The Cuckoo's Child by Margaret Thompson

bird a psychological professional of any sort was up there. I could so easily have missed out on those conversations in the tiny office she had on the fourth floor of a grey cube of a professional building downtown. I think she won my trust right from the start with her honesty.
    â€œI can do something about your depression,” she said, looking at me intently as she stuffed a green velvet cushion behind her back and settled in a corner of the couch opposite my armchair. “I can’t cure your loss, though we can talk about it. Will that be helpful, do you think?”
    It was. For a while those trips with Dad into Prince George to see Dr. Thorburn were the high points of each week, about the only things I could entertain Neil with when we talked on the phone. I couldn’t get much mileage out of shopping with Mum at the Co-op or helping Dad pull chickweed out of the flowerbeds!
    To tell the truth, I kept a lot of those sessions to myself. I may have made Neil laugh describing Dr. Thorburn’s almost clichéd manner: head tilted on one side like a robin listening for a worm; her wordless pauses that compelled me to speak; her habit of answering questions with a question; the mantra phrases like “And how does that make you feel?” But she forced me to inspect myself, to pick at scabs, made questions lodge in my mind so that finding answers became a task, one that was not always pleasant or even fully accomplished. I think it was that half-baked feeling—that I hadn’t really got it yet myself—that made me cautious when Neil pushed for details.
    But when he asked if I was better, I could honestly say I was. I seemed to have regained the knack of getting through the days and finding some point to them. The general boredom of life at Mum and Dad’s drove me to the river and bird watching again. I looked up old friends, the ones without houses full of children at least. The sight of a tricycle abandoned in a front yard, or tiny sneakers for sale in a store, even the lump of plaster that immortalized my own infant handprint, still displayed on the mantelpiece, made my eyes well. But I found myself longing for the feel of Maisie on my lap, for the smell of turpentine, the sound of the latch as Neil came in from the studio, even for the stupid jokes of the grade 9 boys.
    I had instantly liked Holly when I met her, despite her aggressively rosy health and glossiness, the irrepressible chirpy smile and good humour of one whom life has barely grazed. Although she came across like an aerobics instructor on speed, there was an earthy kindness beneath the bubbles; it was easy to visualize her looking after sick and abandoned animals, as she did at the SPCA in Prince George.
    She was frazzled at the time, of course, driven half distracted by all the preparations for the wedding.
    â€œWhat did you order for vegetarian guests?” she asked me one day. I hadn’t had any guests apart from you, Mum and Dad, and three friends from university, and not one of them would have been caught dead near tofu, so I wasn’t much help. Nor did I have any diplomatic suggestions when one of her bridesmaids staged a revolt against peach lace.
    â€œIt’s your day, Holly, and your choice,” I told her. “Tell her to put up or shut up.”
    I was having problems of my own, anyway.
    Mum was having an identity crisis on her own account, and on behalf of Dad, as Parents of the Groom. She had compelled me to review Dad’s entire wardrobe with her. Useless for him to protest that his good navy suit would do just fine, it just needed cleaning, he’d only worn it a few times.
    â€œLook at this,” she said, holding up the blameless navy pinstripe. “It’ll never do, will it? We can’t let Stephen down, can we?”
    And when I cravenly said I supposed not, she said triumphantly, “There, Livvy agrees—you need a new suit!”
    But it was her own outfit that