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“I bet she mixed with some interesting characters,” said Georgie. “What’d she do for a living?”

“She worked in a photographer’s studio, but her true calling was as an artist. She painted and sketched on the side and did quite well. Some of her art hangs in a Stockholm gallery.”

“She must’ve been good!” Georgie smiled.

“Yeah.” Oliver’s gaze trailed a passing schipperke as it trotted alongside its owner up Yonge Street. “It was her sketches of Giza that got me interested in Egypt when I was a kid.”

“But she never visited?”

“No. She based her art on the books and magazines she’d read. But every time I visited Egypt, it felt like I was visiting for her, too, if that make sense?”

Georgie nodded. “It does. I bet she was proud of you.”

“She was. I’m lucky. She told me often,” said Oliver.

“It means so much, doesn’t it? Even with my dad gone, I still want to make him proud.” Georgie gestured to their left and they walked down a few steps leading into the Hudson Bay Centre, a retail and office complex that was home to the second largest Hudson Bay store in downtown Toronto as well as the Bloor-Yonge subway station.

“How’s your dad been since your mum passed away?” Georgie held the glass door open for Oliver.

The dreaded question. His stomach rolled as he followed her inside the shopping concourse and sidestepped fleetfooted Torontonians heading out into the night. “I, uh, don’t know. He hasn’t been in touch with us for years.”

Georgie’s eyes bulged. “Oh! I’m sorry. That must be hard.”

He skirted her gaze. “Yes and no.”

“Do you think he knows about your mum?”

“Probably not. I didn’t find any correspondence between them or his contact details when I went through her things. Nothing was in her will, either.”

However, Oliver had found a torn page from a Swedish newspaper folded up in the back of her desk. The February 1990 article entitled ‘Where Are They Now?’ mentioned several hockey players including Will McNally, a Canadian from Port Perry, Ontario, who briefly played for a team based in Stockholm during his contract dispute with Detroit in 1957. The story also namechecked Will’s current business, McNally’s Bar in Toronto, a vital piece of information that kickstarted Oliver’s transatlantic search.

Alongside it, he’d also found an envelope addressed to My darling Oliver with instructions to Open if you intend to meet William McNally. True to her wishes, it remained sealed amidst his possessions.

Georgie pulled her Metropass from her coat pocket as they passed the escalators leading upward into The Bay. “When’s the last time you saw him?”

“I’ve never met him.”

She gasped. “Ohh!”

Slowing in front of the Shoppers Drug Mart, Oliver pulled a subway token from his trouser pocket. “He left my mother when she was four months pregnant.”

Georgie looked even more appalled. “Did he know?”

Oliver nodded and yanked open the glass and metal door leading to the subway station. He held it for Georgie to pass through first.

“Holy. Shit.” She turned, waiting for him beyond the threshold. “I know he’s your biological dad, but what an asshole! Your poor mum.” Side by side, they traipsed down a couple of steps and approached the turnstiles and the fare collector’s booth.

“Ma dealt with a lot, but you wouldn’t have known anything was amiss. She wasn’t one to sit around and feel sorry for herself.”

“But still…to have someone you trust leave like that,” said Georgie. “What type of person thinks that’s okay?”

The type who’s like a surrogate dad to you. Oliver shrugged. “No idea.”

Georgie flashed her Metropass to the fare collector and pushed through the turnstile. Oliver followed close behind, dropping his token into the collection box.

“It must sting, though,” said Georgie, approaching the busy stairwell leading down to the southbound trains. She kept to the right, avoiding the flow of passengers exiting on the left. “Knowing he’s out there and can’t be bothered to stay in touch.”

Oliver held the shopping bags in front of his body and quickly descended the stairs. “It does.” He glanced sidelong at Georgie as they passed a pack of noisy teenagers headed the opposite way, chattering about cheap movie Tuesdays. “Feeling unloved and abandoned is tough when you’re a kid.”