excerpt
she was pregnant with his child when she died.
Jessica came into his life a number of years later when he was
working in northern British Columbia. Again, a woman on the fringes of
acceptable society, she was wise, beautiful, self-reliant, and she loved him
unconditionally. Ken met her through her brother, Patrick, with whom he
worked. They were First Nations people filled with the pride of their early
ancestors. There is a saying that home is where the heart is, and Ken found
Jessica’s cozy log house in the ranch country the closest thing to a home that
he’d ever experienced. The lovers spent blissful months together planning
their wedding. It was one of the happiest times in his life.
The perverse hand of Fate nearly destroyed him when Jessica and
Patrick were killed in a horrific accident on icy, winter roads. The pickup
was still burning when Ken arrived at the scene, his last hope extinguished
when, through the shattered window of the burnt out vehicle he recognized
the sleeve of Jessica’s buckskin coat, the mate to the one he was wearing.
The traumatic image of the fiery wreck haunted his dreams long after, and
virtually drove him into the Arctic seeking some form of peace.
On his return from the years spent in the Arctic, Ken entered into
a comfortable relationship with Helen. She was a settled, intelligent
schoolteacher who appeared to support his drive to re-establish himself
as a painter within the Vancouver art scene. He was not the first man to
marry under the mistaken belief that his woman accepted his stipulation
that fatherhood was not in his plans. Ken clearly understood the depth of
his own drive and focus and believed that, consumed as he was to right the
wrong that had been done to the Inuit, he had nothing left over to give a
child. But he had not reckoned with the determination of a woman bent on
motherhood.
When Michael was born, Ken was immediately captivated by this tiny
bundle of human life. Torn between wonderment and reality, he knew that
his kind of obsessive dedication to the northern problem left little time for
the sort of nurturing his own father had given him. What was done could
never be undone however, and Ken did his best to provide for his family
both financially and emotionally. Things proceeded relatively smoothly for
a handful of years, although Ken never quite trusted Helen in the same way
he had before the unexpected pregnancy. Happily though, over the years, he
and Michael crafted a wonderfully strong, mutual love and the young man…
Manolis Aligizakis 