The Waterproof Bible Read Free Page A

not thick at all.” Lisa turned in her seat and faced her sister. “It’s really thin. Are you suggesting what I think you are?”
    “Do you really love him?”
    “You know I do.”
    “Is he worthy of you?”
    “I know you don’t think he is, but he really is.”
    “So, yes, I am suggesting that. Everyone and anyone. Start the night you get back, if you can.”
    Lisa took her older sister’s advice. The shared wall proved even less soundproof than imagined. Lewis lasted three weeks. Nineteen months later, they were married. Rebecca’s plan had worked, and she’d never forgiven herself for it.
    “Rebecca?” her mother repeated.
    “We almost got in an accident. Then he just left. He walked away. He said he was sorry.” Rebecca looked up at her mother and tried to smile. “Should we go in?”
    “Okay.”
    Still holding her mother’s hand as they walked into the church, Rebecca saw her father sitting in a pew at the very front. But as they walked towards him, Rebecca began to feel very strange. With each step she took the strange feeling grew. And as she took her seat beside her father, she realized it wasn’t a strange feeling. It was no feeling at all.

3
Forty-five square feet of canvas
    One thousand, eight hundred and four kilometres west of Lisa’s funeral, Stewart Findley waited on the top step of the only post office in Morris, Manitoba. Metaphorically, Stewart was waiting for a number of things to happen, but at this precise moment he was waiting for Margaret, his boss, who was now forty-seven minutes late.
    Taking his cellphone from his pocket, Stewart confirmed that he had no missed calls and then hopped down the steps to the sidewalk. He looked south down Main Street but still didn’t see her. He kicked the large cube, which was made of several layers of folded canvas, at the bottom of the stairs, then turned and continued to wait. As he checked his cellphone again, he heard Margaret’s truck.
    The truck came into view, red, old and given to as many eccentricities as its driver. Seeing Margaret behind the wheel, Stewart tried once again to guess her age. Of all the strange things about her—she seldom blinked, her skin often had a greenish tinge to it, she was very strong, and she owned and operated a hotel that rarely had guests—it was her indeterminate age that Stewart found the most perplexing. He had been the Prairie Embassy Hotel’s only employee for three and a half years, but he had never been able to figure out how old Margaret was.His highest guess was seventy and his lowest was thirty-seven; with both estimations he’d been confident that he’d finally got it right. As Stewart watched Margaret park in front of the post office, he made another guess: fifty-seven, as there was something taxed and sweaty about her today.
    Leaving the engine running, Margaret slid across the seat and out the passenger door. She kissed Stewart on both cheeks. “The goddamn council meeting went long,” she said. “Guess what the idiot’s solution to the drought is?”
    “Which idiot is this?”
    “The mayor. Fifty-four days, with crops perishing in the fields, and what’s his brilliant idea? He’s hiring rainmakers. Two of them, father and son. I said they could stay at the hotel for free.”
    Stewart ordinarily had little interest in the doings of the Morris Town Council, and today he cared even less. With a sweeping motion, he pointed to the cube of folded canvas on the sidewalk. It measured three feet on each side. Margaret immediately recognized what it was.
    “Is that it?” she asked.
    “It is.”
    “Your boat has a sail!” Margaret punched him in the arm, the impact knocking Stewart off balance.
    For three years, six months and one day Stewart had been the Prairie Embassy Hotel’s only employee. This, less three weeks, was exactly the amount of time he’d been building his sailboat. Although Margaret had witnessed every stage of construction, she’d never commented on the fact that