Free City of Ice by John Farrow

right through her wool coat, made her shiver. She waited for her dad, getting madder by the second. If her father ever showed up she’d brain him. Just then, Julia spotted his car descending a hill on the secondary road and waved as he passed to access the highway ramp. Given that the bus had arrived early, he was not terribly late. Never mind. She would impress upon him that unless he planned to buy her a very expensive, much warmer coat he’d better never be late for a wintertime pickup again. He ought to show up at least an hour ahead of schedule. If he loved her, he should have been waiting for her. And yet, when his car sidled up to her and he smiled broadly, Julia was simply glad to see him. She’d been away from home for so long and away from her father for longer still.
    Inside they kissed cheeks and she slammed the door shut. “Good thing I’m a student,” she barked.
    Her father ceded to the trap. “Why’s that?” His name was Ron Murdick, and he owned several restaurants in the Ottawa area. A good-looking man of forty-five, rotund, with a carefree disposition, he’d gained a shock of white hair when he’d been in his twenties. Ron Murdick was always a sucker for her gibes.
    “I’m financially dependent on my parents. Otherwise”—she made a twisting motion with one hand—“a shiv through the heart.”
    “I’m not late.”
    “You’re not early.”
    “You’re hard to please,” he lamented.
    “I’m frozen stiff! Another minute, I’d be a goner.”
    “I came as soon as I could get away.”
    Julia laughed. “Like I’m going to believe that!”
    Enjoying being ribbed by her again, her father laughed lightly also. “It’s the truth,” he said. “You don’t have to believe me.”
    “I know better.”
    They drove into the broad and rolling countryside, past snowbound fields and copses, through small villages that served the agricultural communities around them, the old stone homes of the early settlers still prominent, and they carried on toward what they referred to as the family farm, although no plow had tilled the soil in twenty years and title had never wholly resided in family hands.
    Through most of her childhood and adolescence, Julia had journeyed to the farm from Toronto for her summer and winter holidays. Along with eight others, including her father, her mother had bought the property in the early seventies, before Julia was born. The group had scraped cash together and made the purchase for a pittance, inspired by talk of forming a commune to live off the land.
    “Now that’s a scary thought,” Julia had scoffed one time. “You guys living off the land. Yeah, right. Like maybe for a weekend.”
    She had reason to be cynical. Rather than being a retreat for an alternative lifestyle, the hippie commune had become a mark of affluence. Swank summer cottages replaced the pottery and weaving studios, and the original barn had been bulldozed to make room for a four-season house. Fields had gone to seed. Beehives envisioned next to a wildflower meadow had given way to a three-car garage. Space for the stables had been appropriated for a pool.
    The henhouse, the pig sty, the milking barn, the lambs’ pens and rabbit warrens had slowly collapsedover time, never knowing a welcomed tenant. The vegetable garden—worked for a few years—had been paved for parking, and the original farmhouse where Julia and her family stayed now offered, after three additions, ten bedrooms and four bathrooms to accommodate the expanding and multiplying families.
    Where four couples had originally been involved, now there were nine, divorce having been the catalyst for growth.
    “Look what the cat dragged in,” Margaret commented as Julia entered the house through the kitchen door. “Nice of you to drop by for a visit.”
    Julia beamed at her stepmother. Luckily, she could give as well as receive. “Is Mummy here?” she asked, promptly putting her father’s wife in her place.
    Margaret Murdick