The award-winning story, from the forthcoming collection High-Water Mark.

My sister thinks I gave my mom cancer.  Lauren’s become an expert on death since her baby died.

          I heard hemorrhoid when my mom said thyroid.  I was almost laughing except Lauren started crying, so I realized it wasn’t hemorrhoids, even though she cries at everything now.  I decided I wasn’t gonna sit on that couch with my sister and watch my mom’s eyebrows and eyelashes spill out of her face.  My mom saw me looking at Lauren and then her and back at Lauren, and she said, You have something to say, Ainslee?

          “I'm going to Robbie’s.”  And I went to my room, grabbed some shit, and left.

I have a summer job in the gift shop up at the Cape.  The Cape’s a big cliff way up high and way out in the water and way far away from town.  I had to buy a truck—a blue and white Ford—to get myself up there and back, but Robbie drives it mostly since he’s twenty-five and has a licence and I can’t get my beginners yet.   Had a licence, I should say.

          The gift shop looks like a lighthouse and it’s the first thing the tourists see when they park their big, shiny, American vans and all their kids pile out like clowns and squeeze into the shop.  They ask if this is the lighthouse they’ve driven all this way to see and I say, no, the real one’s down that hill and they unfold the folded T-shirts with their ice cream fingers and shuffle the postcards and stink up the bathroom and grumble about the drive up the road, like it’s personally my responsibility to pave it, even though it’s the first time they’ve really used their SUVs.  And then they complain about having to walk down the hill and ask, could they drive? and ask, could I take their picture? and ask, how much are the T-shirts? and ask, do I see many whales? and ask, what do I do around here for fun?

          Tourism’s a verbal assembly line.

          No you can’t drive, you should walk, Fatso, and I’ll tell you the price of T-shirts if you’re actually gonna buy one. And for fun?  I smoke and drive fast and drink beer and get stoned and fuck Robbie.

          “I hike the beach and watch for whales and pick wildflowers.”

          “Wish I lived your life,” they sigh.

Sometimes when Robbie remembers to pick me up, we do hike down to the beach and drink beer he’s brought and watch the rip tide rip at the rocks.  The waves crash higher than our heads and we’re soon soaked and freezing but screaming and smashing our bottles into the wind.  The rocks are flat and curved like worn stairs, and once Robbie pulled me into a kinda cave and lifted me up onto a ledge.  I wrapped my legs around him as he yanked down my jeans and we never noticed the tide coming in until we were done and Robbie’s feet were soaked.  We had to slip and slide back up the rocks.  We sat for a bit while the tide swallowed our little love nest.  My dad drowned in those rips, and that’s how quick it must have happened—a blink of breath then lobster bait.

At night, driving off the Cape, there’s this one curve where you can see the lights of the village, and just right there, Refugee Cove looks like a glittery city, all lit up for a party.  Then down we go to the main road, to Robbie’s, pulling into his driveway.  At that moment, it’s the most his house looks like a trailer, which is exactly what it is.

          Lauren calls me Robbie’s little woman but living with him feels like one long sleepover.  Pajama drama, pillowfighting.

Lauren’s over, trying to be my mom ‘cause Mom won’t be my mom and Lauren wants so bad to be a mom.

          “Why don’t you come home?”

          “I am home.”

          “You’re getting stupider.  Sunbathing naked on that boat?  With all those guys?”

          “Robbie was there.  It wasn’t all day, and I was just topless.  They were topless.  Some of those guys have bigger tits than me.”

          “This is what’s making her sick.”

          I look where Lauren’s looking, at my feet on the coffee table, beside my math textbook, some rolling papers, pot crumbs.  Robbie’s smells like the last slurps of week-old beer in the bottom of a bottle, and there’s plenty of that around.

          “Robbie got me to quit smoking.”

          “Smoking’s better for you than Robbie.”

          “I’m not making her sick.”

          “You’re not helping.”

          “You get cancer, you get cancer.  What I’m doing has nothing to do with it.”

          “I think you’re wrong.  If you’re happy, and a good person, good stuff happens.  You surround yourself with crap, crap happens.  Her being happy could get her better.”

          “Is that what you believe?  That being happy and good will get you a new life?  Then how come Dad’s dead?  I don’t mean people who are good have bad things happen.  I mean, people who are good maybe aren’t so good.”

The world doesn’t need any more people, so it picks at them like scabs and off they go.  Yeah, Refugee Cove could stand a few more kids so the school doesn’t shut down.  I could barely tell Lauren was pregnant at her graduation—she just looked fat under her gown.  If they need kids though, there’s plenty.  Spend some time with me at the gift shop.  The way parents yell at or ignore their kids?  Tourists are like blackflies.

          No one knew Lauren’s kid’s heart was fucked until she was born.  I was an aunt for six days.  I liked being Aunt Ainslee; I had plans to make those the kid’s first words.

          After her kid died, Lauren packed all the baby stuff into a box and left it at the end of her driveway.  I poked around at all the toys and bottles and books and clothes while I was waiting for the bus, which started coming just when I found the teeny, yellow toque she wore in the hospital, so I grabbed it and shoved it in my jacket pocket and hopped on the bus.  All morning I kept thinking about all that little little stuff that’d had such big big plans, so I skipped school at lunch but by the time I got home the box was gone. 

          When I moved into Robbie’s I took that toque with me.  Sometimes when Robbie’s sleeping I put it on my left hand like a mitt.  It covers my three middle fingers, not even halfway.

          The one time I held my niece, her head rested right there in those three fingers.  Lauren still hadn’t given her a name, and never did, but when the baby opened her eyes, it was like she was asking for one.

Robbie smoked me up before work today.  I can’t tell if time’s moving faster or slower or if the T-shirts are cold or wet. 

          Vince is my boss and he’s sixty-seven but looks younger than most dads and lives in the woods where he grows blueberries and weed.  What’s a bigger deal than growing weed, since tonnes of people I know grow weed, is that he moved here from Alberta, when most people from here talk about moving to Alberta.

          My sister had this job till she got pregnant.  I think Vince likes us working here ‘cause he fucked my mom years ago.  I’m not so sure on that, but Lauren would roll her eyes and make gagging sounds whenever he came around.  Lauren remembers Dad more than me, so it’s more a deal for her.

          Vince comes to drop off peanuts and coffee filters and asks, Sell anything today, Ainslee?  I can’t stop staring at his dirty fingernails.  Is he cooking lunch with those?

          “I woulda sold a T-shirt if we had greys in extra-large.”

          “Two years ago, large was fine.  Now it’s extra.”

          “Busy at the restaurant?”

          “Almost outta chowder.  Cloudy days aren’t BLT days.”

          Talk so small you can’t see it.

          An old guy stumbles in, knee socks and sandals, Tilley hat, Peggy’s Cove sweatshirt, large.  Especially ‘cause Vince is there, I put on my big Cape smile that says, Welcome, Tourist.  Yes, we have T-shirts in your size.

          “Can I help you?”

          “Oh, ooh.  Ha.  Where are your restrooms?”

          I point to the door beside him.

          Good thing Vince raises his voice.

          “The bike tour guys are coming later.  Can you stay an extra hour to help them bring down their luggage?  Cyclone Tours.  They’ve been here before.”

          “Cyclops Tours.”

          “Hey, Ainslee—no more work weed.”

Sometimes, I get the nervous butterflies, like one day at low tide, Robbie took me out in the truck and we spun doughnuts around in the harbour, red, rotten mud spraying in through the window and all over our faces.  It made me laugh like crazy, but I got butterflies too.  Not just in my stomach—on the tops of my hands and all around my thighs and in the middle of my throat.  It’s how my mom must feel.  Her thyroid’s this nervous butterfly in her throat.  She wants to swallow it down but it’s fucked up her swallowing so it’s gotta become a part of her breathing until it gets too big and she can’t even breathe anymore. 

          Tourists are like that—cancer cells. They don’t belong and they fuck up the places they visit.

          I never want to be a tourist, never want to just watch the rip tides but learn how to swim with them.

The Cyclops catches up with me.  Cyclone Tours are regular, three-season customers so we’ve shot the shit before.  I think he’s plucked his monobrow.

          “Looking forward to September?” he asks.

          “First it’s tourists, then hurricanes.”

          Robbie has my truck and he’s late, so we’re footing brick luggage down to the guesthouse instead of four-wheel driving.  These cyclists freaking biked here, they’ve got the muscles, but it’s the gift shop girl who’s bricklaying.

          “I always meant to ask what happened to the girl who worked here last summer.”

          “She’s my sister and she had a baby.”

          Cyclops hits a loose rock and nearly drops the luggage.

          “She had a baby?”

          “Yeah, but it died.”

          Then he does fall, him and the luggage down flat.  Nothing cracks open, no blood.  My hands are too full to help him but I pause and watch.  He’s backstroking through his dust, then he twists around like a beetle and he’s got the luggage and he’s suddenly ahead of me. 

          “She still in town?” he yells.  He’s marching his cyclist calves.

          “You know her and her boyfriend’s house?  Two over from mine…my mom’s?”

          “Yep, yep.”

          We reach the end of the path.  It opens like the jaw of a beast, all waves and sky and rowdy wind.  Over the Valley, black clouds are choking the sun.

          “I’m stunned.”  Cyclops eyes the edge.

          Vince calls them Repeats.  The year-five honeymooners. The groupies.  We like them, not only ‘cause they bring us gifts, offerings for the view, but because they know you can’t keep this landscape in a frame.  They come back for the high, the shock.  Each trip, they need to touch the fire to remember it’s hot.

          But there are the others, the ones who’ll see those storm clouds and blame us for the rain and the roads it’ll soon turn to gullies.  So I’m glad when I see Robbie driving down in my truck, though too fast for the rutted road, aiming straight for us.

“How come you’re pissed and won’t let me drive?”

          “Why were you talking to Bike Boy?”

          “I meant drunk pissed.  Lauren and I call him Cyclops.”

          The rain is crazy-loud on the roof of the truck so it sounds like we’re fighting before we are.

          “Lauren fucked the monster,” he says.

          We’re driving underwater.

          “Fuck off, no way.”

          “He was hitch-hiking to the Cape sometime last October not too far from your mom’s, so I give him a ride.  Says, ‘You know Lauren McPhee?’  ‘Yeah, she’s my buddy’s girlfriend.  Going to meet him now at his camp.  Why?’  I ask.  All he says is he didn’t know she had a boyfriend.  Says nothing the rest of the way, I drop him off at the gift shop and he says it again.  Then he gets out, says, ‘Sorry,’ holds his hands up like, ‘don’t shoot’, closes the door.  Don’t see him again till now.”

          “Last October…”  I think.  “Was around when we found out about Mom.”  My thighs are fluttering.  “But so what?  It wasn’t me, it wasn’t you, it’s between Lauren and Mike.”

          “And their kid if it was Mike’s.”

          “She’s dead and you’re driving too fast.”

          “Slut could run in the family.”

          “Fuck off, Robbie.  Robbie!”

          The truck’s sliding instead of driving.  It’s the last hill before Refugee Cove except I can’t see Refugee Cove, just the edge of the Cape then nothing, nothing’s out my window, the front tire’s going over except there’s a tree and we stop.  I am a quivering insect.

          “Ainslee?”

          Gravity’s outside my door.  I crawl over Robbie, straddle him.  He leans to my neck, lips puckering to kiss or puke, but I lean further and open his door, jump out, start walking home.  Not the trailer.  Home home.

          Lauren’s there, instead of Mom.

          “She went in a helicopter.”

          I am made of rain.  I go to my room to change.

Lauren and I pass the trailer on our way to Halifax the next morning.  My truck’s in the yard, front end like a punched nose.

          By Truro I almost ask Lauren about Cyclops.  Then I don’t.  My niece is dead and soon Mom will be too. 

          “When it happens,” Lauren’s saying, her voice post-storm calm, “her ashes—”

          “Off the Cape.  Her and Dad…”  Little Sister’s crying.

          “Will you do it with me?

          On-coming traffic is steady.  Camper vans are stuffed with deflated beach balls, lawn chairs, coolers, families.  Licence plates of every colour.  It’s late August.

          From my back pocket I get the yellow toque, pull it over my three fingers and hold it up for Lauren to see.  Her eyes widen.  She takes one hand off the steering wheel and grabs my fingers, bringing them and the toque to her nose, her cheek, her neck, her stomach.  Doesn’t let go.