“Just wait for me,” she said. “My Waiting Walter.” She held her arms out to the sides, closed her eyes, and let herself drop backwards. Walter let out a screech and ran to the edge, only to see Kate lying on top of a pile of hay bales in the back of her father’s pickup, laughing hysterically.

“What is wrong with you?” Walter yelled.

“See, I told you,” she said. “Invincible.”

And so Walter waited. They graduated high school, and Walter began a biology degree at Lakehead University while Kate went to work at a seamstress shop in Westfort. Walter had just assumed that she would work there until he graduated and then they would get married. But one afternoon two years after that day in the hayloft, while they were sharing a plate of fries at the Coney Island, Kate squirted a puddle of ketchup onto the plate and said, “Oh. You know that girl Martha Jane, from the dress shop? We’re going to Europe together.”

Everything in the restaurant went silent – the voices of the other diners, the hum of the milk fridge, the waitress counting change behind the counter, the sizzle of the fryer through the kitchen window. All Walter could hear was his own pulse thrumming in his ears. “Europe?” he said, his voice resounding like a megaphone in his head. “What are you going to do in Europe?”

The sound in the room returned, like a record player speeding up.

“We’re not going to do anything,” Kate said, sipping her Coke. “We’re just going to experience things. Life. We’re going to experience life.”

Walter watched the brown bubbles travelling up her straw, trying to think of something to say. “But isn’t it dangerous?” he asked finally. “Two girls on their own?”

“Walter, it’s 1969. Girls can do whatever they want.”

“I’m not saying they can’t.” Walter picked up a fry, dragging it back and forth through the ketchup smear. It had been eight years since he had watched Kate disappear through a hole in the ice at her feet. Now he felt as though he was the one who was disappearing. “I’m just saying, is it the best idea?”

“The best idea either of us have ever had.” But her eyes were wandering and her leg shook under the table, and she had begun to chew on the end of her straw. Maybe she was having doubts. Maybe there was still a chance he could change her mind.

“You know, European men are a lot more aggressive than Canadian men. They’ll see you two as targets.”

“Targets for what?” Kate asked, finally focusing her eyes and staring at him so hard that Walter felt himself shrinking into the booth.

“Nothing.”