“Did you see her?” Hanna asks as they sit at her sleek granite-topped island. Hanna owns a clothing store downtown and lives next door in the closest thing to a hipster loft that you could possibly find in Thunder Bay, an industrial space that has been converted into studios. She is all about the downtown north core, that two-block radius of stores and restaurants that can make you feel like you’re in a real city until you realize you have walked the entire length of the neighbourhood in less than a minute. Still, if you never left that two-block radius, if you lived and worked and partied there, you might be able to forget where you are. Katriina knows this is what Hanna is trying to do.

“Yeah,” says Katriina, embarrassed that for a minute she is unsure which “her” Hanna might be talking about. “Last night. She is still in a coma.”

Hanna shakes her head. “I still can’t believe it,” she says. “The clip’s been on all the news stations. They’re calling her the Conqueror of Kakabeka.”

Katriina takes a sip of her coffee. For her, what’s happened with Kate has been such a private thing, it is a jolt every time someone mentions it – she has a hard time believing that the world is having a reaction to something that she herself hasn’t really had the time to react to yet. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s a weird thing.”

“What’s wrong?” Hanna asks immediately. Secrets have never really been possible between the Saarinen sisters. From their parents, yes, boyfriends, even husbands, yes, but never from each other.

Katriina gazes down into her coffee, organically roasted and fairly traded, she assumes. “I lost the baby,” she says. “Again.”

Hanna shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” Katriina swishes her coffee around in her cup, focusing on the whirling liquid. “How can you say that? It’s like my uterus is broken.”