They strolled towards the pier as if drawn by the lighthouse. Along the way, they passed an old man fishing, a young family of four feeding fries to seagulls, a woman sitting on a bench reading a book. At the end of the pier, their parents stopped to rest on a bench and watch the sailboats. Kavita was impressed by how well her parents were tolerating each other. They were even sitting at the centre of the bench, not at either end, as they tended to, which to her exemplified the separate togetherness that defined their marriage. Maybe it was true that crisis drew people together. Maybe their family was on the brink of a new beginning too, just as Sunil was.

“Feel like skipping stones?” Sunil asked her.

A flood of childhood memories made it impossible for Kavita not to smile. “Let’s go.”

At the lighthouse, they hobbled around the pebbled shore, rummaging for stones, as they had done countless times before. When they were young, Sunil had taught her which stones had the right thickness and weight, how to flick rather than throw.

Holding a handful of rocks, Kavita stood a step away from her brother and watched as he cast. The pebble skipped once, twice, three times.

“Not bad,” she grinned.

“Let’s see you do better.”

“Challenge accepted.”

They fell into a tranquil rhythm, their snug silence punctuated by the occasional plim plim plom of their stones on the water.

After a while, Sunil stopped casting stones. He gazed at the water with a faraway look, at the ship sails in the distance like triangles of paper.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She was glad her parents had stayed behind.

“I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

He flicked a glance at her, then resumed his watch of the sails. “The doctor’s note.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He pressed his lips together.

“You know you can tell me anything.”

“I know.” He lowered his gaze to the shoreline, and the gentle push and pull of the water’s edge over the slick pebbles. “He said I’m completely debilitated. Those were his exact words in the doctor’s note.”

She blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He launched a stone. “How am I supposed to come back from that?”

“Well,” scrambling for something comforting to say, “I bet that’s just doctor speak. Something they say all the time. Remember, he wrote you that note so you could get time off from work. You know what insurance companies are like. He probably had to make it sound worse than it is.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re not convinced.”

“Maybe he wasn’t just saying it. Maybe he really thinks I’m totally fucked.”