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“Oh yes, of course…” Oliver dropped his pen and rounded the desk, eager to assist. He slipped her long coat off the hanger on the back of his door and held it open at waist height, its silky lining facing Georgie.

She did a double take. “Oh! Thank you!” Turning, she slipped her left arm inside a sleeve, then her right.

“May I pay for your cab?” Oliver lifted the coat up onto her shoulders. “It’s the least I can do.”

Georgie blinked, clearly taken aback. “That’s so kind, but I’m only a few subway stops away.” She tugged her hair free from her coat’s collar. “So, next week. How ’bout Wednesday? Around six?”

Oliver didn’t have any post-work plans—and if he had, he’d have cancelled them in a heartbeat—but Georgie didn’t need to know that. “Ooh, let me just—” He leaned over and glanced at his desk pad calendar. “Uh, yes. Wednesday’s great.”

“Perfect!” She looped her bags over her shoulder.

“Thanks for coming tonight, Georgie…” He ran his hand through his hair. “I was going⁠—”

KNOCK! KNOCK! The two weighty thumps swung his office door wide open.

Georgie turned toward the noise as Oliver glanced past her. His boss, a petite brunette draped in a navy pant suit and chunky jade jewellery, holding a Louis Vuitton Pochette bag, stared back. Lips agape, her heavily kohled glare swept Georgie from head to toe then darted to Oliver and the two empty wine glasses sat on the corner of his desk.

He gulped. Shit.

EIGHT

GEORGIE

Later that night

As David Soul’s tender ballad “Don’t Give Up On Us” soared through the speakers, Georgie lowered her pen and scanned the 1950’s-style dining room of Lime Rickey’s, her troubled gape fixating on the Yonge Street entrance. One, two…four people swept through the glass and chrome doors, but none of them were the person she was expecting to see.

Could something please go to plan tonight? While she was grateful her museum discomfort hadn’t developed into another pesky migraine attack, Georgie remained unsettled by two surprises: one, the abrupt and worrying interaction with Oliver’s boss, and two, a glimpse of a framed poster from a vampire bats exhibit propped up against his wall—the same 1969 exhibit where she’d been separated from her parents, and in her tearful panic, suffered her first vision-disrupting attack. She’d spotted the promotional poster while retrieving her notebook from her bag, and the brief peek was enough to suck all the air out of the room and make Georgie feel seven years old again, scared and alone.

Shivering at the memory, she resumed marking her forty-eighth—and final—history pop quiz of the evening.

June 6, 1944 √

Operation Husky √

The Doves

Close, but… She circled the incorrect answer in red pen, then began writing The Wrens, the nickname for the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service during the Second World War, as a whirlwind wrapped in wool pinstripe crash-landed on the opposite side of the booth. The impact shook the table, sending her pen and its vivid red ink careening diagonally through the test.

Georgie scowled. “Shit!” Her pinched gaze vaulted across the table.

“Aw, sorry, Gi.” Catching his breath, Michael flung off his Walkman headphones and shrugged away his suit’s jacket, one of its pockets bulging with god knows what. “Want me to turn that squiggle into Mr. Dress-Up? The Friendly Giant? The Littlest Hobo?”

His lighthearted silliness, a characteristic Georgie usually adored, grated under the circumstances. She scraped back her hair. “Where’ve you been? You’re over an hour late.”

Holding his palms up in surrender, Michael nodded and looked away. “I know, I know. The Yonge and Eg showing ran longer than expected. Then the subway sat at St. Clair for like, forever. They made an announcement, but the speakers crackled and⁠—”

“—no one heard it,” Georgie finished his sentence.

“So I got off. Walked till I found a taxi.” Michael stole her strawberry milkshake and peered inside. “May I?”

She nodded and a smile crept across Michael’s face. He removed the straw and took a quick sip, coming away with speckles of pink shake on his barely-there moustache.

“You’ve got…” Georgie motioned toward his face as he dropped her straw back into the froth.

“Cheers.” Setting down her glass, Michael picked up a serviette and blotted away the evidence.

Georgie’s stomach growled. Thank goodness for that muffin in Oliver’s office, otherwise she would’ve been concerned and ravenous. “I was worried. I checked my answering machine three times and called yours twice.”