Tom grins. He’s the youngest, her favourite of all my four baby boys. She fussed over him when he was a toddler. She never has even begun to like Lance. Lance represents all the things that her boy, Matt, is not. Strong. Tall. Athletic and so very handsome. She has barely acknowledged his presence in the vehicle. She has always been like that with him. Only looked at him to reprimand him, to speak stern words of discipline. We hadn’t been raised that way. Children are to be disciplined through words of love and patience, not anger and finger-pointing. She lost our ways or chose to not acknowledge or absorb them.

Tom begins to tap his lap, a single beat rises and he starts, “We’re drivin’ on the Ghost River Road, we’re driving on the Ghost River Road—Hey-ho—Where do you go when you’re driving on the Ghost River Road?” Sister and I join in. Lance clears his throat and looks out the window.

His memories must be meeting up with mine somewhere along the top of the foothills. He’s remembering too. All the times she laughed at him tripping as a baby. How she always brings up his failing Grade Six and goes on and on about his dropping out of high school, while bragging up her son, Matt, as though he was the only success in our family. I can feel it. Not every reunion is filled with happy memories. Each one of us must wrestle with those unhappy times. The things that we’ve buried in a deep hole at the back of our heads.

“Want to sing too, Lance?” I ask, hoping to break the homecoming of unhappiness we both feel. In the passenger-side mirror, I see him shake his head.

Sister deliberately raises her voice. The Ghost River Road song is drowning out the truth. Tom pipes up and tells his auntie the “Don’t go out in your nightie” story. Sister turns her head toward me and says with a long sigh, “You’re still not telling them the truth, are you?” Here it comes. I can feel it like I did as a kid. The question that begins to line up her verbal assault weapons. I’m about to say something when she continues, “And by the way, your hair?” She shakes her head as though she’s correcting a child and pokes her right index finger into my gut. “A little bit too much of the old Pillsbury Doughboy happening there!”