“Yeah. Kimchi puts fire in your belly,” added Kelli. That was what their mom always said.
Hannah looked at the dull white enamel bowl and its sharp-reddish contents. “I don’t want fire in my belly. I want to go to the mall.”
“We are not up here to shop,” her mother reiterated, sopping up her own stew with the bread.
“We can take out Sencha and Bogey and play in the snow, if you want,” said Kelli. “They don’t even have American Eagle at that mall, anyway.”
Kelli was only nine and didn’t know good clothes yet. Hannah told her that.
“Hannah, be respectful,” said her mother.
Her father said, “We can go to town Friday to get the snowmobile part, and on the way home we’ll stop by the mall, okay?”
“But I’m bored now, Dad.”
Her parents exchanged a look and then went on eating, ignoring Hannah. The rest of the meal passed in silence.
“You know, Peter will be there,” said Hannah’s father, pausing to butter one last hunk of bread after the meal was done. Peter was Scott’s son. He was older than Hannah by a couple of years and his mother had died some time ago, when Peter was much younger.
“I hate Peter,” said Hannah. “He’s obnoxious. He doesn’t know anything and he acts like he still owns this place.”
Her mother rose and began clearing the dishes, nodding to Kelli to help. “He’s just different. He was brought up here, Hannah, like your father. They learn different things here.”
“He listens to country music,” said Hannah.
“I like country,” said Kelli. She started singing
as she took the dishes to the big single sink and placed them on the washing side. “O give me a home, where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope plaaaaay.”
“You don’t have to come,” her father said to Hannah. “I just thought you’d like to see them.”
“I don’t,” said Hannah. If she went she would be forced to call Scott her “uncle” and Jeb her “aunt,” even though they weren’t really her family. Peter never called her mother Aunt Mina. Jeb in particular gave her the creeps, with all her military stuff and the way she looked at Hannah as though she were a total stranger, even though they’d been going over there since she was five years old. She’d used to call her Aunt Jenny, but Jeb’s Army nickname (the initials of her full name, Jenny Eliza Barrett) had stuck after she came home.
“You’re going, Hannah,” said her mom. “Don’t be so unfriendly. It’ll be good to see Peter, and you need to get outside every day.”
Hannah stared at her mother, who was drying the dishes that Kelli was washing. Her mom had diabetes, and she was a freak about making sure she got lots of outdoor exercise. She was even more of a freak about making Hannah and her sister do it.
“Am I done?” asked Kelli. At her mother’s nod, Kelli dried her hands and went to the picture window that dominated the living room. She looked out to where the doghouses could just be seen in the deepening shadows of the trees. Afternoon was passing swiftly. By five o’clock it would be fully dark.
“Dad,” said Kelli.
“Hmm?” said her father. He was putting his parka on.
“Which is your favourite of all our dogs?”
Her father’s moustache tweaked from side to side as he considered. “Nook,” he said finally. Nook, like Rudy, was a husky cross — no one knew exactly where they were descended from, except that it was a sledding line. She was the daughter of one of the dogs he had owned before he went to teach in Korea, before he met her mother and they got married.
“I like Bogey,” confided Kelli.
“Little Jane Austen is the best,” said their mom. Sencha lifted her head and wagged the tip of her tail.
“People aren’t supposed to have favourite dogs,” said Hannah.
“Okay, enough bellyaching,” said her dad. “Let’s keep on keeping on.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent doing more chores. Hannah dug out their SUV while her dad cleared the long, thin driveway that led back to the long, thin dirt road that led to the long, thin paved road that took them to Timmins. It was an hour to town by car in the middle of summer, an hour and a half in the winter.
After a while, Kelli came out with Bogey. She threw a pink tennis ball into the snow and the big brown Lab plowed after it, breaking a trail for her.