“Crow, you remember Wendy, right?”

The Wendigo.

She smiles softly and motions to give my arm a brush of sympathy. My body tenses up, as I smile and resist the urge to jerk away. Wendy’s hand drifts back without making contact.

“My deepest condolences, Crow,” she says in her slow, low, mournfully monotone voice. “Your mother was remarkable. I trust her passage was smooth.”

“Nothing smooth about your car crashing into freezing water,” I snort. “Getting incinerated in a thousand-dollar cardboard box doesn’t sound so smooth either.”

The Wendigo clasps her hands and bows her head solemnly. She flashes a gap-toothed smile, as the blue-green ripples around her head emit tiny tangerine bursts.

“If you’d ever like to plan a more personal celebration of your mother’s life, or if you have things you’d like to explore with your own circumstances —”

Allie interjects. “Wendy is doing some really great work. Spiritual counselling. Grieving. Dying with dignity. Home wakes and burials. Sounds morbid, but she’s amazing. They’re doing a thing here at the fire hall in the spring. ‘Rig Yer Mortis: Doing Death Right.’ Clever, hey? I told Wendy we’d come.”

I give Allie and her smooth, steady, blue-and-silver halo the side eye.

Before I can think, or tell them about my chat with old Hottie McMonk Pants down at The Wharf on New Year’s Eve, I feel something pelt me in the back of the head. Then another. And another. A handful of pine cones are scattered on the floor. I turn, and see the emergency exit door of the fire hall flung wide open. Char stands in the doorway, her giant black hat in hand and filled with pine cones. Which she is biffing at me. Her eyes and her maniac mouth are wide open. She’s howling with laughter.

“Little. Baby. Trees. Everywhere!” she shouts.

Before too many tongues can start wagging, Peggy ushers Char out the door. Into the Monte Carlo. Back to the looney bin. I pick the pine cones up off the floor, as Shirl Short and one of the nosy housekeeping broads from the Greeting Gale scuttle toward me. Shirl puts a hand on my arm. The other one has her doe-eyed, half-smiling head — tinged by a bubble-gum-and-mud-coloured halo — cocked to the side in some sort of half-assed condolence expression.

“Crow, dear,” Shirl starts, all syrup and sympathy, with bile-and-tongue-coloured splotches clustered around her head. “I’m so sorry for your loss. A shame your poor sainted mother couldn’t even be properly mourned without the likes of that one causing a scene. What was Peggy thinking, bringing her here? Silly twit.”

There are a million things I could say to Shirl Short, and I know that whatever I do say is bound to get repeated. I smile politely. I try to picture Shirl Short as an innocent child. Or as an old woman on her deathbed. Aching. Vulnerable. Truly sorry for all the shit she couldn’t help but cause. I open my mouth to let some saccharine platitudes flow.