Trigger warnings: The second section discusses drunk driving collisions. 

The third section of this chapter discusses residential schools and child abuse. It's not detailed or graphic. 

***

The tent walls lit up with the glow of the morning sun as I peeled my eyes open. Beside me, Caleb lay in a black sleeping bag, staring at the ceiling.

"Hey, you're still here," I teased.

He laughed. "Where else would I be?"

"On a beach? Exploring the campsite? Fishing for breakfast?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Have I disappointed you then? You were expecting breakfast in bed?" His smile told me he was only joking.

"Nah, I'm perfectly happy with Caleb in bed." I grinned until I realized how that sounded. "I didn't mean that like a..." My cheeks burned.

He chuckled as he studied me with those green eyes, blooming with curiosity and affection. "Don't worry. I get it. There is something special about waking up next to the person who cares about you. It's why I didn't leave. I can explore the campsite or the park anytime, but these are the moments you don't get back. The first morning waking up beside your girlfriend after you find out how much she likes you."

My heart filled with warmth. "The amount of cheese on your potatoes last night must not have satisfied you."

He laughed again, which after yesterday was a relief to see. "Say what you want, but I do it for that adorable smile you get seconds before the sarcasm."

I swallowed, that was my go-to for downplaying how I felt. I'd never liked to be the one who jumped in first emotionally, even though I'd already done it with him. "I do quite like it, and you."

He propped himself up on an elbow, his upper body poking out of the sleeping bag. He reached out to stroke my hair and the side of my face, his fingertips soft like flower peteals. "Can I kiss you?"

"Not worried about morning breath?" I teased again.

"It doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you."

"Me neither just seems like one of those things you're supposed to say."

He chuckled again, brightening up his smile. I loved that cute way he stared at me. 

"Since when do you say or do the things you're expected to?"

He leaned in for a tender, lingering kiss that warmed me more than the sleeping bag cocooning me.

***

It took us a while to get moving as we savoured each cuddle, laugh, and smile between us in the tent. With Caleb pointing out it was our first morning waking up together as a genuine couple, it felt like it needed to be appreciated. Our train wasn't leaving until 5 pm and our total drive today was under an hour, so we had the time.

Within the park, we strolled around Coffee Cove, near a couple of beaches close to the marina, and enjoyed the beautiful greenery and vistas of Paint Lake. I was sure Caleb was a large part of it, but this was becoming one of my favourite parks in the province. Though I wouldn't want to come back without him.

We walked through a section with thin-trunked white spruce and balsam fir, allowing us to see further into the forest and sections of the dark lake. I cherished each breath of fresh piny air and the relative quietness of the area aside from the far-off boat motors. Soon we'd be back in the car for the final stretch to Thompson and stuck on a train full of people for hours.

Caleb was so content right now, his attention divided between sharing smiles with me and examining the flora he'd missed yesterday at the falls. His hand kept returning to mine after he'd stray to kneel down to inspect a flower or stem. I was glad to have him back to his regular self, though we hadn't returned to the highway yet.

Would Caleb be okay for the drive? Would it be easier for him to be in control of the vehicle? Despite his outburst, I didn't see Caleb's actions going beyond honking, so if it would help, perhaps it was worth offering him that option.

"Did you want to drive today?" I asked.

He shook his head. "After yesterday, I should not be behind the wheel of a car. Not in a country where the side of the road they drive on confuses me." He paused and looked at me with his brows melding together in concern. "Are you worried about driving?"

"No, I just thought it might help you."

He stroked my hand with his thumb. "Are you sure you're not worried? I won't react like yesterday even if we get cut off again. I promise." His eyes were wide and sincere.

"I'm not, honest." If anything, I was concerned about him. "Is that the first time that happened?"

His gaze went to the mossy forest floor and earthen path. "No... I wish it were." He was silent, but I kept looking in his direction, awaiting the rest of the story. "A few days after I got home, I was driving with my mom to the hospital and this asshole blew a red light, almost swiping the front of the car. I was so furious, yelling and cursing, ready to chase him down, so I had to pull over. My mum took me aside later and told me that as much as she wanted me to stay in Cardwell, she thought it would help to attend the wedding like I'd planned."

"It helped. You weren't angry at all when we met."

He sighed. "But I hurt you yesterday."

"I could tell you didn't mean to, and it came from a non-malicious place, so it didn't hurt. It just made me wish I knew how to help."

"Still." He released my hand rubbed his together. "And at the wedding, I was upset when your friends wanted to take shots, even if you would have been fine after one drink. I ruined a fun memory you could have had with them."

So I hadn't imagined his discomfort then. Alcohol must have been involved in the crash. "I sensed something wasn't right then. And you didn't ruin. I have plenty of other great memories with them from the wedding."

"You could have had a drink. It wasn't fair of me to be awkward about it."

"You didn't ask. That was my choice." We stepped over a rooty section of the path. "Was the driver who hit your sister drinking?"

He nodded slightly.

"That's awful, Caleb. I'm sorry." He was quiet as our backs turned to the lake and we begun the short journey back to the car. "What happened to them?"

"He's still alive, but his passenger died on impact."

A brick dropped into my gut. I was afraid to ask how old they were because I suspected they'd died far too young. "That's awful."

He nodded solemnly. "They were both practically kids, eighteen and nineteen."

"That's so tragic."

Tears lined his eyes as he nodded. I took his hand and squeezed it gently in mine. "We don't have to talk about this," he mumbled.

"I'm good to talk about whatever. If this is helping, keep going. If not, we can move on." Discussing death when his sister was still in that coma couldn't be easy.

He sighed and ran his free hand through his hair twice. "I don't know how everyone else in my family can be calm about it. They want him to recover too, and I just... I want him to pay and to suffer." Caleb's head bent down like a water-starved flower head.

"He did something terrible, and it hurt your sister. It's okay to feel that, as long as you don't act on it. I can't ever see you doing that."

His glassy eyes met mine. "I've got you worried?"

"No, not at all. With everything that person did, there'd be no way the justice system would let him walk away from this. He will pay with the rest of his life."

A bird call echoed from our left.

"14 years."

"Sorry."

"The maximum sentence in Queensland for vehicular manslaughter while drink driving is 14 years. After that, he'll have his life back, and his passenger won't. My sister might not either."

I ran my hand over his back. "She might have a decent life by then. They haven't ruled that out yet, have they?"

He pressed his lips together. "No, but it could be awful, or she could end up like the passenger."

I swallowed hard. There was a fine line between toxic positivity and fighting catastrophizing. I really hoped my next statement would find it. "She hasn't, though. If that happens, you'll have support to get through it from family, from me. Right now she's fighting to stay alive from what you've told me."

He nodded and leaned further into my touch, which I turned into a one-armed hug, resting my head against his chest. 

"I didn't want my problems to take over the trip," he said.

"The wedding was a giant 'Audrey's problems' night followed up by an 'Audrey jumps in a lake instead of having an actual conversation about her feelings', and preceded by 'Audrey breaks down around her mom', all of which you had witness and deal with, so I think I'm ahead on the emotional train wreck count."

Despite his tear-streaked face, he chuckled. "I think I'm at three too from the car yesterday, the conversations today, and hurting you at the beach."

"So we're even stevens, no worries."

His expression grew more solemn. "For now. I can't promise this won't keep affecting you, whereas your problems are rather settled with your ex behind you, your mom at a distance, and you are quite aware that I adore you. This isn't an ideal state for me to be in for our relationship."

Despite his overall tone, that second last part lit up my heart. "It may not be ideal, but it's an awful state to be in alone, isn't it?"

He looked into my eyes and paused before nodding.

"So not ideal is better than alone," I said.

"Not for you."

"Yes, it is because watching you go through that alone pains me. So whether you believe it, this is the easier option. Because I care about you far too much to not be affected by your suffering. Plus, there's the bonus of getting to be with the man I adore."

He wrapped his arms around me, a sensation that was growing into one of my favourites. Every muscle relaxed in his embrace, and we let the gentle swishing of the trees in the breeze and the crisp forest scent soothe us even further.

Yet despite his touch and the beautiful park, troublesome thoughts crept in like ivy.

Would he be alright when he returned home? 

Would our video calls be able to calm him down like this? 

What on earth would I do if they didn't?

***

Thompson was a slightly bigger community than I was expecting, but not large compared to others in the province. It had a double-lane ring road that circled a residential area, a few strip malls, apartment buildings, Canadian Tire and Walmart box stores, as well as several hotel chains, and a hospital. With all the chain restaurants and stores with generous parking lots, it had a bit of a generic North American small-town vibe, those you drove through looking for lunch or fuel during a road trip. Although there was a sweet wolf mural painted on one of the taller apartment buildings, and a few painted wolf statues along the way, which gave it character.

I drove to Thompson Lion's Park on the Burntwood River for us to check out a few of the statues close up. In the distance a long arched bridge crossed it which would be where we parked it to take the train.

After I parked, we approached a red bush plane mounted on a display facing the river behind the three wolf statues. One statue had more of a natural landscape painted on it with water, rocks and a man in a wolf headdress, and flames burning at the wolf's paws. The next had an Inukshuk, the face of a person in a parka, a wolf and a full moon, while the final depicted the settler history of Thompson, which got it start as a nickel mining town in the 1950s, although Indigenous groups lived in the area much longer.

The Norseman bush plane had been restored to celebrate aviation in Canada's North and how it contributed to economic growth. Near the plane, a monument mentioned how bush planes like this one were used to take Indigenous children away from their families and off to residential schools to face horrors the Canadian government had only begun to acknowledge and address. That dark part of the Canadian identity left me colder than the lake waters Caleb dreaded.

"Residential schools happened here too?" he asked in a quiet tone.

I nodded. For over 150 years, the government had a system in place to break Indigenous communities and eradicate their culture by taking their children away to residential schools where they couldn't return home for ten months at a time. It gave them a 'good Christian education', which was mostly child labour and abuse, to help them 'integrate' into a society that didn't view them as fully human. Many stories of abuse, from malnourishment to physical, psychological and sexual abuse, and death either from disease, mistreatment, or failed escape from these horrific institutions. It wasn't lost on me that these 'good Christians' created an experience akin to hell for the most vulnerable section of the population in their twisted minds, thinking they were doing the lord's work. I had never connected with religion as a kid, and this was a significant reason for that disconnect to remain lifelong.

Could the British empire be so awful to have replicated that experience on the other side of the world? It wasn't that far-fetched.

"It happened in Australia too?"

Caleb drew his lips into a thin line. "They'd take kids from the outback and move them to a completely unfamiliar environment like the coast to disorientate them and lessen their chances of escaping home and vice versa."

"Out here, the communities are so far apart that flying them away had a similar impact. There are unmarked graves at many of the so-called schools for the ones who never made it home. Other kids died trying to escape. It's fucking horrifying." 

Anger burned in me each time I thought about it. The abuse went on for over a hundred years, with the last one closing in 1996. The thought that these still ran during my lifetime made my skin crawl with fire ants.

"It is. My friend's grandparents attended them, and they only talked about it briefly in recent years. I can't imagine living through anything like that. That it was cross-continental is equally abominable," Caleb said.

"It really is."

As much as I clashed with my mom, I knew underneath her backhanded compliments and meddling that she did it because she loved me and wanted me to be successful. My dad wasn't the most physically or verbally affectionate person, but he also cared in his own way. 

Except in rare cases or for those in day schools instead of residential ones, Indigenous kids didn't get any parental love for almost an entire year. When they came home, they hesitated to speak their language, as doing so at school resulted in abuse. The European settlers taught them to be ashamed of their culture, and the children returned as different people than they left. I could hardly imagine what that would do to your sense of belonging, worth, and worldview not to mention your family dynamics. It's a fate I'd never wish on anyone.

"Targeting children is deplorable. People say that was the way things were, trying to gain territory and resources, plus groups always fought often brutally, but European settlers signed treaties with Indigenous people agreeing on how to share the land and resources then turned around to rid themselves of that responsibility by commit genocide starting with the kids who were at the heart of these communities. Many Indigenous communities saw their purpose as protecting and raising the children and ensuring the survival of future generations, but when you rob them of their children, you steal that purpose."

Caleb sighed. "It's fucked what people will do to each other, and it doesn't seem to stop."

The path forward was a challenging one, considering that Indigenous people were still overrepresented in foster care and prisons. The old system may have disappeared on paper, but the systematic racism and effects of genocide hadn't.

This turned into a bit of a heavier chapter, thanks for getting through it. We will be on the train to Churchill in the next one, and I'm planning to keep it a bit more lighthearted (but it's not quite written yet so we'll see :)  

The knowledge I have about residential schools in Canada comes from both texts written by Indigenous writers as well as seminars I've taken led by Indigenous hosts who've discussed the impacts that colonization had on their communities. What happened is so heartbreaking and malicious, and given that this story takes place in Northern Manitoba where a lot of Indigenous communities are (and in some cases were relocated by the Canadian government to get Indigenous communities off more desirable land they wanted settlers to have), it felt pertinent to include this discussion. 

Earlier in the book I had mentioned the trial for the serial killer targeting Indigenous women. This summer, the man responsible was charged with four first-degree murder convictions, which come with an automatic life sentence with no parole for 25 years. It doesn't undo the damage, but at least it's some sort of justice.