She returned to the subject of our siblings and I felt pressured to come up with an answer. I told her that I really didn’t know any of them anymore. Once our parents had left this world, so had the one thing we had in common. There was nowhere left to go home to. Without the parents to hold us together, the old family squabbles resurfaced and our relationships disintegrated. It all fell flat like a deflated balloon. She giggled. It reminded me of being little girls together. Laughing ourselves to sleep in the double bed that we shared. Sometimes I missed that. The small worries and stories of small girls. She was fun once.

She asked if I’d visit her on the next long weekend. I wanted to, but I was afraid to. She went off on a long description of how to find her country home. She’d left Banff and moved about two hours away into the country, the Deep Country as she called it. I tried to write things down, getting excited about the possibility of seeing her. I told her I’d call her the next night with an answer. After all, I did have obligations and I needed to arrange to take time away from the university. We hung up. I lay in bed that night, unable to sleep.

I lay there thinking about how random all of this was and how unsettled I’d always felt around her. I asked myself if I needed this kind of interruption in my life again. She had always treated me like a doll that she wanted to play with for a short time. And she was always the one who decided when the game would end, when she had become bored with me, and who then placed me on the shelf for at least another decade, only to be dusted off when she felt like playing with me again.

Years and years had passed since she had last put her plaything aside, and the accumulation of time had taken the shine off it even more. We had literally stopping thinking of one another . . . and now an invitation and the expectation of an answer in the morning.

I won’t go alone, I decided.

When the Saturday of the long weekend arrives, I make two of my sons jump into the car with me. Off we speed down the highway, the open road breezing around our sense of freedom. Happy to be leaving our city and all those problems. Sister and I have talked twice a week for the last month. An ease has settled over us and we are less cautious with each other on the phone now. I am excited at the thought of being able to look at her in real life.