Chapter Text
Chapter One - You gotta go there to come back.
“Are you ready?”
Alex’s voice came from the doorway, warm, careful, deliberately steady. She tugged the zipper of her bag closed and rested her palm on it, as if holding the moment still, as if this pause could be preserved if she tried hard enough.
Kara didn’t answer.
She stood in the middle of the granny flat, the first place she felt at home since leaving her hometown. Her safe space, where she and the ghost she carried lived for years.
Morning light slid across the polished wooden floors, catching on the corners of furniture she’d placed with intention, warming the leaves of plants she tended with near-reverence. The air smelled of eucalyptus oil and roasted coffee beans, of routine and silence. Of safety.
This place had never asked her to be anything more than what she already was. It didn’t demand resilience. It didn’t reward endurance. It didn’t require her to swallow grief or soften sharp edges. It simply held her.
That was why leaving it felt like tearing skin from bone. She left her house for trips many times, just not like this, to go back, There.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said finally. “It’s only three months, I think I’ll survive.”
The words landed hollow, even to her own ears.
Three months was a sentence when measured against memory. Three months was long enough for old wounds to split back open, long enough to remember why she had left in the first place. Long enough to feel seen in ways she no longer wanted.
She moved slowly through the room, letting her gaze linger, letting herself catalogue the life she had built here as if repetition might fix it in place. The bookshelf she’d assembled alone, stubborn and aching, refusing help even when she’d needed it. The couch angled precisely to catch the late afternoon sun. The photograph she had never taken down, though she rarely let herself look directly at it.
Passport.
Wallet.
Her fingers paused.
The orca rested on the low shelf, pale and smooth from years of handling. She picked it up, turning it over in her palm. The weight of it was familiar, small enough to be carried anywhere, heavy enough to matter. It held a history she never articulated aloud, something shared, and something lost. She slipped it into her jacket pocket, where it had lived for years, a quiet constant against her ribs.
Alex stepped fully into the room, her eyes softening as they swept over the space. “You’re going to miss this,” she said.
Kara huffed out a breath that almost became a laugh. “I already do.”
Alex reached for the suitcase, more out of instinct than necessity. “We couldn’t believe it when you told us you bought us a house,” she said gently, remembering when her sister told them she bought them a house in Sydney, Australia. She thought she was joking because they did not have the money for this; they grew up poor back in Canada, so much so that there were barely any beds for them when they were growing up—until Kara, in the same phone call, asked her and their brother Kent to look at their email and check for tickets to come to Sydney, because they needed to talk. “But you did. And you kept your little fortress. You always keep the parts that feel right. Even when it costs you. I know it wasn’t easy to continue to live here after everything that happened.”
Kara lifted the suitcase and slung it over her shoulder. “It’s ok,” she said, voice steady despite the pressure in her chest.
Outside, the main house stood broad and open, renovated to welcome noise, laughter, chaos. She had bought and renovated it for her siblings, so they would also have a home here for whenever they needed a break from their hometown. So they would never feel the way she had felt growing up. But the granny flat had always been hers—and her ghost.
“I know leaving this place is hard,” Alex said as they walked down the path. Her hand brushed Kara’s elbow, brief, grounding. “That’s why we came.”
Kara glanced at her. Alex met her gaze without flinching, without pity. “You weren’t going to do this alone,” she said simply.
Gratitude twisted painfully with resistance. Kara had learned early not to lean too hard on anyone, even the people who loved her most.
“What we’re doing,” Kara said after a moment, “isn’t about me.”
Alex stopped beneath the dappled shade of the trees. “I know,” she said softly. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t costing you.”
Kara didn’t say anything. Her sister knew that going back to their hometown would cost her everything she had tried to rebuild and keep together.
Beyond them, Sydney hummed awake, buses exhaling at the curb, traffic threading itself together. Alex eyed the bus stop with thinly veiled distrust.
“We could take a car,” she offered. “Comfort isn’t a crime.”
Kara adjusted her backpack. “Public transport is good here, it works,” she said. “Besides, I need to leave like this. On my own feet.”
Alex studied her, then nodded. “Okay.”
At the airport, Kent waited near the gate, leaning against a pillar as if he’d always been there. Hands in his pockets. Attention, wide and unassuming. When he saw them, he gave a small nod.
“Hey.”
He took the suitcase from Kara without asking, adjusting his grip easily. Strength without display. Loyalty without performance.
“Figure it, we could grab something to eat here before the flight.”
“Plane food’s questionable,” he added quietly.
Her brother was a gentle giant. Always one step ahead, always thinking about everyone else first before himself. He is not picky about food, but knows that once Kara is on that plane, her stomach will be in knots and she won’t be able to stomach anything.
Kara smiled despite herself.
They settled at a café near the gate, the smell of coffee and pastry wrapping around them. Alex immediately ordered something substantial for the three of them. Kent got a sandwich and a hot chocolate, and Kara and Alex settled for some croissants and coffee.
“The gardens are nearly ready for winter,” Alex said, stirring her cup. “Michelle told me that the kids helped plant garlic yesterday. I’m covering the herbs once we are there. Frost doesn’t forgive mistakes.”
Kent watched planes drift lazily across the tarmac. “The new bike trail by the creek should be ready for a test soon. It’s been raining quite a bit this autumn, but it is draining well, and that geologist we hired was spot on with the placement of the routes and how to drain them properly. The trail-crew guys wanted me to thank you for sending them on that two-week trail-building course in Whistler. It was super helpful. The kids will love it, we all will.”
Kara just nodded once. Still extremely uncomfortable with praise or thanks. She never got many of those when she was growing up.
Alex nodded. “I want the kids to see what happens when you care for something long enough.”
Kent smiled faintly. “They need places that let them grow.”
Kara listened, absorbing the familiar cadence of their voices. Her siblings had come all this way, dropped work, rearranged lives, just to sit beside her while she faced the one place she had never fully made peace with.
Alex turned to her. “You’ll see how much it’s changed when you’re back.”
Kara’s fingers curled around the orca in her pocket. It was hard to imagine Canmore different from what it was ten years ago, the last time she was back there for their grandmother’s funeral. But she supposed that, since they started planning this project with their friends three years ago, some things must be different. She just hoped it made a difference and everybody got on the same page. The only way for this to work was if the whole town embraced it and worked together as a community.
So far, she had been able to coordinate everything from afar, trusting her siblings and close friends to decide what needed to be done. She hadn’t lived there for nearly twenty years, so she felt she wasn’t the best person to arrive and tell people what to do. It had to come from them; they needed to care more than her, more than they ever cared in the past, in late-night conversations at the bar, throwing ideas into the universe of what they would do if they had the means to help other people, so no one would have to go through their lives scared of their future, or feel lost, or unprepared for the world. So they would always have a place where they belonged and where it belonged to them, where they felt safe.
That was why she was going back now, to launch the project, to tie the loose ends, to make sure everything was steady before she left again. Then she would come home. Then she would be okay. She was going back because something good needed her, because the project mattered, because the community mattered, because children deserved spaces that had never existed when she was young.
Boarding was called. They walked together through the glass corridor. Alex’s hand brushed Kara’s once. Kent stayed close, protective without intrusion. Her siblings were her rock now. She was still learning to be okay with that, to accept their help, to accept that they cared about her, but there were still plenty of parts of her that were guarded, even more after everything that happened. Still, she was trying. And she really needed both of them now, more than ever.
The plane lifted. Sydney folded in on itself and disappeared beneath the clouds.
Kara hated takeoff, the moment gravity released its hold, and the body had to choose whether to fight or trust. It reminded her too much of other departures.
Alex slept quickly, head tipped toward the window. Kent sat beside Kara, book open, engaged in one of his action novels. Kent had come a long way; he was never much interested in books until he read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. For some reason, that book clicked with him, and now he was on his way to No Country for Old Men. Kent had always been very quiet, but he and Kara bonded through their shared love of the outdoors and outdoor sports, and now books. Kara promised him they would watch both movie adaptations of the books he was reading, and he was quite excited about it. It was the first time Kara had spent such an extended period with her brother, just doing normal brother-and-sister things. Everything was still very new for all of them.
Alex was the hopeful one of the three of them, the youngest, always happy and ready to deal with and understand everything. This project wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for her. She was a good kid. Twenty-six years old, but in Kara’s eyes and Kent’s, always their little sister.
Kara closed her eyes.
She didn’t invite the memory.
Canmore came anyway.
Snow under her boots. Mountains pressing close. A presence that once felt inevitable. Years of longing, of hoping, of dreaming. One day, under a starry night, a meeting at the park, more years of hoping, and a kiss that came too late and lingered too long.
Then;
the same streets.
the same trails.
the same sky.
laughter offered to someone else.
The pain was precise. Familiar.
Kara opened her eyes, breath sharp. She pressed her nails into her palm and found the orca. Solid. Real.
Other memories stirred, older, heavier ones. Learning young how to absorb, to protect, to be the shield. Her siblings never knew those parts. No. They were too young to remember most of the really bad ones. Alex wasn’t even born yet. They only knew the version of her that endured.
The plane shuddered lightly. Kent shifted, close enough to remind her she wasn’t alone.
But Kara, one way or another, always ended up alone.
Pascal Mercier once said, “We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place; we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”
Kara wondered what she would find again in Canmore.
She really hoped it was peace, because she was tired of fighting her war.