is when you’re fourteen,” she replied.
“Haw,” I said. There was a high-pitched squeal from the phone. “Ouch.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got new hearing aids.”
“That’s okay,” I said. Hilly had worn hearing aids since she was four, tiny things that fit into her ear canals and were almost but not quite invisible. She kept outgrowing them.
“Do you have a cold?” she asked.
“Uh, no.”
We chatted for a few minutes, catching up. Hilly usually spent the summer with me, but this year she’d spent only three weeks in July. She was getting older and there were more interesting things to do than hang around with her dad. She asked me to give her regards to Bobbi Brooks, my business partner, to Daniel Wu and Maggie Urquhart, my Sea Village neighbours, and to Harvey, Maggie’s huge Harlequin Great Dane. She then spoke those most dreaded of words: “Mom wants to speak to you.”
“Uh, what about?”
“She’ll tell you,” Hilly replied ominously. “Bye.”
There was a click, then Linda, my former spouse, came on the line.
“Hello, Tom. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. Had Linda always sounded so much like my mother? I wondered.
“Are you getting a cold?” she asked.
“I guess,” I said. “What is it you want to talk to me about?”
“Hillary?” Linda said. “Are you still on the line?” There was no answer; Hilly was smarter than that. “If you are,” Linda said, “hang up right now.”
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
“As you may know,” Linda said, “Jack’s mother and stepfather live in Australia.” Jack was Jack Flynn, Linda’s current husband, Hilly’s stepfather. Not a bad guy, as husbands of former spouses go, except that he got to see a whole lot more of my daughter than I did. He was good to Hilly, though, and she liked him, although she frequently referred to him as the “Fat Food King of Southern Ontario.” He owned a dozen or so fast food franchises in and around Toronto. Bags of money.
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“Jack’s stepfather is terminally ill.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Thank you,” Linda said. “Naturally, Jack wants to go to Australia to be with his mother.”
“Naturally,” I said. Then it dawned on me. “And he wants you and Hilly to go with him, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you expect me to object?”
“No,” she said, a little too emphatically, I thought. “Well, maybe, a little.”
“A few months in Australia would be a great experience.”
“I think so too,” Linda said. Hesitantly, she added, “But we could be gone for up to a year. After his step-father, um, passes, he wants his mother to come and live with us.”
“I would miss Hilly,” I said. “But a year isn’t such a long time. Besides, like I said, it would be a great experience.”
“That’s very understanding of you, Tom,” Linda said, as if bestowing upon me an award for behaviour above and beyond her expectations. She paused, then said, “But that isn’t the problem.”
“What is, then?”
“She doesn’t want to go. She wants to stay with you while we’re away.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed. I want you to talk to her, Tom. Tell her what you told me, that a year in Australia would be a good experience for her.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “You want me to tell my daughter that I think she should go to Australia with you and her stepfather and watch her step-grandfather die rather than spend the year with me?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly.”
“What way would you put it? Exactly.”
“You don’t really want her to go, do you?”
“I didn’t say that. I actually really do think she could learn a lot from it. How to play the didgeridoo, for instance. Or to like Vegemite.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Tom,” Linda said with a heavy and martyred sigh. “Why must everything be a big joke to you?”
“Put Hilly on,” I said.
Silence, punctuated by the hollow hum of the long-distance connection, followed by a wary, “What are you going to tell her?”
“Listen in, if you like,” I said.
Linda gave another long-suffering sigh, then called to Hilly, “Hillary, your father would like to speak with you.”
A few seconds later, Hilly said, “Daddy?”
“Scout, about this Australia thing — ”
“Mom?” Hilly said, interrupting. “Hang up the phone.” She waited, then said to me, “Do you think she’s listening in?”
“Probably,” I said. There was a hard click. It might have been Linda’s teeth snapping together, though. “Look, Hilly — ”
“I don’t want to go to Australia,” Hilly interrupted again. “I want to come and live with you.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Really?”
“Sure. But hear me out, okay?”
“All right,” she agreed warily.
“Someday you’ll regret not going to Australia with your mother.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes,” I said. “You will. Trust me. When you’re older, you’ll regret all kinds of missed opportunities. This will be one of them.”
“How do you know?” she challenged.
“Because I do. Regret things, I mean.”
“Like what?”
“That’s not important,” I said.
“So what you’re saying is you really don’t want me to come and stay with you?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. All I said was that someday you’ll regret
