The Evolution of Alice by David Alexander Robertson Page A

houses visible.
    “Do you ever worry about dying?” Kathy said.
    “Oh, not really,” he said.
    “I do. I worry about it lots.”
    “Lots of people do. You know, I have this person I talk to from time to time when I’m worried, and he’s really smart. You know what he tells me?”
    “What?”
    “He says worry has never changed anything for the better.”
    This was followed by quiet, and Edward began to think about the words he’d just spoken. It felt like he’d been talking to himself. He knew very well he worried about almost everything under the sun, and that worry had brought him to the doctor’s office for everything from headaches all the way to stomachaches. But he was never actually sick. At the height of Nicole’s frustration with Edward’s anxiety, she’d said, “If there
is
something wrong with you, do you want to spend the rest of your time worrying about it?” He got annoyed at her then but now began to see what she’d meant.
    They kept driving, and as the houses got closer he recognized they were on a First Nations reserve. It wasn’t what he thought a reserve would look like, but he wasn’t sure what he expected. More desolation, maybe—a bunch of boarded-up houses, sad looking people, casinos. The houses weren’t the nicest he’d ever seen; they looked quickly built and more like large sheds than homesteads, but, somehow, they were welcoming and warm, and he liked how things just lay unattended in yards, seemingly without a worry about theft. He saw trampolines, toys, quads, golf clubs, and many other things. You’d never see something like that in the city. Finally, just a couple of kilometres from the highway, Kathy said they’d arrived at her home. “Home” was a trailer with an enormous tree directly behind it. A tire swing hung from the tree’s largest branch, and a big open field past the tree stretched back forever, all the way to a tree line visible on the horizon. Edward pulled up alongside a line of large rocks blocking the driveway from the road and turned off the engine.
    “Thanks for the ride,” Kathy said as she got out of the car.
    Edward got out of the car too and thought it was best to walk her up to the door.
    “You think you can do that? Stop worrying?” Edward said.
    “I can if you can,” she said.
    They arrived at the door and Kathy walked inside. Instantly, Edward heard a cry from inside the house. Not wanting to intrude, he quietly shimmied over a few feet to look. He saw that a woman, undoubtedly Kathy’s mom, had buried the girl deep within her arms. Another girl, a few years younger, dressed just like a Disney princess, was standing beside the two of them, crying like everybody else, trying to find a way inside the prolonged embrace, eventually collapsing on top of them. A man was there too, standing in the kitchen, and he noticed Edward outside the front door. He stepped outside the trailer.
    “Where’d you find her?” he said.
    Understandably, he sounded distrustful.
    “Oh, just up the highway,” Edward said, and noticed the man’s interrogative look, so decided to be more specific. “I don’t know, about seven or eight kilometres away?”
    “Yeah? That far, eh? And where were you headed?” the man said.
    “I was on my way to the cemetery just a little ways from here. You know the one?”
    “There’re a lot of cemeteries around here.”
    “Look,” Edward said, “I get it. You don’t know me from Adam.”
    “That’s right,” the man said, “and that’s our little girl in there.”
    “She mentioned an uncle, I guess that’d be you?”
    “That’d be me. That’s what they call me, anyway.”
    “Okay, I just wanted to help. She was looking pretty lost out there, and, this might sound strange because we’ve established that you don’t know me, but I couldn’t stand thinking of her getting picked up by some creep.”
    The man thought about it for a moment. He looked back at the group hug going on inside the trailer then turned