“I said I’m fine. I just want to go back to sleep.”

Walter hesitated. “Okay then,” he said finally, his shoulders sagging.

WARNING: ASSUMING YOUR DAUGHTER HAS GROWN UP TO BE AN ACTUAL ADULT MAY LEAD TO EXTREME DISAPPOINTMENT.

Beyond the dock, the Kaministiquia River winds away from the edge of their property and curls around a corner, making its way past the mill and out to the lake. As kids they were allowed near the river only during deep summer, when the water was low; the rest of the time it was unsafe, a seething force waiting to carry them away or pull them down. She had known kids in the neighbourhood who had fallen through the ice, heading out too early, too impatient for hockey. She vaguely remembers one kid dying upriver at the public boat launch, there one minute and through the ice the next, leaving nothing but a black hole. But even in the deepest freezes – when snow machines regularly patrolled up and down the river, their loud buzzing like angry bees echoing off the riverbanks – her parents were so adamant. They were never allowed on the ice.

Then there were the spring swells, the years when the water would rise so high that it would pick things up from the banks: giant tree stumps, people’s deck chairs and inflatable boats, a picnic table or a garbage can from Fort William Historical Park – all rushing along on the surface to the lake, and after that, who knows? Maybe they washed up on the shore in Duluth or Sault Ste. Marie, or were carried through the locks and down the Gulf of St. Lawrence and out into the Atlantic Ocean. All rivers flow to the sea, isn’t that what people say? Maybe somewhere on some beach in Ireland there is an oar from one of their neighbours’ canoes, or a flip-flop that someone forgot to bring in from their dock. But once it was on the river, it didn’t matter where it went – it was just gone. That was what the river did. It made things disappear.

Except Kate. Was that why she had decided to go over the falls? The Kam just outside her door, taunting her with its quick escape route? The thought startles Finn. All those years, smiling in the kitchen window and waving as the school bus pulled up to the driveway, playing the happy housewife. Had her mother secretly yearned to wash up on some beach in Ireland? Had she dreamed about finding out what lay beyond the river, the same way Finn had?

“Aunt F?”

She turns around to find London standing behind her. She’s wearing a pair of cotton Hello Kitty pyjama pants and holds her laptop under one dark, slender arm. On her face is a pair of thickframed glasses. Since when did London wear glasses? Why didn’t she know London wore glasses?

“Hey, L,” she says. “Want to sit down?”