Read The Opening Sky for Free Online

to the mall, bumper to bumper, exhaust rising. Three more days of work and then Christmas, and then, with anyluck, the cold will finally come and they’ll get a decent snowfall and he’ll make it up to the cabin. You have to drive partway in from Minaki on the ice – they plow a winter road. And then you ski across to the island, pulling your grub on a toboggan. Just when you’re about to perish, you see the solitary lost cabin hove into sight against horizontal lines of white and blue and the rock faces thrusting up through the snow, everything transfixed by winter.
    He moves to his desk and turns on the lamp. The cabin makes him think of Jake – Defrag, as he calls him privately – a guy who likes the wilderness as much as Aiden does. He picks up the phone and punches in his number, lets it ring a long time. Defrag doesn’t have an answer function.
    Okay, the notes. He boots up the computer, gets comfortable, and turns his mind back to the morning. To Norman Orlikow, slim and neat and intense, like a bit player in a Shakespearean tragedy.
Vengeful fantasies
, Aiden types.
Grandiose ideation, resistance to insight
. Suddenly he can’t be bothered to go into their little drama.
Invoice for broken window
, he instructs himself.
    Odette Zimmerman – he’ll write her up after he talks to Edith.
    Christine Tolefson, a new client today. Forty-three. She gave her age as if Aiden was forcing her to admit to a criminal record. She’d been referred by her GP for anxiety. She wore a fake animal-hide jacket and fake lashes that clung to her eyelids like insects, and her square-ended claws were a jumbled heap of plastic in her lap. Only her eyes were real, and sad. He told Christine how they would work, what he expected of her. She sat for a minute without speaking, and then she said, the words wrenched out of her in pain and fear, “I don’t know if I can say anything honest. I don’t really know what that would be.”
    Thank you, Christine, he thinks as he types. You could spend all night at a party, standing by a bay window with a glass of winein your hand, and you would count the evening special if you had just one moment like that, one moment of true connection with another human being.
    It’s ten to five. He closes his files and turns off the computer. He rinses the mugs and cleans the grounds out of the coffeemaker and sets it up for the morning, and then he takes his V8 can out to the recycling bin. The hall is silent and empty, ceiling lights blazing.
    Down at the end, the elevator opens to reveal Sylvie, standing alone among the loops of tinsel. She’s wearing her second-hand Cowichan sweater, her bright hair hanging to her shoulders. Not crying – she looks drained of emotion. Her face is filling out, he thinks in surprise. There’s an almost matronly look about her, all her exuberance dialled down. There she stands in a cage of yellow light, her backpack slung on one shoulder, motionless as in a diorama: a future Sylvie.

2
Never Explain, Never Apologize
    T WO CHRISTMAS GIFT BAGS SIT ON LIZ’S OFFICE chair. She lifts them to the desk, not bothering to peek inside, and switches on the monitor to check her calendar. A private appointment at noon – that’s her yoga class – otherwise, the day is wide open.
    Will she tell the staff today? She unwinds her scarf and sits down to think. It would be great to have one less thing to fret about through Christmas. But she’s got to be calm about it, and matter-of-fact. A touch of wry wit. She’s not there yet.
Are you taking this as a personal failure?
Aiden asked last night.
Failure?
Liz said.
When have I ever pretended to have any influence over Sylvie?
But the whole thing is bound to reflect badly on her. It’s just a fact – even people who like her and respect her will have a little laugh at her expense. So who in Liz’s shoes wouldn’t be anxious?
    Two nights ago, when Aiden brought Sylvie home with him from the office, her eyes were swollen from crying.