Black Sheep - A Novel Excerpt.

“It's one of the great tragedies of contemporary life, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common.” Andrew told me that once.

We were lying around, watching t.v., stuck in one of those days that never begins and then never really ends. He wouldn’t look at me when he said it, he just kept staring at the television. I have moments with him where he’ll say one thing that changes my life forever.

I’m dumbstruck, silent, and he’s none the wiser.

Black Sheep - A Novel Excerpt

“Did you sing that song a lot when you were a kid?” I asked him.

I’m always asking him about his childhood. I’m a stupid, old detective trying to understand the man I love.

“All the time. My mother would always say, ‘Sweet Lord, the never ending song!’

“How did you sing?”

“Very earnestly.”

“Were you good?”


“No, I was awful.”

He is a beautiful singer now. He is beautiful at everything he touches and I am jealous of him. Maybe that is why I love him.

“I was. In Grade Two, my teacher told me I wasn’t allowed to sing at my desk anymore. Then on the last day of school, everyone got to pick one special thing they were allowed to do and I asked to sing again.”

I pictured him as that little boy, with too much energy singing his heart out for hours at his desk. Maybe he was performing, or maybe, he just liked the company of his own voice. Either way, I thought it was mean that a teacher would take that away from him.

Especially when he had a dead brother.

“Did you ever really feel like you were married?” he asked me as we fell asleep that night. My marriage was another thing we talked around but hardly ever about.

“No, not really.”

And when I was married, I never did. Things only feel real once they’re over and even when they’re over, stories never really end.

In the hazy dark of the night, I looked at Andrew.

“I hope you’re my never ending story,” I told him.

I meant it.

Black Sheep - A Novel Excerpt

I picture my father in his prime as Dustin Hoffman in All The President’s Men; smoking in elevators, busting into politicians offices in corduroy bell-bottoms, coercing pretty young women into giving him leads.

Only, he was tall and handsome like Robert Redford.

Only, he believed Watergate was the end of journalism he wanted to be apart of, the end of turning a blind-eye.

He stopped working undercover with criminals, exposing sex scandals, interviewing off the record. He became editor of the sports page and travelled with the Toronto Blue Jays, almost year round. He refused to wear anything but jeans, sweatshirts and ball caps.

He told me that he just had to get out. He didn’t have the taste for the jugular he used to.

I know the truth. That was the year he quit drinking.

That was the year he lost his nerve.