Page 17 of Touch the Sky

Shel leaps to her feet and rushes to Tess’s side so she can tug at her sleeve.

“Can I go?”

Tess’s eyes find mine.

“Um…”

She trails off, and as we stare at each other, it hits me for the first time: how young she is to have a kid as old as Shel. She can’t be much older than thirty, and Shel has got to be at least eight.

Some more of the image of her I’d painted in my head flakes away, leaving a stretch of blank canvas underneath.

“Oh, don’t worry,”Mamansays, breaking the silence. “Jacinthe is just being dramatic. Joaquin loves to meet new people.”

I scoff. “Yeah, new victims.”

I can feel the heat on the back of my neck that means I’m about to earn another blast of The Glare fromMaman.

“But really, we will be totally fine if we show up with carrots,” I add.

Shel is bouncing on the balls of her feet now.

“Pleaaase can I go see him?” she begs.

Tess presses her lips together for a moment before she sighs. “Well, I guess Gabrielle and I do have a lot to talk about…”

I freeze with my orange juice glass halfway to my mouth.

“You do?”

I forgot all about asking what the two of them are doing here.

“They’re here to look at the back,” Maman says, a huge smile on her face that makes the corners of her eyes crinkle.

‘The back’ is what we call the rear section of the house, the one myOncleGeorge fixed up so my dirtbag cousin Yvon wouldcome live with us instead of at his parents’ place. George even paid for all the renovations himself; he was that sick of his son’s trash piles and bongs all over his house, and he knew no normal landlord was going to let a twenty-eight year-old with no credit history sign a lease.

Thankfully, everyone in the family has always had a soft spot for my mom, so Yvon was onlykind ofa shithead while he lived here, and he did do a lot of work around the farm for free, so it was a pretty good arrangement while it lasted.

Finding someone to take over the back now that Yvon’s out working construction in Alberta has been way harder than we thought, which hasn’t helped with our strained financial situation. We’ve only had a few half-interested phone calls that haven’t even led to a tour.

The back is the absolute last reason I would have guessed Tess is here today.

“They…are?” I ask.

“Yes!” Maman chirps. “Isn’t that great? Their lease in Saint-Jovite fell through, so they’re looking for a new place.”

I scan the kitchen like there might just be a pile of moving boxes already stacked in the corner.

“They’re looking…here?”

Maman chuckles. “Oui, ma fille. Did you forget to have your coffee this morning? Keep up!”

She ignores my baffled face as she pulls the last remaining chair out from the table and plops herself down.

“Alors, how about this?” she says. “Tess and I will have a little chat in here while you two go visit Joaquin, and then we’ll all go look at the back together. Does that sound okay?”

It sounds like I’m still ten steps behind everybody else, so I just bob my head and hope for the best.

“That’s good with me,” Tess says, “as long as you don’t mind?”