Certainty Read Free Page A

motivations she does not doubt. She knows that a single act, a choice, can transform all that came before. Long ago, when she was young, she risked her future on this belief.
    Clara stands at the cutting table, smoothing the paper pattern that she drew earlier in the day. She pins the pieces down, examining the weave of the cloth as she works. If she concentrates, she will be able to finish this gown before morning.
    Across the hall, she can hear floorboards creaking, and she pictures her husband rising from bed, standing at the curtains, gazing out at this starlit night. When she first met him more than forty years ago, they had been drawn to one another because of their differences. On the surface, they had been north and south, light and dark. Back then, he had carried a hollow within himself, a grief that he could not share. To each other, they had seemed the way out, the path that leads along the river, finally opening on to the sea.
    Nearby is the house where her daughter lived. Gail was a runner, and each day she would pass by Clara’s window. She would detour through the alley, into the garden, blowing a playful kiss to her mother as she passed. Clara would watch the easy movement of her daughter’s body until it disappeared around the corner.
    She picks up the chalk, traces the pieces with a steady hand. The halogen lamp flickers and steadies itself again. In the alley, a stray cat walking between the houses sets the security lights off one by one. Lately, the strangest thought has settled in her mind. If she repeats her own actions on the morning that Gail died, she can pass between days, the way a pin passes through this piece of paper, leaving only the faintest trace. Time will bend backwards on itself and Clara will look out the window, see her daughter returning from her run. The way her dark hair sticks to her face, the same determined expression. Prince George, the hotel room, the suitcase of clothes all disintegrating. As clean as the opening of a seam.
    She sits down at her sewing machine, replaces the bobbin and threads the needle. She has done this same work almost all her life. Her hands take over when her thoughts retreat.
    In the bedroom, Matthew wakes hearing music, a song played on a phonograph, the rustle and scratch of air on the recording. When he opens his eyes, the dream and the music evaporate. The windows are open, and a cool breeze drifts through the room, holding the curtains aloft. Moonlight gleams off the roofs of the houses, and the leaves shift in the trees. He pushes the covers aside and sits up.
    When he first arrived in Vancouver, Matthew felt free in this city. The buildings showed no wear, they seemed untouched by the passage of time. Indeed, it seemed as if once they reached a certain age, old buildings came down and new ones replaced them. The mountains, near and distant, the ocean, all these things changed from day to day, never quite the same. During the winters, it rained almost all the time, sheets of water like a brush coating everything, dimming the sounds to a quiet murmur.
    When Matthew and his daughter walked together, along Keefer, then Pender, she used to whisper the street names under her breath. Matthew would tell her stories about his childhood before the war, about Sandakan, until he realized that she remembered so much. She wanted to hear everything, to know how the story continued. His words ran dry. She was half his height then; the crown of her head reached his waist. He remembers carrying his daughter, her hands clasped around his neck, feeling as if he held a treasure in his arms. He held her so tightly, careful of each step he made.
    Six months ago, his daughter died suddenly in her sleep. She was away working in the north of the province. It was Matthew who received the phone call, who was the one to tell his wife. He knows that all one’s grief cannot stop the present, cannot change the way a life unfolds.
    Now, when he walks through this neighbourhood, he