Part 1 / Chapter Two ⥈ Sisters, from Her Side
Our dad gave each of us kids a nickel when we turned five with the year of our birth on it. He loved collector coins and later bought us each the commemorative 1967 Centennial Canadian coin set. It included a $20.00 gold coin, which was a real prize in those days. He'd been trained as a jeweller in his home country and always dabbled in gold. A knock at my door at 8:30 in the evening surprised me. I opened it, and there stood my sister with a large bottle of red wine. "I came by to see how you're doing," she said. She was 28 and had just returned from living at Pink Mountain and Fort Nelson, in northern British Columbia. I was 34 and reeling from a very new divorce. "Oh my god," I said. My eyes filled with tears. The kids were with their dad and this was my 3rd night alone. "You are an angel." She seemed all grown up. Five years earlier, I'd seen her off in her gold 1972 Chevy Nova, packed with her f...