“I know!” says Holly. She retrieves two bottles of white wine from the open fridge. “My grandparents were second cousins. Who gives a shit? It’s not special! Okay, look,” she says. “Do you call yourself a Mennonite?”

“I don’t … I don’t know?” says Gemma. “I guess so, but I can’t remember the last time I actually said that to someone. It never comes up.”

“Hm,” Holly says. She pours herself a glass, then hands Gemma one of the whole bottles.

Gemma takes the bottle and stares at it, then looks up at Holly. “Why do you ask?”

Holly sips, then begins to slice the cantaloupe. The music coming from the living room is soft and melodic. Gemma can hear that Olive is still talking fast. And Ava is speaking to her in hushed tones.

“I think my parents are ashamed of it,” Holly finally says.

“Ashamed?” Gemma repeats.

Holly’s arm moves methodically in the shadowed light. “Yes.” “Ashamed how?” Gemma asks. She drinks from the bottle she’s been given. A few more of her sensory handles slip away. Her stomach is complaining, she realizes latently. She is in some degree of pain.

“Sometimes it’s politics,” Holly replies. “Something racist or homophobic happens out here and they’re embarrassed. Fucking Bill 18, that kind of shit,” she says. She stops slicing and looks at Gemma. “But that’s not what I’m thinking about. See, they were raised to be ashamed to take pleasure in anything. They were raised in a way that taught them almost everything they wanted to do was selfish, that so much pleasure was untoward, a sin. And sometimes, I think,” Holly says, reaching for her glass, “as a reaction to this, they learned some … wrong lessons.”

“What makes you say that?”

An ugly look moves around Holly’s face. “Pleasure is important to them. They taught me it was okay to take things. They were very concerned, when I was growing up, that I wouldn’t take things if I wanted them.”

Gemma can’t relate, but it’s not the time to say that. “And this is because they’re ashamed of the church or such?”

“I don’t know what they went through.” Holly says abruptly. She resumes chopping.

Gemma takes another drink from the bottle in her hand. She turns back to her apples. Gemma realizes that Holly is not exactly sober herself, and perhaps it’s indeed best if the conversation doesn’t continue. Though she does wonder why Holly handed her a full bottle of wine. Mennonite women notice things. Her dad had said that once.

It occurs to Gemma that Holly has perhaps drunk-talked herself into a mood. Gemma can relate to that. She changes the subject. “Weren’t you telling me a Christmas story earlier?”

“Right!” says Holly. She waves the knife over the cantaloupe in a manner that would be hilarious in a movie but is terrifying right now. “So we’re driving back from Alberta. It’s winter and shitty as hell and we get a late start. We stop in Regina for dinner and, like, it’s already late in the evening, the wind is Salad Shooting air blades at my skin, we still have hooooours left to drive, and me, genius that I am, I leave my phone on top of the car outside a Wendy’s. By the time we realize, the phone’s already long gone. Ava calls it a bunch, and after, like, the tenth call, it starts going straight to voice mail. Ava knows how to track it, but I don’t. She finds out it’s at an apartment building. I’m ready to write it off, y’know? I’m embarrassed. I do not want to try to bust into this fucking building where God knows who is in there. But Ava’s like, no, we’re getting your phone back. And dude, like I said, she never left her fucking house in those days. She was such a recluse, such a shut-in. I was worried about her those years.”