Normally Mum called the police about trespassers. It was a working farm, she would say, “private property,” and people had no business there. Dad had just gotten his job at the plant then, in the office. There were only three cows left in the barn.

Before we went up to our father’s hotel room, you wanted to look around the dusty hotel lobby at the old landscape paintings and the portraits of King George and Queen Mary with ornate gilded frames. Edmund said we should go up right away. He said we should be a few minutes early. What does it matter if we’re a little bit late? you said. There’s never a moment to lose, replied Edmund. You shrugged. And we waited for you.

Do you remember how Cedar went on about “the universe” back when you first brought her home to meet us? She was wearing the emerald-and-diamond engagement ring you had given her, and it sparkled when she moved her hand. The universe was sending her a message: it was telling her she could fly. This was a land of resignation, she said. In Vancouver anything could happen. Here we were all so burdened. I was living at home, working in the bookstore and teaching part-time. Mum and me in the back seat giggling when you were showing Cedar around the Annapolis Valley. Cedar asking if the cows were organic. Mum told her about the accident on the garage roof, and Cedar said this could be our origin myth, that moment when I jumped and you hesitated.

She and I took a drive one afternoon before supper. Her hair was dyed the shocking pink of summer cosmos. We drove up the North Mountain to the Look-Off on the Brow of Mountain Road. Cedar stood with her eyes closed at the edge of the Mountain and chanted as she held out her arms ready to receive whatever was offered into her heart. She was thanking the universe for abundance and greatness. The sun illuminated her, and it seemed for a moment that diaphanous wings sparkled from her back. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at me. We thought of her as a flower child, Mum’s words, but even when I first met Cedar, her understanding of life radiated in a way it never would in us. Cedar always had lightness, even in the darkest moments.

Later we stopped at the fire hall. You didn’t want to. Mum said even though Edmund wasn’t working there anymore you had to say hello to Ian, Edmund’s best friend all through school. Ian was working on the fire trucks. Sunday duty, they call it. He asked how Edmund was. You said you didn’t really see Edmund much. You were busy with architecture school — that’s why you were in Vancouver, after all. He looked away. You were wearing sunglasses. Ian took Cedar for a ride in the old Model T Ford fire truck, and she waved as she went by. Mum said when you got married Edmund could come home and pick you up from the church in it. You said Cedar wanted a sunrise unity ceremony on a beach on Cortes Island. Ian looked at his boots and tried not to laugh. You looked at the old fire truck when you answered. You hadn’t seen him; he lived on the other side of the city.