Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Kate and Walter were married at city hall and bought the house on Victor Street. In 1976, he quit his job and bought the Miss Penelope, an old fishing trawler that he remodelled with a canopy and bench seats and converted into the first of his tour boats. For years he ran Superior Tours right out of the woodshed he built at the back of the property, at the edge of the Kaministiquia River. Back then, he only went up and down the river and sometimes into Thunder Bay Harbour. It wasn’t until after his daughters were born that he bought the Serafina and the Veronica, twin cabin cruisers as identical as the twin girls he named them after, and started chugging people out to Sibley, and then later on overnights up the North Shore to the Black Bay Peninsula, St. Ignace Island, even all the way to Neys. When the business expanded to include the ice huts, he moved his office from the woodshed to a storefront on Cumberland, near the expanding marina, but he still kept his boats docked along the Kam.
Kate made dresses, raised the babies, stayed strangely quiet about her years in Europe – which was fine with Walter, he didn’t want to know, not really. With Kate, he had learned, there were some things that were safer left unsaid.
—
It is early afternoon by the time Walter docks the Serafina in back of Victor Street, and the river is so still – deferential, even. It’s okay, he whispers in his head. It’s not your fault.
He grabs his spare set of truck keys from the garden shed and drives straight to the hospital. They will know he’s back when they see the Serafina, but for now he wants to go see Kate, alone. In the lobby by the gift shop he sees a young reporter standing with a microphone in front of a man holding a camera. Walter gets a sinking feeling in his stomach as he realizes she is talking about Kate. “Sources close to the woman, who media are now referring to as the Conqueror of Kakabeka, report that there is no change in her condition. We will keep you updated on the situation as it progresses. Reporting live from Thunder Bay General Hospital, Cassandra Coelho for Thunder Bay News.”
The Conqueror of Kakabeka. Well, Kate would like that. He wonders if he should just ask this Cassandra Coelho person to update him on Kate’s condition, since she seems to know so much about what’s going on. Maybe she could tell him why the hell she did it. Tell him what he has to do to make things right.