Here So Far Away(57)

I thought of how proud I’d been to visit my father at the detachment when I was a kid. I loved the clacking and hum of the typewriters, the smell of stale coffee and the stubby brown cigarettes that the staff sergeant smoked at his desk, talking to the receptionist through the hole in the window that separated her from the public. How people straightened up when Dad entered a room. He was the walking embodiment of responsibility: for your community, your fellow officers, your family, your own personal conduct.

Now, as I watched him light another cigarette, I felt, for the first time, a little ashamed of my dad. Not because he couldn’t be an RCMP officer anymore, but for making it sound like it was all the universe’s doing, not his own.

We used to have a cat named Priscilla. After she got sick and went to the vet for three days, we were never sure we’d brought home the right animal. Gone was the midnight yowler who went mousing at night for balled socks and once almost tore my hand off for trying to take a pair away from her. It became impossible to sit when she was in the room because she was suddenly so full of love that she would climb onto your chest, put you in a stranglehold of a hug, and try to lick your face off.

That was how I felt in the weeks after Francis and I got back together, like I’d had an out-of-kitty experience and was filled up with more feelings than I knew what to do with, even just watching him fork hay across the barn floor.

“How long are you going to stand there watching me?”

“I like what I see. Why don’t you give us a spin?”

Well, he whipped around that pitchfork like it was a stripper pole, and I did not want to think about how he could have that move at the ready.

“Change of scenery for Shaggy,” he said when I uncovered my eyes. “Poor guy’s got cabin fever.”

Shaggy had already burrowed into a pile, and his head and back rose out of the hay like a pink crocodile floating in a lake. “Thank god,” I said, crouching down to give him a scratch. “Rupert fights me every time I try to let him outside.”

I stretched out beside Shaggy and looked up at the rafters. “My dad found out that he’s not returning to his job.”

I’d been sitting on this for more than a week. I needed time to consider what it meant. That Francis would probably stay, yes, but also how that made him all the righter about our fall expiration date.

“I know,” he said.

“You do?”

“Your father called. They might not tell me for a while since nothing is official, so he wanted to give me a heads-up.”

“That was surprisingly decent of him.”

He joined me and Shaggy on the hay. “Is he upset?”

“Weirdly, no.”

“Are you upset?”

“Not anymore,” I said truthfully. “This could make things simpler. For us.”

I felt around the hay for his gloved hand. “I was thinking, maybe if you stay, I stay.”

His hand flexed in surprise, which he tried to cover by giving mine a squeeze. “You’ve been talking about getting out of here since I first met you.”

“The universe has been conspiring against that. With some help from my dad.”

“And what does the universe want?”

“For me to go to Noel. I don’t want to take off just when it starts to become okay to be with you. The city, and everywhere beyond the city, they aren’t going anywhere.”

“You know it’ll be a long time before anyone will think this is okay.”

“I know. But it’ll stop being something you could lose your job over a lot sooner than that. In the meantime, I could swing residence if I got a student loan, or board at the farm. In the maid’s room. Then it wouldn’t be a problem if people saw us together.”

“Incremental acclimatization.”

“Right.”

“And you’d be happy at Noel.”

“I think so.”

If I got in, and stayed in. I had been worrying about how things were going to average out on my final transcripts. They could send an acceptance letter in May only to send a rejection later.

“Will you have friends there?”

I shrugged. It honestly didn’t matter to me anymore. I didn’t need anyone but him.

“George, have I gotten between you and your friends? When I busted up that party—”

“Oh, those weren’t my friends. I hang with a different group.”

Francis propped himself up on his elbow. “You know as well as I do that I could be relocated at any time. Even with a permanent position, I’ll still be transferred within three, four years. If I can bring myself to leave the farm, and that’s a big if.”

“In three, four years, I could be done with my degree.”

I couldn’t read him. “You’ve thought it through,” he said in a way that made it clear he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry. God, it’s too much. I’m freaking you out.”

He gave me a fierce look. “George, you’re the only thing I’ve ever been sure about. I know that sounds like a line from a shitty love song—”

“It actually is a line from a shitty love song.”

“But it’s true. I don’t want you planning your life around me when I can’t promise to do the same.”