I’VE NEVER BEEN AFRAID OF DYING.

Except once.

I was coming back from my parents’ place. I was in the car. It had been night for a while. In February, even when the sun shines with all its might, the cold is deathly. I’ve always hated winter. Especially February.

Especially after that night.

Snow waltzed over the road—an immaculate aurora borealis. I don’t think I know for sure where the aurora borealis happens. Is it in northern Quebec? In Canada? In the world? Maybe the South Pole? I don’t know. There are so many things I don’t know. That I’ll never know.

At that moment, all that mattered was that I get home. Though the word home had shifted meaning. I no longer knew where it was I felt at home.

Fear of the glacial wind, of its devious whistling, of the ...