Winona still couldn’t make up her mind, so I put forward the idea of us going to see Niagara Falls first before heading in the direction of any reservation. It would be another three hours, yes, but I’d always wanted to see it and we could camp underneath the sound of the water crashing down.

  Felicity and Benjamin were both fine with it, as was Winona, since Niagara Falls was in the centre of all the reservations she’d narrowed down for us to go to.

  There was the Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory in Quebec, which we would pass along the way, and there was also the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, another hour from Niagara.

  There had also been several New York reservations on the opposite side of Niagara Falls, but all of us vetoed that idea immediately. Yes, we all knew New York isn’t just the city, but the thought of coming across New Yorkers—no matter how rural and cut off from the Big Apple they might be—didn’t appeal to any of us.

  We all seemed to have had a bad experience with New York one way or the other. Felicity was stranded there once at JFK Airport and didn’t feel the airport crew were as deferential and servant-esque as she would’ve liked. Benjamin had gone once to work on an indie horror film about zombies, only to find hordes of opiate-addicted undead scrambling through Brooklyn and Manhattan streets.

  Winona had driven through it once with her parents, and vowed never to go back after a horribly invasive search of her parents’ campervan by state police officers that made her feel like she wasn’t even considered a citizen of America, despite being Native.

  And for me, well, I’d never actually been to New York. But hearing all these stories made me want to steer clear of the place as well. We’d had one scare crossing country lines already and I didn’t think we needed another one. Perhaps we’d just been fortunate enough to have crossed paths with the most incompetent border officer in the history of Canadian-American relations.

  “This is your first road trip, isn’t it?” Benjamin asked me. I’d stumbled into the front passenger seat once I felt the girls were lost in their own worlds and didn’t need me to be their peacekeeper.

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  Felicity was immersing herself in a book of French verb conjugations for next week’s World Fencing Championships, and Winona had headphones on, muttering whatever words of an indigenous Canadian language she could find on YouTube to hear and practise.

  I let my guard down. Only for a bit. There was a shaky, unstable peace between them in the back seats right now, but I didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire once it all came to a bloody, crashing halt.

  I gave him a faint nod. “Irish Navajo hasn’t been on the road before this,” I said. “Short treks to O’Brien’s don’t count.”

  “I hope my Irish accent wasn’t entirely too awful,” Benjamin murmured.

  “It was,” I mumbled back.

  “How so?”

  “Awful in the sense of how accurate it was,” I said. “I mean, your only point of reference was that McGregor fella.”

  “Well, aside from long-dead writers and poets,” Benjamin replied, “he’s the only Irish person I’ve heard of.”

  He yawned, and I could see his eyes were heavy with sleep. It had been a long day for us all. Aside from the border crossing, we hadn’t stopped once since we left Milton behind. Benjamin was only able to change back into his usual attire of dark sweaters and brown slacks once Winona had taken the wheel for him—she was the only one besides him who had the licence to drive such a behemoth.

  Even still, he’d kept his shower hat for some peculiar reason. Winona loved it, however, which made me want to snatch it and throw it outside the window. But I steadied myself, and we drove on.

  Benjamin started to tap the steering wheel with his fingers. In the few hours we’d spent driving together, I’d learnt that was a sign he was going to say something to someone onboard this RV of ours.

  “Are you looking forward to this?”

  “Looking forward to what? Niagara?”

  “No,” he said flatly, with a look of dumbfounded shock plastered across his face, reflected in the front mirror. “I mean this reservation we’re heading to.”

  “In my own way,” I said, but my voice lacked confidence.

  “I just wish Winona would stick to one reservation,” Benjamin grumbled. “Felicity thinks the same thing, you know.”

  In truth, I thought the same thing. I really did wish Winona would just stick to one place. One time. Instead of us all just driving aimlessly around Canada until we got to Niagara Falls and then we had to hear her answer.

  Even then, what would we do on a reservation? Hardly the place for a concert or something akin to that, I felt.