The Roma Plot. Mario Bolduc

Max O’Brien lost contact with Kevin Dandurand and his family. Max did visit them in Montreal a few times, but for Kevin and Caroline, Kevin especially, he represented the past. Gabrielle was the only one whose attitude toward him hadn’t changed. The girl was growing so quickly. She’d started school and was learning, little by little, to go without her mother, who was often off to Toronto for work. The family now had the means to pay for a full-time nanny to take care of Sacha when Caroline was away.

      Kevin seemed to enjoy his job at Nordopak. His truce with Raymond held despite Sharon’s now-official role as his new wife, a role that still bothered Kevin, though his mother had been dead for years. Kevin had convinced himself that Raymond could do whatever he wanted with his love life. He wasn’t cheating on anyone anymore. Perhaps Raymond had even been sensitive by keeping this woman — and their daughter, Josée — far from his first family. Kevin had learned that his father’s relationship with his mother had soured long, long before. They’d only remained married for Kevin. Ironically, Roxanne’s death had put an end to an impossible situation for both of them.

      At the time, all of eleven years old, Kevin had interpreted Sharon and Josée coming to the house on avenue Shorncliffe as a betrayal. His father’s betrayal, combined with his mother’s defeat: a painful shaming Kevin sought to avenge. And yet, curiously, Sharon had ended up being a wonderful substitute mother, in some ways better for him than Roxanne had ever been. She had often come to Kevin’s defence, though he wasn’t her own son. The situation with Josée, his half-sister, was entirely different. While Kevin hated his father, the little girl adored him, and felt much closer to her father than to her mother, Sharon. This powerful affection negatively impacted her relationship with her half-brother, four years older than she. A sort of cold war had begun, unchanged by the passage of the two children into their teenage years. In fact, Raymond had been forced to intervene a number of times between the two of them, usually to Josée’s advantage. Kevin had had the impression they were ganging up on him to make his life miserable.

      Sharon had been the neutral arbiter. She was interested in Kevin’s day-to-day life and treated him with respect. She was the one who remembered his birthday every year and drove him to the hockey rink on Saturday mornings. She was the one who made sure his grades were good in school, who waited for him when he came home late from a party in high school while Raymond slept soundly in their bedroom. Kevin was especially impressed by how Sharon could hold her own against his father’s mind games, something Roxanne hadn’t been able to do. Kevin had never understood his mother’s seemingly shameless and total submission toward Raymond. He’d even talked about it with Roxanne — he was nine, maybe ten years old at the time. Even back then he had been able to intuit that the relationship between his mother and father was a strange one. But, as always, Roxanne had avoided the question. Kevin had insisted, and so she’d answered, “Your father can do whatever he wants. Do you understand?”

      No, he hadn’t. But Roxanne had refused to say more.

      A few days after her death Raymond had told him to get in the passenger seat of the Cadillac. Without another word, father and son drove to the countryside. They eventually reached a small river, made famous after a local newspaper’s exposé on young people drinking beers and smoking grass around campfires on its banks. To the great despair of the neighbours.

      Raymond parked his car near the river and got out. Finally, he broke the silence. “Come on. Give me a hand.”

      In the car’s trunk, Roxanne’s personal effects. Boxes filled with her clothes, books, perfume. A scarf she had loved dearly. Raymond had lit a fire on the pile of ashes left by the previous night’s revellers and thrown all of his wife’s possessions on it. Soon, the objects were only smoke in a clear blue sky.

      Raymond took his son by the shoulders. “Your mother’s belongings are with her now. She’ll need them up there.”

      Carried by the wind, a half-burned piece of paper floated above the trees. Raymond didn’t notice it. Kevin ran after it, finally catching it at the foot of a tree. He recognized his mother’s writing, the sharpness of it. A piece of paper saved from the flames. Half a sentence printed on it in a language he couldn’t read. He thought for a moment of asking his father what it meant, but just then, a voice called him back to the car. It was time to go. His father’s shouts wiped the thought from his mind, and Kevin simply put the piece of paper in his pocket and hurried back.

      Years later, as Kevin and Max had been getting ready for a con, Kevin emptied his wallet out to get into character. Among the usual IDs and documents, that small piece of half-burnt paper, which Kevin had kept all those years.

      “The only keepsake I have of my mother.”