SSC (2012) Adult Onset by Ann-marie MacDonald Page A

tracing the first of their forbears to board a plague ship from Scotland for the New World. Why are people so pumped about nth degree relatives they’ve never met, when they can barely cope with the ones they know?
Bing!
    RE: Some things really do get batter
    Dear Mister,
    Well that was a heck of a cliffhanger! You ought to try your hand at writing;-)   (I just learned how to do that winking face!) What were you going to say? You’ve got me in suspense now.
    Love,
    Dad
    She glances down the thread.
    Dear Dad,
    I
    And hits
reply
.
    Dear Dad,
    Sorry, Maggie hit “send” then the doorbell rang at the same time as the phone, and Daisy just about ate the mailman! Do you think Mum may be experiencing the early stages of
    Delete
.
    Mum tells me you’ll be leaving Victoria and heading east again in the next few days. I’m really looking forward to seeing you both at the station for the usual “stopover.” I’ll alert the Tim Hortons! Would you mind dropping me a line to let me know when your train will be arriving? By the way, did Mum mail a package for me?—speaking of “cliffhangers”(hey, can you do that?!)
    What kind of “reply” is that? She has written two books and she can’t even write one lousy e-mail to her father. She is evading his touching e-mail of this morning. No she isn’t, she is tired—her eyes skitter side to side again as though to prove the point. She is not a retired management consultant, she does not have time to compose touching e-mails. She will call him on the phone tomorrow and have an actual conversation.
    Delete
.
    … unless there is something wrong with her visual cortex. She googles “involuntary rapid sideways eye movement, symptom of stroke?” It takes less than thirty seconds to confirm that she has experienced a series of Transient Ischemic Strokes. It is unlikely they will kill her. They mimic the effects of déjà vu and “a sense of unreality” that is symptomatic of depersonalization, depression and psychosis. Otherwise they are asymptomatic. “Autopsy can confirm the presence of neural scar tissue.” If only she could be present at her own autopsy to exclaim, “I knew it!” She decides to keep it to herself: why worry Hil?
    For some reason, Mary Rose told Hil she had done laundry tonight, which was untrue but only according to the rules of this universe wherein we recall the past but not the future; she had no reason to lie about laundry. Is there a tear in the amniotic sac between worlds? Memories leaking, mingling … she’ll make a note of this just as soon as she’s put in a load.
    She heads upstairs, picks up the children’s overflowing hamper and, on the way back down, steps on the hem of her housecoat andnearly pitches headfirst to the bottom. She needs to be more mindful or she’ll wind up painting calendars with her mouth. In the basement rec room, she switches on the baby monitor, puts in a load of teensy T-shirts and tiny Y-fronts, and tunes into a rerun of
Law and Order
. Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth barge into a Manhattan boardroom and collar some fat cat—her favourite type of episode. She reclines on the shameless La-Z-Boy couch and relaxes, kind of wishing Hil were here with her, kind of glad she isn’t. On the walls, framed show posters and book jackets have been upstaged by laminated crayon renderings of murky flora and fauna and various wheeled objects, along with family photos—including an Olde Tyme portrait of the four of them dressed as outlaws with Daisy in a bonnet.
    Chris and Jerry have just stopped at a hot dog stand in midtown Manhattan when the monitor emits the first tinny snufflings that Mary Rose knows will shortly become a full-blown—“Mumma-a-a!” She runs up the stairs. After she has changed Maggie, brought Matthew a glass of water, rewound his unicorn and settled Maggie with yet another bottle, she goes to her bathroom, takes another Advil—four in a day is hardly an overdose—and hauls up her sleeve.
    Down the