But I really didn’t want to have to use the stencilled letter.

In the end, I handed Pete over to a couple in their thirties who were in the area to do some skiing. They had matching fluorescent pink headbands, and their noses were slathered in thick coatings of sunscreen. I said: “Here, I’m giving you my dog. My dad wanted to take him to the SPCA, but they’ll put him down for sure because he’s too old. He loves chicken. Don’t give him chocolate because it can kill him. He’s good with kids. His name is Pete.”

Pete fell asleep next to their cooler, and they took it as a sign. I never found out what happened to him.

With the Rivards’ dog, things didn’t go quite so smoothly. He started running down the road because he saw a chipmunk. We hadn’t even gone three kilometres. My plan was to see if I could leave him at the waterslides. I would have liked to find that dog a cute little family so he could have lived out his days in Brossard, or Jonquière, or maybe even Ontario, why not? He was a big black dog, sort of like a retriever but a little smarter and a lot furrier.

He ran away, though, and never came back. I hope he survived. I like to imagine him out chasing wolves. Before he disappeared, he used to be a loud barker. You could hear him all over the village, especially at night. Wherever he is now, let’s hope he doesn’t have to cry out for help anymore.

6

Big City

When I am plagued by doubt, I cheer myself up with the thought that for every wrong decision I’ve made, there exists a parallel universe where I made the right one. There’s even a perfect universe out there where I’m a perfectly good person, spreading infinite tenderness all around me. I’m another person, anyone but that cruel, vengeful, cold-blooded killer on a vendetta for lost causes. My bravest actions aren’t breaking laws but having the courage to tell the people close to me that I love them, each and every day. In this perfect world I harbour only pure, benevolent feelings for everyone, like the sense of marvel a mother has bringing her newborn to her breast, feeling the warm weight of the child in her arms and her little heart beating fast, fast, fast. It’s not impossible. Just like there’s a statistical possibility that you could walk through your living room wall, since everyone knows it’s made of individual atoms and molecules with space between them.