“If I didn’t need the money I would burn this place to the ground.” Her mother peers around the room with startled eyes. “It’s haunted. I see him everywhere. I need to get away from here.”

Kavita’s legs begin to shake as if the very foundations of their house, their only home, is beginning to crumble. “What about Sunil’s things?” she asks.

“You can take what you like. The house is being sold as furnished. The realtor will take care of everything while I’m gone. You might as well pack up your things while you’re here. And take your father’s junk too, or else I’ll have it thrown out.”

Kavita slackens her fist. The pain is not enough to smoother Blaze. It burns, burns, burns. If she stays much longer, it will burn her alive.

“There’s only one thing I want,” she says.

She strides down the hall into her mother’s bedroom, where she finds Sunil’s urn on the dresser. She hugs the cold metal snugly to her chest and canters to the front door. I’ve got you, Bear, she reassures him. I’ll protect you.

“Kavita?” her mother cries out as she speeds past the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

Before her mother can stop her, she trundles down the stairs and out of the house.

I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you—all the way to the car.

I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you—all the way to the condo.

27.

About a week later, Kavita finally arranges to meet Chi for coffee. Perhaps Nirav was right. Perhaps Chi just needed time to figure out what to say. Now more than ever, Kavita needs an ally.

She rides the bus downtown, gazing passively out the slush-splattered window. The snow came early along with a push of cold weather that caught most people without their winter tires. Stories about black ice and collisions got nearly as much airtime on the cbc news last night as the usual headlines about war, natural disasters, and political scandals. She watches as pedestrians scurry along the sidewalk, buried in their winter garments. Soft snow begins to fall, light and stilling. You always loved the winter, she thinks to Sunil. She sees him snowshoeing along a trail in Gatineau Park, dressed in his navy winter gear. She went with him a few times. Remembers the Styrofoam sound of their shoes squeaking through slumbering trees, the awe she felt when it started snowing, the wood-smoke air in the warm-up cabin where they had lunch—peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil, left to warm on one of the iron stoves. She can taste the first bite, gooey and sweet, a taste of childhood.