Ouch. It would seem that in three years, sweet little L has turned into a master manipulator. Finn glances down at London’s feet dragging in the water. “L, why don’t you pull your feet up, honey?”

London stares at Finn, her eyes hardening. “You’re scared of it, aren’t you? Everyone’s so scared of everything!”

The news video finishes and jumps to the next clip. “A Thunder Bay woman made international headlines this week as she attempted to go over Kakabeka Falls in a whisky barrel.” The photo of Kate flashes on the screen.

Finn grabs the top of London’s laptop and slams it shut. “We don’t need to see that,” she says. “No one needs to see that.”

London kicks at the water, sniffling. “Nana wasn’t afraid.”

“No, but there’s a reason for that,” Finn says. “She wasn’t thinking straight. Or else she would have been scared.”

“You know what I think?” London says. “I think that she’s the only one who’s thinking straight. I think it’s the rest of you who are all broken, hiding in your big houses with your cushy jobs and your retirement savings and your, like, first world privilege.” She says that last word almost proudly, as if it’s something she has been waiting to use in conversation. “Have you forgotten how to care about something, Aunt F? When did your soul die?”

It’s all Finn can do not to laugh, but her soul is not quite that dead. “I care about what’s important,” Finn says. “I care about you.”

“If you cared about me, you’d take me to Duluth.”

“I can’t do that, honey.”

In what Finn now recognizes is a pattern of violence followed by storming off, London lets out a frustrated scream, then jumps to her feet, kicking Finn’s empty coffee mug into the river, where it slowly sinks into the depths. Then she runs back up to the house. Finn stares down into the river, imagining the mug getting hooked on the fin of a bull shark and travelling back down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, finally free of the Parker tyranny of bad coffee and weak tea.

—

After a mind-numbing hour of Americanizing the manuals for UniTech’s new line of microwaves – changing “colour” to “color” and questioning her life choices – Finn gets bored and logs onto Facebook. Ever since dinner, she has been thinking about that photo of her mother and has come to the conclusion that it must have been taken from Nicki’s Facebook page – neither of her parents are on Facebook, and both Shawn’s and Finn’s pages are private.