It was the twenty-first of December. Melissa wished for quiet winter days, but Beck’s parents were still at the Lanark motel, bored and restless. Beck had assured them he was fine, but they were determined to hang around Ontario until after Christmas, as if making it through the holidays without incident was the litmus test for their son’s normality. Matthew, on crutches, was devoting his days to photography and spent many afternoons perched down by Bow Lake, swaddled in a parka and peering through a telephoto lens. Melissa had asked Eurydice to check in on Marjorie, but Beck’s mother reported the septuagenarian would only c***k her door a few centimetres, insist she was fine and brusquely retreat. Beck warned Melissa that his mother’s boredom spelled trouble; she was hounding him to do a
