I put down the half-assed tea in the second-tier cup and slowly hoist myself to stand. “Well, Mama was right. You are a piece of work, aren’t ya, Saint Sarah?”

I steady myself against a table, as another dizzying bout of technicolour tumour-vision takes hold, this time spilling layers of jade green and sickly bubble-gum-pink around the periphery of Sarah’s face.

“I have no interest in what any of you people think of me,” she says through gritted teeth. “But if you want to know what really happened to Alec, consider that there might be something your mother and her family isn’t telling you. Desperate people are capable of anything. And the Fortunes are nothing if not desperate.” She strides toward me and sweeps an arm toward the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a business to run.”

I nod politely as she ushers me to the door.

“Before she passed on, Mother said she encountered you and Effie at the hospital.” Sarah Spenser flashes a perfectly aligned smile. “She knew what you were just by looking at you.”

“Really,” I say as I clumsily wrench my shoes on, simultaneously trying to process what Sarah Spenser implied about my father and my family. “And what’s that?”

“A troublemaker,” she sniffs.

“Well that’s probably the nicest thing she’s ever said now, isn’t it?” I sniff right back just before she snaps the door shut behind me as I teeter down the icy steps.

Roger meets me on the path, waving around my phone as it whines “It’s My Party” at top volume.

“This thing has been singing its brains out for a bit now. I didn’t want to answer ’er for fear of gittin’ you in hot water.” He smiles and winks.

I fumble to answer it as he shuffles back to warm up the Cossack.

“Finally!” Peggy thunders at my hello. “Where the Joe Jesus are you?”

“None of your business,” I say.

“What kind of a stunt was that, not coming home last night? Your mother was worried sick. Tell me where you are. I’m coming to get you.”

“No, it’s okay, Allie will —”

The phone warbles with an incoming text message. From Allie. Saying she can’t come get me.

“Your mother worked an overnight, and now she’s home in bed feeling like garbage.” Peggy resumes her guilt trip. “I told her I’d find you and bring you home. Now, I don’t know what you’re up to, Crow, but you’re old enough to know better. Where are you?”

With a fake sigh of fake acquiescence, I say, “In Town. Pick me up at the mall. And do me a favour? Bring me a coat and a blanket or something.”

I end the call before she can ask me any questions. And just past the spot where the lit-up nativity scene would have been thirty-one years ago, I roll up the sleeves of Roger Leblanc’s cable knit sweater, pull the Toronto Maple Leafs toque tight around my ears, and hurl a jet of bitter, weak tea and strong, sweet coffee into a pristine snowbank in the Spenser family’s yard.