Back at the Paulsson house, she peels the Post-it notes down one by one, carefully, as though she is performing some kind of ritual. She counts the Post-its as she goes, and by the time she is finished there are three hundred of them. She fumbles around in the kitchen drawers until she finds a set of matches, and then strikes one, staring at it as it burns in her fingers. Then she sweeps the pieces of paper into the sink and lights them on fire, watching them curl into black ash against the stainless steel. Once they are gone, she runs the faucet, dousing the remnants and washing them down the drain. The kitchen is now full of smoke, but she doesn’t care. What does it matter? This is her house. Hers. Not her father’s, not her husband’s. Hers. She can fill it with smoke if she wants to. She can do anything.

She would have gone to Ottawa with Shawn. She would have left her parents and Hanna, she would have moved to an apartment if she had to. She would have tamed her wild northern boys into city kids, with bus passes and a taste for sushi – tamed them into skating in a straight line down the Rideau Canal, into living the alternate future she had envisioned for them. Shawn would wear a suit instead of an apron, she would learn how to sell houses in a different market. Maybe it was a lot to ask for – a whole new life – but she is starting to learn that sometimes it is necessary to ask for a lot.

Her ultimatum to Shawn, that had been her Margaret Paulsson moment. It had been her hand on the bedroom doorknob, her life split in two, unravelling. Pieces of the old Katriina slowly crumbling away with every agonizing heartbeat in the terrible, breathless eternity between saying the words and understanding they would not be leaving. It was over.