Where You Are

Moncton

Jesse

The girls had insisted Petra needed time and space. And they'd had plenty of that, in my opinion. Damn, Birgitta had already had too much of it herself, it felt like we'd only just made it through our first fight of sorts ourselves and now Rob and Petra were doing the same thing. Only why did they have to drag us into it? After my little one-night stopover with Birgitta just a few weeks ago, I'd been dying to do it again. I'd been knackered by the end of it, but it had been so worth it just to see her and hold her all night.

And the sex.

Blimey, I was half-hard the entire flight to Canada. She'd sent cheeky texts and photos the last few days until her battery had died. She was going to be in for it when I finally got to her.

I had managed to find out through Birgitta that Petra was flying out Saturday morning. On my flight too, no less. She'd flown in with me, as well. I'd just had no idea. It wasn't job to pay very close attention to the manifest.

'You're sure this is about kids?' I asked Rob as we drove towards Birgitta's flat. I'd hired a car but had every intention of staying right with Birgitta.
Rob had been driving me mad for the last three days. I'd agreed to take him with me the first night, but then the storm had grounded all transatlantic flights. Now it was Friday, the day before Petra was due to return anyway and we were finally in Canada. He'd only texted me every twenty minutes for the last three days, wondering if I was flying to Toronto again.

Neither of us had heard anything from Birgitta or Petra since yesterday. I knew they'd lost power, but I was hopeful it would be back on by now. Birgitta had told me she had enough power banks to get her through a week, but she hadn't been expecting Petra. And she hadn't been sure she could get more with the rest of Atlantic Canada preparing for the storm as well.

The Moncton airport had power, but they could also be running on a generator. We picked up our car and drove through the city of Moncton.

It was a bit eerie. There definitely wasn't power in the rest of the city. It was almost unnaturally dark. There were no streetlights, the traffic lights were all out and everything except for the roads was covered in at least a foot of snow. I wasn't even sure what you were meant to do if a traffic light wasn't working. Treat it like a four-way stop? That seemed to be what everyone else was doing. The power rarely went out back home, but most of the wiring was underground. Here, it was all overhead and exposed to the weather, of which they got much more than we did, living on the coast.

Some parts of the city had power. Not many, though. The further we got from the airport, the darker it got. At least the roads had been cleared of snow. I wasn't sure I could handle a car in much snow.

Rob and I hadn't had much of a chance to chat on the journey, with me in the cockpit and him seated in economy. Now that it was imminent that we would be seeing the girls again, I wasn't sure I had all the facts straight.

'It's got to be,' he said, expression pained. 'I didn't mean anything by it. I just thought it might be nice to have a baby after all, after spending time with little Natalie.'

'But she never wanted kids,' I said, remembering bits of our previous conversations. 'And you never wanted kids, either.'

'So what?' He said, looking appalled. 'I'm not allowed to change my mind?'

'No, but it's not just your decision,' I told him. 'It's a lot more work for a woman to have a baby than it is for the man.'

'I know that,' he scoffed.

'I'm just saying, she might not want to put her body through that,' I went on. 'Billy said it's gruesome business, having a baby. What was the reason she doesn't want kids?'