The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan Read Free Book Online Page B

recluse these fifteen years, Jacob had given up the privilege of being remembered. And Samuel was not going to make himself uneasy by dragging past traditions into his life when the man he would do it for had willingly, in all but ink, tried to forget him.
    Mrs. Tyne turned her stern look straight ahead. Samuel almost laughed. His wife’s anger might have made him second-guess himself in the past; not so now. He drove the short distance to Ama’s place, where the child sat on her pale white steps, looking for the first time untidy and a little hassled. André and Elizabeth Ouillet waited for him at the curb, where they made small talk Mrs. Tyne felt obligated to join. She spoke quietly, as though it were all she could manage under such forced circumstances, and André helped Samuel coax Ama’s things into the overfull trailer.
    Ama pressed her palms against the hot vinyl seat and refused to look at the twins. She’d had to endure them every Saturday night since that wretched dinner at their house. As it happened, Mr. Tyne had called the Ouillets just an hour later, asking their permission for Ama to spend the summer in Aster.
    By some hateful coincidence (“Divine Providence,” Mrs. Ouillet had called it), the Ouillets wanted to visit a spa this summer, but could not think of a single reliable relative to entrust with Ama.
    “Usually you come with us,” Ama’s mother told her, “but this is a different kind of trip. The rumour of Lourdes, France, is going around—they say it’s a miracle what it’s done for people. We’re using the last of Grandpa Ouillet’s inheritance.” She clasped her hands, raised her shoulders and laughed. “I might even walk.”
    Her flippancy appalled Ama, as though walking had the attraction of a new water sport. “But you don’t even know the Tynes,” she’d said.
    Her father paused. “Well, we’ll get to know them, then.”
    And so, every Saturday the Tynes came over so that the families might know each other better before the summer. These evenings usually ended in a three-way round of jokes between her parents and Mr. Tyne, at which the four left out looked on with bemused discomfort. The night was a useful one only in that it strengthened her parents’ conclusion that Mr. Tyne was a worthy man. Ama hated slander of any kind, so she never spoke of how nervous he made her feel. Not wanting to make her parents rethink their trip, she bore it stoically. What couldn’t be understood, though, was how Mr. Tyne had managed to convince his wife to move.
    Maud felt the question like a goad at her back, and kept her eyes on the pavement. How indeed had this meek man, this sponge-boned husband, gotten her to move to a house she hadn’t seen? She’d wondered at it for weeks. Not that she hadn’t tried to thwart him; she’d called him “Senile Sam” or ignored him so deftly that she’d worn herself out. But all in vain. When Samuel came upon her one spiteful night, as she longed for home, she gave in. A lengthy bout of dreaming of Gold Coast had the effect of a good Calgary winter: it left her dull and cold, in a frost that stalled all reason. In the end, she couldn’t really say why she’d given in. Boredom with her current life? The need to own the property on which she lived? A fear of her husband’s sudden will? No one reason seemed enough. Samuel had told her that the house wasn’t really in Aster proper, that it sat unbiased on the line between its outskirts and the country. Besides, some of the wealthiest men in Alberta owned land near Aster, and Maud liked the thought of living close to high society. She fought off feelings of compromise and believed herself admirable for it. She couldn’t account for her daughters, though, whose brooding she envied.
    An hour passed in silence. They all realized it at the same time, and in this discovery made an unspoken pact to keep it that way. Only the engine’s grief could be heard, and then the weather, when the drawn sky gave