Set against the backdrop of the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak, a young woman, Gravely Eaton, is stuck working at the family funeral home with a father she hates. The world is dying around her, but there seems no escape from her boring life with no friend...
There was no time for a discussion about the deal we'd made at the storage unit. No understanding of the boundaries of our relationship or where it might take us. The danger of it all intrigued me. It occurred to me, maybe I was hungry for more tribulation and edge, beyond what I'd been experiencing with father. I had no second thoughts about leaving father frozen in the food locker. At least he was out of circulation. There was time enough to deal with him. After we drove away from the storage facility, Healy dropped me off in front of the funeral home.
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All he said to me as I stepped onto the sidewalk was "Later".
With that, he drove off towards the morning sunrise to make his meat deliveries. There was poetry in that, somehow. If he'd been riding off into the sunset, that might have foreshadowed an ending, like you see in the movies – you know, when a cowboy rides off into the sunset after killing all the bad guys.
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My cowboy was riding off into the sunrise. See the difference? A new beginning, I thought. Anyway, between you and me, and in all honesty, at the end of Healy's trucking day, I intended him to do one more meat delivery after he got home.
The first thing I did that morning was hit the pause button on the sale of the funeral home. Within twenty-four hours, everything had changed for me. Father was safely on ice, quite literally, and he couldn't hurt anybody else, including me. There was a new guy in my life and he seemed to have some boyfriend/sex partner potential. Most importantly, I was feeling good about the future. I didn't need the distraction that came with selling the property, finding a new home, as well as dealing with the shit life throws at you every day. There was still a month or two of good weather ahead. Toronto is wonderful in the later part of summer, and into September and October, before it gets rainy, cold and snowy. If I played my cards right, and things worked out as I'd hoped, the cowboy and I could winter together, and explore our options in the spring. What I really needed at the point was some stability. Was that asking too much?
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