“I wrote this thing proposing changes to the federal exemption policy, blah, blah.” Clara slammed her hands down on the table, her mouth open wide like it always was when she was excited. “And I won!”

Well, hot damn. “That’s fantastic!” They high-fived, and pride surged through him.

“I thought for sure the winner would be someone writing about something a lot sexier,” she went on. “Like residential schools or climate change or something.”

Sawyer’s heart squeezed. Only Clara would call climate change “sexy.”

“I’m so proud of you, Clare Bear.” Proud and amazed. He wasn’t really sure how he’d managed to raise such a person.

“There’s more! They want the top three contestants—that’s number three, number two, and me—to be on The Agenda this fall!”

The Agenda was a politics show on the Ontario public television station, a fact he knew only because he sometimes watched it with Clara. His own teenage years had not included The Agenda. And not only because he’d been more interested in making sandcastles and picking raspberries with Evie, but also because he wasn’t naturally the brainiac his sister was.

“So we’d have to go to Toronto for filming. Can we? Please, Sawyer?”

Clara was about to enter her last year of high school. And given the nature of his work—long shifts, often overnight—she spent a lot of time on her own. She was responsible and mature, and he trusted her. All of which was to say that she didn’t need his permission, much less his chaperonage, to go to Toronto to be on TV to talk about her science policy essay. Oddly, although he stressed about her at the grocery store in the next town over, he didn’t worry about her farther afield. Probably because Charles, who didn’t have a driver’s license anymore, didn’t have the wherewithal to get much farther than Grand View.

But since she was still asking his permission like she thought she required it, he wasn’t going to tell her any of that. “Of course. Maybe we’ll stay overnight, make a trip of it.”

“Yay!” She bounced in her chair. “Okay, I know you want to go to sleep. Since I begged off work, I’m going to the beach.” He furrowed his brow, and she read his mind. She usually went to the beach with her friends. “It’s nine in the morning. He won’t be there.”

“Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t.” Charles was known for his habit of strolling the town’s beaches with a metal detector.

And his habit of going ballistic when angry.

“Besides,” Clara said, “it’s a summer weekend. It will be crowded.”

By which she meant any threat an encounter with their father might present would be neutralized by the presence of tourists.