Always Watching

sometimes.”
    “About what?” She looked confused, her brows pulling together.
    “I think I was scared of Aaron. I didn’t like being around him.”
    “Why on earth would you have been scared of him? He was so nice to you. When he took a few of us on that picnic up at the lake because we’d been working hard, you even got to sit in the front of the truck with him.”
    I tried to think about a time we might have gone on a picnic, but nothing came to mind. I shook my head.
    “I don’t remember any of that.” But I did remember the fog my mom had been in back then. “Are you sure it was me?”
    “Of course it was you. You liked Aaron. After Coyote died, Aaron spent hours down at the river teaching you how to swim.”
    I thought back. “I can’t remember that either.”
    My mom looked like she couldn’t understand why I was being so dense. “We couldn’t get you back in the river until he started helping you.”
    “I didn’t like him. He made me nervous.”
    She sounded surprised now. “He’s the reason you know how to swim.”
    I was embarrassed that I had no recollection of any swimming lessons, and that I’d voiced my uncomfortable feelings about Aaron—feelings she obviously didn’t share.
    “Do you remember a girl named Willow?”
    She paused for a minute, thinking, and then nodded. “What about her?”
    “She was just really nice to me. The commune, some of the people there, for a kid it was scary. But I liked her.”
    She said, “Aaron could get carried away with all that New Age spiritual stuff, but they were all just harmless hippies.”
    It was the first time my mom had ever given an opinion on the commune’s beliefs, and her tone made me wonder if she hadn’t been on board with them as much as I’d thought. I said, “Maybe, but I just wanted to go home.”
    She looked upset for a moment and almost defensive, as she said, “You had it a lot better there than at home.”
    Feeling defensive myself, I said, “Then why did we leave?”
    Her whole body flinched, like I’d hit her, and it took her a moment to speak. “That little boy…” Her eyes were sad. “He was so sweet, just a baby still.” I was surprised by her emotional reaction after all this time, the sorrow in her face, and thought she might cry. But then she took off her glove and rubbed her hand across her nose, tossed her head with an angry jerk. “Social services were involved, the cops. It wasn’t good for you kids to be there anymore. Your dad said he was going to be home more, and I wanted to give our marriage another try.”
    Though Dad forgave her for running away, and he quit working on the boats, their marriage had never improved. If anything, it was worse. I couldn’t count how many times we had to buy plates because they’d thrown them at each other. Eventually, Dad had started spending all his time hunting, or at the pub, until Robbie came to collect him. Mom spent all her time with the horses.
    Mom put her glove back on and took another flake out of the wheelbarrow, dumped it on the ground. “The commune left after that—moved down to Victoria.” She held my gaze. “Don’t go looking for trouble, Nadine. You’ll only cause yourself pain.” She touched my cheek gently, the glove rough on my skin. “I might make a lot of mistakes, but that one I know for sure.” She grabbed the handles on the wheelbarrow and headed back to the barn.
    It was only a few weeks later that she died in the car accident.
    *   *   *
    I didn’t have any more luck with Robbie. Back then, he was living in a rental house with two guys in the village. They worked for the same logging company, building roads. I caught him alone a while later, changing the oil on his truck.
    He stopped, lit a cigarette, took a long drag. “What’s going on?”
    “I was just out at the ranch talking to Mom.”
    “Yeah? What about?” He took off his baseball cap, ran his hands through his sweaty hair and jammed it back down, black tufts winging out by his ears. He was twenty-nine at the time and still handsome, in a tough don’t-mess-with-me way, though he was uncomfortable in his body, pacing restlessly, especially in social situations, like he couldn’t wait to escape. And he never seemed to date, or have a girlfriend, that I knew of anyway.
    Since I’d moved to Victoria after high school, we didn’t spend much time together anymore, only seeing each other at family dinners and holidays, where I’d sit, depressed, staring