Page 1 of Home to Christmas Island
Chapter 1
I’M ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES FROM home when I see them.
The flashing blue and red lights in my rear-view mirror.
My stomach drops.
Come on, I curse to myself. Not now.
It’s the last day of November and I’m on my way home for the first time in ten years. I have enough to be anxious about: awkward family conversations, running into people I went to high school with at the grocery store, and worrying about what I’m going to wear to my best friend’s wedding—you know, the important things in life.
I feel a twinge of embarrassment as I realize I might have been going a little faster than the posted speed limit.
I pull over as much as I can, given the snow banks along the winding Cape Breton highway. Usually we don’t have this much snow until closer to Christmas, but thanks to last week’s nor’easter, there’s still a lot of it piled around the side of the road.
I sigh and reach over to get the vehicle registration from the glove compartment of my rental car. It’s just after five o’clock and already pitch black. I’d forgotten about the soul-crushing darkness of Canadian winters.
I glance in my side-view mirror, but I can’t quite make out the face of the officer getting out of his car. He’s tall, and for a split second I wonder if it’s someone I know from home.
As he gets closer, I can see he’s probably in his mid-thirties. His hair looks freshly trimmed, cropped shorter along the sides with longer, wavy dark hair on top. He has a short, dark beard, and I can tell even from here that he’s frowning. Definitely not someone from home. I’d remember that face.
I grin, some resurrected part of my old self rearing to life. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty, I was pulled over at least half a dozen times for speeding in Cape Breton. I can’t help it that I have a lead foot and know these roads like the back of my hand. But I’ve never once gotten a ticket. I was always able to charm my way out of one.
If you ever get pulled over, you just smile, tell the truth, and be yourself Florence, and you’ll be fine—my mother’s voice comes lurching through my memory and I try hard to clamp it down. She said this to me before I even had my driver’s licence, as if it was inevitable that I’d get pulled over for something. But even with her suspicions about the kind of driver I’d be, it didn’t stop her from lecturing me every time it happened.
If I didn’t tell her myself that I’d been pulled over, she always found out. People talk in Cape Breton.
I’m so lost in my own memories that I jump when the police officer knocks on the window. I press the button to roll down the glass and I’m a little startled by how handsome the face is that’s staring back at me. Curious, dark green eyes assess me almost warily. I take a deep breath and try to amp up the charm.
Heyyyyy officer, I say, flipping my long, red hair over my shoulder in an attempt to further channel that long-stifled version of myself. Wild, fun, carefree. I haven’t seen her in about a decade. I have to tell you, I—
License and registration please, he interrupts. He doesn’t smile, which I find a little irritating. Clearly, I’m out of practice. His voice is deep and rich with what I think is a Scottish accent. I hand over my license. He glances at it, and I swear he jolts at the name, but it only lasts a millisecond. He clears his throat. Do you know how fast you were going, Miss MacLeod?
My heart aches at that—that was my mother. Miss Margaret MacLeod.
It’s just Florence, and I don’t really know I’m afraid, I just—
You were just going over one-thirty, ‘Just Florence.’ This section of the highway has a speed limit of eighty kilometres an hour.
His frown only deepens as I attempt my best smile and try again, hoping to turn my level of charm up a few kilowatts, Well officer, I—
He cuts me off, speaking so fast that it takes me a second to realize what he’s said. It’s getting dark, there’s snow and these are unfamiliar roads to you. That’s quite the dangerous combination.
Now it’s my turn to frown. Unfamiliar roads? I’m sure I could map out this section of the island in my sleep. I almost want to laugh, but given how much he’s been interrupting me, my next words come out in a rush.
Officer, listen, I’ve been driving here since I was fifteen years old. Rain, shine, snow, I’ve seen it all. So I know I was going a bit fast, but, I’m anxious to—
Your license says Ontario, he cuts me off again and he’s smirking now, like he’s caught me in a lie. It wasn’t my fault that someone stole my wallet while I was living in Toronto, and I had to replace my Nova Scotia license with one from Ontario. I haven’t been back home in a long time, so I was never able to get a new one.
I can feel my face heating. My mind starts spinning, I’ve always been able to talk, okay flirt, my way out of a ticket. But he doesn’t stop there.
I’ve lived here for roughly nine years and I’ve never seen you, certainly never pulled you over. So even if you did grow up here, you’ve not been here in some time. Things change. And, might I add, it’s illegal to drive in Canada before sixteen years of age, is it not?
All the air rushes out of my lungs. He’s got me there. Before I can even start to think of a reply, he continues.
Where exactly are you heading? And don’t be— but his Scottish accent is so thick I can’t really make out what he’s saying.
Don’t be what, sorry? I ask, making a face that I hope isn’t a grimace. I feel so out of sorts, completely caught off guard by this entire interaction.
