chief Blake Pelletier faded back into the gathering of mourners, leaving Jack to read his business card. Noah grabbed it from him and examined it. There was Chief Pelletier’s address in Hudson, Quebec, his phone number and email address. The top left of the card was adorned with an illustration of a sunrise in yellow, blue and black, with a stylized hawk in flight. Jack snatched the card back and stuck it in his suit pocket. He looked for Pelletier in the crowd but did not see him. The old Chief had gone.

  Jack would not look at the card again until he sat, drowsy, in the car on the way home again, watching the landscape pass. Reaching into his pocket, he found the card and ran his fingers on its smooth linen, then pulled out the dark blue feather. It looked like it could have been a feather from the hawk on the card. He ran the feather against his cheek, letting its soft strands tickle his skin, avoiding the tender bruises that remained on his face. Noah was doing the same thing, he noticed. Had he just decided to try what Jack was doing, or had he come to it on his own? Jack didn’t know. It didn’t matter. He could see that Noah was sad, staring out the windows just like Jack had been doing.

  He looked at his mother, behind the wheel. She looked like her thoughts were far away, as she stared straight ahead. There was no music, no sound in the car, save for the white noise of the engine and the tires on Highway 30. They were heading northeast, toward the junction with Highway 10, which takes them back to the Townships. They could have just as easily gone to Kirkland, but Catherine had wanted to return to Valhalla. Preferring to be alone with her boys, she had refused help from her sister, Isabelle, who had invited them all to go back to Ottawa with her. Catherine also knew Isabelle had been dealing with her own issues, including a daughter with serious learning difficulties and a husband who was often away on business. Even so, Catherine didn’t want the company. Her boys were enough.

  It was late afternoon and they were all exhausted when she parked the car in her driveway at Valhalla. They had taken Paul’s Audi, which had more space for the boys. The car had been cleaned professionally, and free of charge, by Eddie Combs, the local gearhead. Miraculously, there remained no traces of Paul’s blood from that fateful trip to the hospital.

  While the boys grabbed their electronic tablets and earphones and ran ahead to the house, Catherine popped open the trunk and collected the rest of their stuff—suit jackets, spare shoes, unfinished snacks—when she heard a panicked call from the house.

  “Mom!” Jack’s voice sent a shiver down her spine.

  “Mom, come!” The second shout came from Noah.

  Catherine raced to the house. A framed picture of Jack and Noah was on the floor in the hall, broken. She felt as though scalding water had been poured down her neck. Jack and Noah were in the living room, surrounded by debris from the break-in. Their home had been violently ransacked. Furniture had been upturned and smashed. Logs from the fireplace had been thrown indiscriminately around the space, breaking anything in their path and showering ash and soot over the walls and windows. The windows hadn’t broken, which didn’t surprise Catherine, who had over-designed with insanely thick tempered glass. What surprised her was that someone had been able to break in. She had designed major locking mechanisms for the house, with steel bracing bars in each door. Had she forgotten to shut one of these mechanisms?

  The three of them walked carefully through the rubble that was their living room. The boys, in their tailored pants suits and shiny black shoes, looked out of place in their own home, sorting through the mess. They froze when they came to the gaming area, standing in front of the wide screen on the wall, which was cracked from one edge to the other. Jack picked up a bent, opened DVD game box. The disc was missing, and DVDs were strewn everywhere, damaged and trampled. This was not just a robbery, this was unbridled vandalism.

  “Boys, don’t touch anything, please. You could cut yourselves.”

  Catherine moved past what had been her prized glass coffee table, which had been shattered by the wrought iron fire-poker, which was on the floor beside it. She moved to look into the kitchen, which broke her heart. The refrigerator had been smashed open and the contents scattered all over with broken dishes everywhere. The cushions on the kitchen chairs had been sliced open.

  Jack bolted upstairs. Catherine immediately realized his concern. How bad would it be in their bedrooms? How much had they violated their intimate belongings? Had Paul’s bookcases and books been wrecked? She stood with her hand at her face. There was a stench in the a
ir, a mix of spoiling food and a subtle new smell she couldn’t quite identify. Perhaps that of people she did not know who had ransacked her home so malevolently? She imagined the noise they must have made, the boots they must have worn to kick and trample. Fright and fury rose in her in a way she had never felt before.

  She yanked at a kitchen chair and threw it as far as she could. The noise only brought more pain. She held herself tightly and leaned against a wall. This was more than she could take.

  Jack was downstairs again. “They didn’t go upstairs, Mom. It’s okay up there.”

  She reached for her big son and hugged him hard. This helped her regain her composure, and she reached into her pocket for her cell phone and dialled 911.

  Noah picked up the chair that she had thrown, lining it up where it should have been at the kitchen table. He quietly began cleaning up, taking a wooden log off the table and carrying it back to the fireplace. He picked up a sculpture from the floor. It was one he’d always liked, a wooden American Indian in full ceremonial dress. The spear was now broken. He reached into his pocket, and took out the blue feather, and stuck it in the fist of the wooden Indian where the spear had been. He placed it back on the mantle where it had stood for years.

  Catherine was sipping the last of a hot lemon tea when Tom Doran came to the door of the kitchen from the living room, where Sergeant Hanes was taking notes and photos for their report. Catherine raised her eyes to him, and he took a few steps closer.

  “You must have your insurance company on speed dial,” he blurted out, immediately regretting it.

  “I beg your pardon?” asked Catherine.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be funny. We’ll find who did this.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, dead serious, her spirit far away. “Yes, I need your report for my insurance claim, if I bother.”

  He saw the hurt and anger in her eyes. “Who knew you would be away?”

  “Anyone who knew of Paul’s funeral.”