I preferred to believe that it was moved by giants. They simply plucked up our two-storey saltbox with their enormous hands and set it gently down on the lawn, like a child playing with her toys.

My parents bought our house when my mother was pregnant. She was twenty-three years old, and beautiful in a way that caused men to fall in love at first sight. Suiters would write poems about her, moaning Jayde, Jayde, Jayde, swearing they would die if she didn’t return their affections. She was often silent, lost in a daydream. Sweet Jayde, they’d say, come back down to earth. My father said she exuded a darkness to which he was instantly attracted. They had met at a party. My father saw my mother across a crowded room, later analogizing the encounter to being struck by a bolt of lightning. My mother couldn’t remember him being at the party.

My father was a writer, my mother a painter and sculptor.

They had owned a bungalow in the city, but decided to move when my mother became pregnant with me. She spent hours sitting in the living room, her bare legs draped over the arm of a chaise longue, perusing magazines on idyllic small-town living. Their plans were birthed from an old-fashioned notion of romance: two young artists, moving to the country to pursue their careers and raise their family in controlled safety.

My brother, William, was two when they moved. The property needed a lot of work, but that wasn’t a problem. My father could do anything.

I was born on the first day of December. Large, fluffy snowflakes drifted peacefully from the sky, clinging to the windowpane of my mother’s hospital room. As she clutched me, swaddled in the softness of a blush blanket, she whispered, “Grace, you brought the first snowfall.”

Chapter 7

Jack sold weed. I used it as an excuse to see him, texting him to buy more before I had even finished my last half-quarter.

Sitting on the oxblood sofa in the living room, I busted some dope with a chipped plastic grinder and poured it into a paper. Specks spilled over the sides, falling onto the table. I brushed them to the floor with the back of my hand. I had meticulously styled my hair, blow-drying it smooth with a round brush, and with much deliberation, decided on a silky black mock-turtleneck dress. I spent an hour carefully lining my eyes, rouging my cheeks, and shaving my legs all the way up to my thighs, just in case.

The front door creaked open and my stomach began to flutter. I busied my freshly manicured hands in an attempt to appear casual. Jack’s shoes hit the floor with a thud, and the carpet muted his footsteps as he made his way down the hallway to the living room.

“Hey, kid.” Jack smiled, rounding the corner into the room.

“Hey.”

“You’re quickly becoming my favourite customer.” He dropped a Ziploc baggie into my lap, flopping down on the couch next to me.