And you moved to Vancouver, just as everybody seemed to do back then. You promised Mum you would get in touch with Edmund. Cedar said you did see him but it was only because you both bumped into Edmund on the Downtown Eastside. Cedar said the two of you had been going to an artist’s studio on the Eastside, The Church, it was called. Edmund was on the street, cigarette hanging from his lips. He smelled bad, like a garbage bag in the sun. He tried to sell you pills. “Don’t you know who I am?” you yelled. Cedar had never seen Edmund, but she could tell from his eyes it was him — Atlantic blue, she said they were. Like yours. And mine.

“Just give me a minute,” Edmund said, scratching at his greasy hair. Maybe Edmund was remembering when you would run behind him on the beach, always trying to catch him, and him throwing us in the air and catching us in his arms. Memories flying in his mind, wings beating so quickly they were only a blur, moments lost.

Edmund wanted you to come and meet him in a park but you said you wouldn’t go there with a bunch of junkies. Cedar said Edmund wasn’t suggesting that. But then Edmund said he would meet you at Kitsilano Beach. Cedar told me you guys were held up in traffic that day. Edmund was already there on the beach when you and Cedar arrived. He sat on a log by the high-water mark, looking out at the tankers. You stood by the kiosk and watched him. Cedar told you to go out to him, but you didn’t. “What difference can I make now? This is not my brother,” you said to her. Edmund sat for a long while and then stood up, dropping his shoulders, walking away. Maybe he thought you were late, as usual. But then assumed it was his fault, that he must have mixed up the time. He tripped and fell down on the beach. Edmund was crying. Cedar said you still didn’t go out to him. Edmund got up and walked away without even brushing the sand off his face.

A month later they called. Edmund had been found in a dumpster. It was his home, the dumpster — that’s what they told us, those ladies who worked with people on the street. Cardiac arrest. His heart was weak. It wasn’t an overdose. It was common with heroin addicts.

After Cedar picked me up from the Vancouver airport, she took me out for coffee on the beach. I had flown out to be there for you, to fly home with you and Edmund’s body. You were making Edmund’s funeral arrangements on the phone with Mum so you didn’t walk on the beach with Cedar and me. Cedar said she wouldn’t be coming out to the funeral. I nodded, looking at the mountains. She stood at the edge of the water and lifted her arms. There was no sun that day, only mist. Cedar sang a song. It was a chant, and the words were om and la la la, and I watched the mountains vanish into the white. She held my hand as we walked back to the apartment. There was no ring on her finger anymore. Cedar told me that after she saw you ignore Edmund on the beach that day she knew she didn’t want to marry you. I told her we were going to sell the family home. My mother didn’t want to live there anymore. After the funeral I planned on moving to the city and getting a job. I was going to dye my hair neon blue. I still see Cedar in my mind’s eye, standing at the Look-Off, the sun sparkling on the water below as she tosses her head back with such lightness.