The train had passed through landscapes that blurred into one another, a gray and green haze through the cold window. Marina closed her eyes, her hand on her stomach, and felt each kilometer taking her a little further from her former life. It was a feeling both terrible and necessary, like ripping off a bandage stuck to the skin.
Arriving in the small Quebec town was a sensory shock. The air smelled different, sharper, laden with fir and a damp cold that pinched her lungs. The wooden houses with steep roofs, the dirty snow lining the sidewalks, the signs in a language she barely understood… Everything reminded her she was a stranger. An exile.
The taxi dropped her off in front of a small white house, modest but cute, that Paul had found for her through a friend. The key turned in the lo
