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The nights Ruby can sense a tornado, she checks the weather just before bed. Propped up on three pillows, a glass of water on the bedside table, she puts down her book and takes off her reading glasses, listening for a moment to the silence echoing through her tiny apartment. Then she gently cradles the remote control in her hands, eyes shut, breathing steadily.

Partly sunny, partly cloudy, chance of showers, and she can go to sleep: no lying awake, staring at the walls, waiting for thunder. But wind warnings, hailstorms, blizzards and hurricanes make the night endless and black, the familiar pressure building up inside her, fighting against the weight of the darkness. And if she hears news of a tornado, no matter how far away, the pressure rises, pushing out unbearably from the pit of her stomach, and she has to go home.

Home - where she grew up, where her mother still lives - is only an hour's drive away. A straight shot out of the city and then curving swiftly around the contours of St. Margaret's Bay, sneaking past the familiar sights: the old community hall, the pizza joint, the faded pink store. Also growing familiar are the bulldozers and back hoes that tear up and reshape the land for its new, rich owners: Germans and Americans who have flocked to the bay like gulls to a fishing boat. When Ruby was little, everyone in Seabright either fished or fixed cars for a living; now the neighbours only appear on weekends, and sprawling new houses line the coast, with swimming pools and sliding glass doors that open onto cedar patios, sailboats docked at the ends of wharves. Cramped in between are the old clapboard houses and trailers like Ruby's mother's, shrinking down into their worn-out shells, their bright little gardens of petunias and marigolds fading in the shadows of their neighbour's exotic topiaries.

Bumping up the impossibly steep, rutted driveway and suddenly she is ten again, running across the patchy lawn and up the rickety front steps, placing the palms of her hands against the door to feel the bite of the sharp, cold metal frame, to make sure the trailer is really there. She slips inside, the tornado in Oklahoma or Ontario making her shiver.

"The Ruby Barometer," Ruby's mother used to say when she could feel the pressure rising under Ruby's skin. She always knew, somehow. Ruby's face would remain calm, blank, content, while inside clouds gathered, ions charged, thunder rumbled. She'd be sitting at the kitchen table eating a grilled cheese sandwich after school, watching the gulls smashing mussels against the sun-bleached wood, watching the back of her mother's head as she did the dishes. Without even turning around, her mother would know. "Uh, oh. The Ruby Barometer's rising," she'd say, gently blowing the soap bubbles off her hand and into the air.

Storms kicked up and died down in Ruby's belly. At night she would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling; her mother would sit next to her and they would speak without words:

Tell me, her mother's hand saying on her forehead.

I can't. Ruby's eyes straight ahead; the ceiling sparking with light from headlights up the driveway.

Yes, you can, baby. Ribbons of urgency threading through her mother's thoughts, Ruby feeling them dance with the quickening thud of her pulse. The sound of the engine switching off. The slam of the car door. He'll be in the workshop for hours.

Ruby's eyes flickering, quick as a hummingbird's wing. And her mother, suddenly knowing.

Her father. Days spent at the hardware store, selling different sized nails and fancy power tools to the new rich neighbours. Nights spent in his workshop: a tiny shed he had built in the backyard before Ruby was born, painted sky blue and full of mysteries. The amazing workshop, where he kept his chest of treasures belched up from the sea, where he bent steel and shaped wood and melted glass. Where ordinary, everyday things went in and beautiful, radiant things came out: giant, towering things carved from wood and tiny, delicate things covered in seashells and everything in between, sometimes faces with glowing eyes, shapes and colours Ruby had never seen before, things that scared her and made her heart race and made her smile all at the same time.

More than anything, Ruby wanted to know what went on behind those rickety doors, but she was never allowed in. Sometimes she would sit on the picnic table out back, throwing food for the gulls, which she knew she wasn't supposed to do, and she would wait for him to come out, shirtless and sweating, swigging from a can of beer.

"Ruby, girl, you better stop feeding them gulls. They'll eat the thumb right off ya." He'd shoo them away then, their indignant squawking making Ruby jump. "You got nothing better to do?"

Then Ruby would shrug, look away like she didn't care. Her mother, watching from the kitchen window, sensing the Ruby Barometer rising.

Sometimes, if it was a good day, he'd sit down, ruffle her hair with his greasy hands, call the gulls back with the stale bread heels in Ruby's plastic bag. Ruby would snuggle into his armpit, and they'd talk about gulls' feathers and beach glass and lady's slippers: secret, magical things that only her father knew. Other times, he'd shake his head, retreat to the workshop, and Ruby would return to the trailer, her face calm, blank and content.

When Ruby was ten, one of her classmates told her she was going to blow away in a tornado. His name was Tim and his father owned the autobody shop across the street and two big mean dogs that growled at Ruby while she waited for the school bus.

"Shut up, Tim, you don't know anything," Ruby said, steadily peeling her orange, her eyes as still as the puddle of water at her feet.

Tim stomped his foot in the puddle, spraying mud. "That's what tornadoes do to trailers," he said. Tim was as mean as his dogs; he liked to make Ruby cry.

"There's no such thing as a tornado, stupid. That's just made up. You probably even think Oz is a real place, too."

Tim grinned, his face inches away from hers, so she could see every ridge in his big, ugly teeth. He wrenched the orange from her hand. "Tornados are real, Ruby, don't you watch TV? You think it's all calm, then here comes this big whirling spiral that picks up whole houses and cows and things, then smashes them back down on the ground. Bam!" He threw the orange on the ground, where it split and splattered, pulp and rind mixing with the mud from the puddle.

Afterward, she wanted to ask her mother about the tornadoes. But when she got home, her father was there, tempted into the trailer by Ruby's mother's chilli. Ruby slipped onto the chair next to him, watching him eat, his big, rough hands ploughing the spoon through the chilli. His body was huge but his face was a boy's - smooth and milky, with wide eyes that watched everything - and was as blank and calm as Ruby's could be. But with him, there was no barometer, no warning signs, until the storm spilled over, tidal waves of rage crashing over everything. Ruby and her mother both knew about the tidal waves.

It was a good day. Her father was talkative, asking her about her day at school. Ruby, shy at first, described her math lessons, her recess games, her teacher's funny earrings. She kept her head bent when she talked, afraid to look at him, just in case he wasn't paying attention. When she finally looked up, it was her mother's gentle eyes she saw. Ask him, baby, they said.

Ruby took a deep breath, waited until he finished chewing his bread. "Daddy? Are we going to blow away in a tornado?"

He laughed loudly, spraying bread and chilli across the tablecloth. "A tornado! Here!" He clapped her on the back. "Ruby, girl, what an imagination! Where'd you hear about tornadoes?"

So Ruby told him about Tim, and the orange, and the puddle. When she was finished, he had stopped laughing. He turned to Ruby's mother. "Jesus, Maggie. Can't you talk to his father or something?" He rubbed his eyes. To Ruby he said, "Tornadoes are only scary because you don't get how they work. I betcha I could make one in my workshop." His eyes roved the room, calculating, imagining, measuring. Ruby held her breath. "Come on over to the workshop tomorrow morning. We'll get one goin' for ya." He wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand and lumbered out of the trailer.

Ruby squeezed her fists into little balls and shut her eyes tight. When she opened them again, her mother was wiping the crumbs from the plastic tablecloth. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She placed her hand on top of Ruby's frizzy blonde head. Yes. It was real.

That night before bed, Ruby and her mother walked to the shore. The water was calm and the fog had settled far out beyond Peggy's Cove, near the mouth of the bay, so they could see the jagged points of land all the way to Paddy's Head, and beyond that, Shut-In Island looming round and ragged, its bald, craggy dome rising out of the water like a turtle's shell. Ruby's mother held her hand as they navigated the rocky beach, pointing out periwinkles and sea urchin shells, lifting seaweed to see the tiny crabs scuttling along the sand. Watching for signs in Ruby's face. But Ruby's internal weather was as fine as the weather outside: the big orange sun dipping low in the horizon, the temperature constant, the air warm, dry and still.

Ruby let her mother's hand drop and skipped ahead, her attention focused on a piece of driftwood, bone-white and tapered to a point at both ends like a set of antlers. Ruby picked it up and ran her hands along the smooth wood, tracing the curves, feeling the tiny ridges from one tip to another. Her wide, hopeful eyes searched for her mother's. He'll love it, won't he? It's perfect. Isn't it perfect?

Her mother pulled her sweater around her shoulders, aware of a growing chill in the air. She looked around for a sign of wind, but the ocean was smooth as glass, and the trees along the shore stood erect and still. She blinked her eyes, refocused them on her daughter. Yes, baby. It's perfect.

Later, Ruby awoke to the sound of her parents fighting, a discordant duet of piano and percussion: her mother's voice, low and soothing and melodic, and her father's shaking the walls like a bass drum, booming words Ruby knew she wasn't supposed to use, shattering dishes, cracking his fist against the walls and sometimes, Ruby knew, against her mother's face, her tiny body.

She never knew what they fought about. She didn't want to know - if it was about her, she didn't want to know. She lay in her bed with her eyes shut, pretending to be asleep, until they had moved their fight from the kitchen and down the hall, past Ruby's room and into the bedroom, where her mother thought Ruby couldn't hear them. She got out of bed and put on her slippers, then grabbed the piece of driftwood, which she had placed carefully on her dresser, and tucked it into her night-gown. Then she slipped silently from her room and ran lightly across the hallway and out into the backyard, being careful to shut the door quietly behind her.

She crawled across the lawn on all fours and hid beneath the picnic table. The ground was cold, and bits of mussel shells cracked under her knees, digging themselves into her soft skin, bird shit sticking to her hands and feet. Drawing her knees up to her chest and pulling her night-gown over them, she rocked back and forth, wishing the gulls were still around to keep her company. Ruby wasn't frightened, just lonely - she felt safer here, outside, than she did in the trailer, which filled up too fast with her father's anger.

The piece of driftwood felt cool and smooth in her hands. Running her fingers over the tip, she imagined what her father would say when he saw it. Ruby, girl, this is just what I needed. I've been looking all over for a piece of wood just like this. It's perfect. Ruby sighed and rubbed the wood against her face, cradling her cheek in one of its curves. Yes, she thought. Perfect. She slid the wood up onto the seat of the picnic table, where it rocked for a moment before toppling over onto the grass.

The door to the trailer opened. Her father appeared, slamming the screen door, bouncing back and forth between the rickety railings on either side of the stairs, punching his fist into the side of the trailer, kicking the garbage can. She gripped her knees tightly, commanding every bone in her body to stop moving, every rise and fall of her chest to remain hidden beneath her thin night-gown. I am invisible, she thought. I am air. I am nothing.

In one hand he held a bottle, which he now held to his lips, drinking deeply. He was very close. Ruby could smell him - liquor and sweat and something else, something Ruby didn't recognize, an animal smell, feral and raw. She saw his work boots, worn away at both toes, covered in mud and glue and paint; his jeans, ripped along the bottoms and turned up to avoid dragging the threads along the ground.

Ruby fought the urge to reach out, grab onto his leg, wrap her arms around the soft, worn denim. Maybe he would launch his leg up into the air like he sometimes did on those good days, swinging her back and forth like a pendulum, pretending to shake her off. But Ruby knew he could just as easily swing his leg in earnest, leaving a deep, boot-shaped bruise on her skin that would cause trouble at school and make her mother cry.

Suddenly he threw his head back and let out a long, loud howl, throwing the bottle high into the air. Ruby shut her eyes, waiting for the inevitable smash. But the bottle landed on the grass with a thud, rolling back and forth slightly, spewing amber liquid onto the lawn. Ruby's father leaned forward to pick it up, but his eyes rested instead on the piece of driftwood that had fallen off the table. He squatted down to examine it, running his fingers along the ridges, just as Ruby had done. His huge hands enveloped the wood as he held it out in front of him like a steering wheel, turning it over and over. Then, with no visible effort, he snapped it in two.

Ruby drew a sharp breath. Her father flinched, searching the darkness beneath the picnic table, until finally he saw her. His eyes were hollow and vacant, yet somehow glowing with a ferocity that Ruby had never seen before, had seen only in the eyes of his strange, monstrous creations, cold and hot at the same time. He held her gaze for a moment, assessing her as if she were an artifact washed up on the beach, judging her importance, imagining her cleaned up, polished, brushed free of sand.

Then he stood up and walked away.

Ruby's mother found her the next morning and coaxed her out from under the picnic table into a yard destroyed: deep tire treads in the lawn; holes in the side of the trailer; lawn furniture, bottles, Ruby's little wooden swing, the railing, all broken. Everything broken. Her mother didn't look at her. This time, Ruby knew. He's gone hung between them in the air, blocking out all other thought, all other speech. Together they gathered the splintered pieces of driftwood, then turned to the workshop.

The shed, sky-blue and haunted, lay on its side, the wood smashed, paint and sand, glue, seashells, feathers, all that magic, spilling out from the cracks onto the lawn. But the spell had been broken; released from their mysterious shell and exposed to the light of the sun, all those treasures suddenly seemed, to Ruby, like junk.

"A tornado," Ruby whispered. She looked at her mother, whose eyes were dull with weariness and grief. Ruby took the broken pieces of driftwood from her mother's arms and heaved them on the junk pile. Then she turned and walked back across the yard, her face calm, blank, content.