The sting in the tail.

You have meetings scheduled for much of Monday and Tuesday, so you eat breakfast with Amber at the hotel and leave. She doesn’t mind too much, as she has schoolwork to get done which she’s utterly unmotivated to do when you’re around. She orders room service for lunch so as to minimize the interruption, and on the whole, she probably works harder than you do. Your negotiations go very well, and you come back to the hotel in high spirits. The first night, you take her out for fast food again—this time Nando’s for peri-peri chicken. The heat makes her eyes water, but she loves the flavor as much as you do. On Tuesday you come back earlier, so the two of you walk down to Gastown and spend the evening exploring. She enjoys the shops, especially the galleries of First Nations and Inuit art, and thinks the steam clock is fun. You have dinner at Kilimanjaro, an East African restaurant that you remember from a previous visit for its curried goat and mango mousse.

You’re free for Wednesday, so you and Amber set about the business that brought her here. You don’t have a clear understanding of the situation, and over the course of several hours, that doesn’t improve. All you can get straight is that there’s some concern over her birth certificate, but whether that concern relates to her Social Insurance Number (which would be academic as far as you can tell, since she’s never earned any money in Canada), her passport, or something else, you don’t know. You begin to suspect that someone is pulling something shady and the ostensible reason for her visit is actually little more than a smokescreen.

When you get a look at her record of birth, you’re sure of it, because the shock rocks you back on your heels. You must go absolutely white, because Amber immediately picks up on it. Listed as the father, with the right date and place of birth, is David Michael James. Your oldest brother.

Unfortunately—or fortunately for whoever’s pulling this stunt, if it’s faked—your brother David is dead, and thus unavailable to be asked if he (was) seduced (by) a 16-year-old April. You have to believe it’s faked. Did someone wangle this whole business—influencing various government functionaries, somehow—just to get you both here to see this? And can it possibly be genuine? It’s hard to believe. Your associates have regaled you with stories of B.C. politics, but still, that sort of chicanery would be truly scandalous. On the other hand . . . the alternative is nothing you want to contemplate.