The House of the Wolf

5

She decided to drive to Montreal. Train or bus would get her there faster, but she could take the famed scenic route through the Eastern Townships and still be in Montreal by nightfall. Chantal had flown to California, and now regretted not having driven there and seen the sights of the Midwest along the way. In any case, traveling by car was cheaper.

"I'll take Minnie," she told Katharine.

"That old wreck?" her cousin replied. "Better you than me."

"Minnie" was Chantal's second-hand Mini-Cooper from her high school days, still sitting in the family garage. Kath's playful jibe aside, the car was in very good condition and Chantal had intended to sell it before she went to college, using the money to buy herself a new one in Los Angeles. She was glad now that she had not succeeded. Minnie had taken her on many a road trip and seemed to her like an old and trusted companion. Chantal cleaned the vehicle inside and out, checked that the radio was working, and packed the glove compartment with her road maps, flashlight and cell phone. She always kept everything in the same place: it gave her a sense of reassurance, like having her own little home away from home.

"Chantal dear," Aunt Lorraine said as she watched her niece load her luggage into the trunk, "we don't want you to feel you have to leave. You're welcome to stay here as long as you like – even live with us after we move in. You're much too young to be on your own."

"I understand, Aunt Lorraine. And thanks." Much as she appreciated her aunt's kindness, Chantal could not endure the thought of remaining in the house. It was so desolate now, so haunted with loss and memory. Uncle Phil's family would not be moving in for at least a month, so she would be all alone during that time. The road trip to her birthplace was as much a timely escape as a sentimental journey.

Despite living within a literal stone's throw of her home province she had never actually visited it. Her grandparents had allowed her to travel to France with her school French club, but when she wanted to attend a summer course in Quebec Nana had put her foot down. There had been quite a scene about it. Disappointingly, even Gramps had not supported Chantal: he just couldn't understand why anyone would bother to learn French. "Hardly anyone speaks it this side of the Atlantic," he said. "Why don't you learn Spanish instead? That'd be more useful to you in the long run."

"It's her French temperament coming out," Nana sniffed, forgetting her own famously short fuse, and the stubborn streak that ran through all the Vandusens. Everything that aggravated Nana about her wayward granddaughter got blamed on Chantal's Québecois ancestry.

Chantal shoved those memories to the back of her mind. There was no use dwelling on past grievances. She was eighteen now: not yet fully adult, but at the magic threshold when authority at last loosens its constraining grip. No more "legal guardians', or sitting in classrooms because the law demanded it. Any courses she took now she would choose for herself, and attend only if she wanted to. No more eating what was put before her, or being scolded for not squeezing the tube of toothpaste from the bottom up, or being out after curfew. As for Russell, his removal from the picture only expanded her freedom. The future was no longer pre-set, but stretched before her wide and unknown as the northern horizon. She was like a fledgling on its first tentative tumble from the safety of its nest, fear and elation intermingling as its wings embraced the air; or like a salmon departing the quiet pool of its hatching to rush headlong down streams and rapids in search of the unseen ocean. As she got into her car she felt the last of her bonds finally fall away.

The national boundary was here marked only by a modest stone obelisk, and a large sign reading "Welcome to Quebec". In the checkpoint booth a middle-aged border guard sat looking affable and not terribly vigilant. "Shahn-tahl Bwah-vair," he said on seeing her passport, pronouncing the name correctly in his thick Québecois accent. "You are French Canadian, hein? And where are you headed, Ms. Boisvert – to see relatives, peut-être?"