Even if Walter wasn’t away on one of his week-long guiding trips and out of cell phone range, it still would have fallen to Shawn to take charge, Shawn to field the first calls from reporters, Shawn to tell the twins what happened, Shawn to spend the afternoon talking to doctors, asking the right questions, signing the forms. It was Shawn who had to do all this with terror weighing down in his gut like a bowling ball, from the horrible moment that morning when he was woken from a rare sleep-in by a phone call from a police officer – “Am I speaking with Shawn Parker? Son of Katherine Parker?” – and he had been sure, he was sure that Kate was dead.

“You need to look out for us girls,” Kate had told him the day she met him, and he had. He had. At least, he wanted to believe that he had.

The dinner rush is already starting when Shawn gets to the restaurant at four. Kahvila closes early, and its customers like to eat early, although there are a couple of tables of Lakehead University students who Shawn is pretty sure are having their first hungover meal of the day. Behind the cash register, refilling the napkin dispensers, is Dawn, a fifty-two-year-old grandmother who has been working at Kahvila since before her first daughter was born, and whose husband has been on disability for even longer than that. She can eat more pancakes than anyone Shawn has ever seen, and can handily drink him under the table.

“Natalie called in sick,” she says immediately.

“Again?”

Dawn finishes the last dispenser and spins it around on the counter, lining it up next to the others. “Artie said he saw her at Crocks last night drunk out of her skull.”

Shawn sighs. “We have to fire her.”

“Ha ha. We?”

There are a lot of things Shawn likes about the restaurant, despite what he says most days. He likes its location, at Bay and Algoma – an area sometimes known as Little Finland – near his favourite coffee shop and his favourite bar and two blocks away from his house. He likes that, after more than thirty-five years in business, the place runs like a well-oiled machine. He likes the customers, and how much they like the food. He knows Kahvila is a bit cheesy, but he has been working there for over twenty years, and in that time he has seen people who used to come in as kids now coming in with kids of their own. He likes his staff, for the most part, especially the lifers like Dawn. He does not, however, like firing people.

“Let’s see when she’s in again,” Shawn says, coming around the counter and pulling out the clipboard holding the staff schedule. “Someone must need more hours on here.”

“Jean-Marc’s girlfriend is pregnant,” Dawn offers, scooping the dispensers up in her arms. “He’ll work any hours he can get.”