Spadina streetcar, to the back...keep going...keep going.

Caucasian woman, mid 40s, graying hair upswept by reading glasses, wearing a Gap trench coat and cashmere scarf.

Smoke, Elizabeth Ruth (Penguin)

Page 99:

The woods is a different place for a boy alone at night in winter. Sound is muffled and yet amplified--the creaking of icy branches, the sleepy movement of cardinals and owls, dry breath. Trees take on ominous shapes in the dark, larger deformed monsters. Giants of the underworld.

A group of them went in together and rented the cottage. Brenda was two years into her marriage, 1979, happy with Tom and finally talking about children. The couples spent the day on the dock taking turns on the inner tube, two at a time. Doug grabbed her hand, away from Lisa, and two beers from the cooler. Lisa couldn't swim and this would give them time alone. He was going to ask Lisa to marry him. Brenda gripped the tube, her beer slipping into the lake, bobbing once, then piking to the bottom. That night, Doug slipped out for a quick butt in the forest away from the watchful eyes of his now intended. Brenda lifted Tom's arm from around her shoulder and said she had to get something from the car. Tom had decided he liked Ben for a boy and Amy for a girl. Tom patted her ass as she rose from the couch, calling after her, "Benjamin Cole and Amy Ruth!" Outside, Brenda gingerly stepped through the fallen logs and cleared brush. Doug was leaning against a tree, looking at the moon.

"It's done now. I don't want anything. But I never told you," she continued, "that I loved you too."