C’mon almighty Universe. Don’t make me go chasing ambulances or hanging around the old folks’ home in Town, or staring at people on the street looking for those with a dose of the death aura in order to make this work. We don’t have time to diddle around here. She’s a race against the clock.

“Wouldn’t your mother be proud, God rest her soul. When’s the little bundle of joy due, Crow, Dear?” That’s what all the old dolls say every time they see me out and about. I pretend I’m not looking to see if any of them are close to kicking the bucket, and I pretend there’s not a slew of the new and improved Crann Na Beatha business cards and information brochures in my purse. Instead, I smile and say, “Oh, Mama would be in her glory. She’s looking down on us from a front row seat in Heaven, waiting for this baby. Due August twelfth. Now when are you gonna give me that recipe for those delicious squares of yours?” Even though I don’t believe in Heaven. Or due dates. Or squares. Unless it suits me.

“You smell different after you’ve been down The Wharf,” Peggy muses, as I make my way into the trailer after an early evening wade in the calm, warm water. She’s busy scrubbing down my cupboards with Javex. “You were getting all mouldy bread and canned ham. Now you’re mint and sawdust.”

“Gotta get outside and blow the stink offa ya,” I say, a pitch-perfect imitation of Mama’s most sage advice. I try to ignore the heady haze of gold and purple ripples that have been emanating from Peggy with increasing intensity for the last few months. “Why sawdust, I wonder.”

“I don’t make the smells, I just smell ’em. Sawdust used to make your mother cry.”

“You throw it in her eye?”

“No, smartass. When we were small, every time the Old Man cut down a tree, she’d go out and gather up the sawdust in a bag, and she’d bawl because all the little wood chips missed their mother. So she’d go try to glue them back together, and end up with her arse tanned for using up all Ma’s bread flour for paste. She was an odd bird, that Effie. Do I ever miss her.”

“She never told me that story.”

“There was a lot Effie never told anybody.”

Peggy busies herself with water boiling and cupboard rummaging, while I mop beads of sweat and the traces of tears from my puffed-up face with my puffed-up hand.

“Peggy, why didn’t she tell me the truth?”

“About what?”

“About anything. About my father. About where she went and what she did with her hands? Christ, she missed my graduation because of it,” I say, trying not to look and sound like I’m sooking. And failing.

“As far as she was concerned, Alec was the man you deserved to believe was your father. They were best friends, and the messy truth was a technicality.” Peggy resumes her scrubbing. “She felt awful about not being there for you that night of your grad, you know. But that woman in the accident. She needed Effie’s help. It was damn near a miracle the way she healed.”