Free Cool Water by Dianne Warren

her family values a shot at the Home Economics job. Maybe she could accomplish something that he and Lila apparently have not been able to, namely, keep teenagers from having babies. But he knows that Mrs. Baxter is not the answer. The best he can do now is wish the unsuspecting Kyle a whole lot of luck. Norval is quite sure that marriage to Rachelle will be a challenge to rival any he’s encountered so far in life.
    With the house once again silent and his sleep for the night ruined, Norval goes to the sunken living room off the kitchen and settles himself on the couch. Almost every time he sits on this couch he gets pleasure from the memory of how it was acquired. Lila had special-ordered not just any couch, she said, but an item of fine furniture, from some fancy company for half a fortune. When the couch arrived in Regina, she’d sent Norval to pick it up in a borrowed truck. She’d given him a photograph printed off the Internet to make sure they’d sent the right one. When he got as far as Swift Current, he drove by the local furniture store and saw the parking lot filled with row after row of couches and La-Z-Boys and bedroom suites. A portable sign on the sidewalk advertised a one-day-only pavement sale.
    Norval got out and had a look and sure enough, there was Lila’s couch, or one close enough to it that he couldn’t tell the difference from the picture she’d given him. So he bought it for a third the price and called the Regina store and told them to send the fancy one back. Even when he paid the shipping and took the deposit into account, the parking lot couch was still almost two thousand dollars cheaper than Lila’s special order. There was a manufacturer’s tag on the back—the wrong one of course—but Norval figured if he could get the couch installed against the wall in the living room before Lila could look at the tag, he’d be home free. And he’d got away with it. Lila had never examined the couch closely enough to find the tag, and the manufacturer of the expensive couch had never phoned to ask why it had been returned. Norval had paid the credit card bill without Lila seeing it, and he’d saved himself some money and proven that even Lila couldn’t really tell the difference between haute couture and the local offerings.
    Norval flips through a variety of infomercials—cooking appliances, home gyms, skin care products—and finally settles, as usual, on the Weather Channel. Its forecasts are notoriously wrong, but he listens to the perky female announcer who tells him the day will be sunny, warm and windy, with a slight chance of a thunderstorm later in the day. Well, he thinks, you could probably make that prediction for southern Saskatchewan on any day in the summer and stand a pretty good chance of being correct, although the thunderstorm part of the forecast has been unusually absent for the past few summers. He stares at the television, which makes the same prediction every ten minutes, until his eyelids begin to feel heavy.
    He’s just about to lie down on the couch when he hears a truck pull up in front of the house. A door slams and footsteps sound, coming up the walk. Loud footsteps, unmistakeably Kyle’s boots. Norval makes it to the door before Kyle can ring the bell.
    â€œWell,” Norval says to Kyle, who is teetering on the top step, one hand on the railing, trying hard to look sober for his future father-in-law but not succeeding. Norval notices that he’s left his truck lights on.
    â€œGood evening, Mr. Birch. Sir,” Kyle says. He’s trying to stand steady but gravity pulls him back down a step. It takes him a few seconds to regain his balance.
    â€œIt’s hardly evening, Kyle,” Norval says. “It’s more like, well, the middle of the night would be more accurate.”
    â€œSorry,” Kyle says.
    â€œWhat can I do for you, Kyle?” Norval asks. Of course he knows Kyle is