“It isn’t Heather Forest’s letter,” I said, spiriting it back into my pocket, where I hold it as one of my most important papers, a testament to everything I am and stand for. “It’s my own. It was my mother’s—Henrietta Wolfe’s—and now it’s mine. And I have a lot more to say about what led up to her writing it than you’ll find in the archives. But perhaps you aren’t interested in words from the horse’s mouth. Perhaps…” I fixed her with what I believed to be my coolest, most dispassionate expression and, while doing so, backed away from Mrs. Waugh slightly, as if to announce a final parting.

“Wait,” she reconsidered. “Perhaps…well, it could be that I should…” She looked at my hair, my face. “Certainly not at my apartment, but…if there was a neutral place, some café perhaps, or—if by the post we could arrange something, once we are back in Montreal—but you say you only visit there?”

“Next September,” I told her, “starting on the third for eleven days, you can leave me a message at the Old Brewery Mission on Clark Street.”

I did not tell Mrs. Waugh about my tent with Sophie Cotterill in Parc du Mont-Royal. Nor did I mention that the ideal place to leave me a note was to tuck it in a crack of the Mordecai Richler Gazebo in the park just below our tent, between the gazebo’s railings and its north pillar facing the park’s angel. I could tell her this later, should she choose to contact me. As it was, she gave me a post-box number belonging to one of the little rentable mailbox centres offered by all the Jean Coutu drugstores. Box 444.

2 His Flute

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3.

NIGHT.

Montreal, Quebec

AS I APPROACH, I SEE Soph’s silhouette inside the tent. I smell her bean tin brimming with scalding hot Labrador tea.

Everything in the tent is a bit damp: the sleeping bags, the tent walls. Sophie has a cozy little corner set up where, for our time together, she’ll commune with her emails between checking Facebook and insulting me. I hope my letter-writing notepad isn’t damp. She notices my hand sneak to it.

“Writing to your mama already? You haven’t even said hello.”

“Maybe.” This is a lie. I need, in fact, to get a note to Mrs. Waugh to inform her that I’m here. “Did you get the honey for my tea?”

“Here, pass me your quill and parchment. I’ll write that mother of yours a few home truths.” She grabs my pen.

“Dearest Madam Wolfe,” she announces. “Sweet Henrietta: Your son, Bigbad, is an unbelievable procrastinator, a real fusspot…”

“I’m not. I’m timely. I don’t vacillate and I’m not fussy. Ask anyone.”

“He claims he isn’t particular, but tomorrow he’s going to send me all over the Plateau looking for honey that simply must…Where the hell is your honey supposed to come from?”

“I need Minorcan honey.”