In the warm months, before Toby grew too old to appreciate its magic, Edward Mushinsky would take his son up the mountain, and together they would walk, looking over their shoulders to be sure no one had followed. Other boys could visit, maps could be drawn, but only if these initiates were brave enough, and true. The secret place was the site of an unofficial stone and concrete monument, built in honour of someone’s brother killed in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, decorated with a large iron soldier and amateur stone statues of a bear, a lion, trolls and dwarves and dragons, all of it less than ten feet away from one of the best climbing trees in the history of the maple. At Catherine’s apartment on New Year’s Day, Toby waited at the kitchen table for the boy to wake up. Unaccustomed to his new nap schedule and apparently keen to ignore Toby’s directives, Catherine had not put him down until almost two o’clock. She sat across from Toby, the white teapot a crystal ball between them.
