When I was finally finishing my Ph.D. in civil engi­neering, I talked to an ornithologist from the biology department at a campus event and she assured me a crow would not imprint on a child, and certainly would not switch loyalties: the crow would be forever faithful to the adult who raised it.

I remember leaving in the back of a police car. There was a helicopter. They had to search the water. My mother was in the hospital having the baby and there were problems, they said. She had to stay in longer. Later, I found out they had kept her there, under observation. She had postpartum depression on top of it all. She was flooded with hormones and grief, but she held my little brother to her breast.

My stepfather’s auntie took me to the city on the day of the funeral and we went to the Discovery Centre and took a ferry ride across Halifax Harbour to Dartmouth. She called it “the big city,” and it was to me — the first time I left the countryside. She kept me with her for a few days and when the first snow of the year came down she bought me a pair of snow pants and took me snowshoeing

And life returned to normal, as it does. The days got very short, and then they got longer. I refused to visit my father again. As far as I know, he made no effort to see me. I would walk to school and back, and my stepfather would take me to the hockey rink. My mother stayed home with the baby and didn’t go back to work until he was in school. My little brother looked so much more like my father than he did my mother or my stepfather. But it might have been the way I studied him, looking for Morgaine but never finding her. I called my stepfather “Papa,” as my brother did. Papa said Ocean was right about one thing — life was full of mystery and things happen with no explanation. We couldn’t argue that one.

My mother never discussed what happened. There was a picture of Morgaine on her dresser in a silver frame, but we never mentioned it or looked at it when she was in the room. My stepfather said my mother was always trying to do the right thing, always trying to please others and never herself. She finally learned that life was a fine and ever-changing dance to keep everybody in the circle. My stepfather wasn’t one who talked a lot, so when he did, we listened.

And then this email from my father, all these years later. He said he had heard on Facebook about a prestigious park I was designing. It was curious he was on Facebook — that social media wasn’t something he thought was part of the Big Conspiracy, like vaccinations. He was already in Vancouver for the conference, he wrote, and wanted to see me before he left in a few days. Maybe we could go for a walk on the beach, he suggested.