He reaches for her hand and gently lifts her palm, holding it with a leaf-light touch. His fingertips are warm from cradling his tea cup. He draws her hand close to his face as he reads the patterns on her skin, those lines that run like roads, and the sinkhole at their centre that breaks them. His warm breath sweeps across her skin.

“So,” he says.

“…So.”

“A glimpse of the hurt.”

“Something like that.”

He lets go of her hand and she lowers it onto her lap.

“You know what they say about scars, don’t you?”

She shakes her head.

“They only form on the living. They mean you survived.”

She resticks her Band-Aids.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“What for?”

“I’m just sorry, that’s all.”

“I don’t want your pity. That’s not why I showed you.”

“I wasn’t offering pity.”

“I showed you because in a way this is what led me to group. After what happened, I promised myself to find a better way of coping.”

He grins. “And of course, you have me now, too.”

“I told you I’m not looking for pity.”

“And I told you about my saviour complex.”

“We barely know each other.”

“But in some ways we probably know each other better than our family and friends do.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“My cell number’s on my card. I told you they come in handy.”

A minute or so passes in silence and tea sipping and window gazing. “You know how earlier you talked about life taking shape again?”

He nods.

“I think someday I’d like to find a way of helping people, the way you and Brenda do. I’m not sure how yet. But it would be comforting to know something good’s come out of all this pain.”

“I’ve thought about it, and in the end, I think all this pain goes back to love. We grieve the deepest for the ones we’ve loved the most. In a sense, grief isn’t possible without love. And love isn’t possible without grief. They’re like fraternal twins of a different kind, I guess.”

Like Yama and Yami. “I’ve never thought about it like that.”

“I guess it’s a matter of perspective. Which reminds me, I owe you a book.” He rises and approaches the antique bookcase beside the desk. “Here it is,” he says, as he frees a slim volume from its place on the shelf. Once he finds the page he’s looking for, he hands the book over to her.

“The Gita,” she says, surprised. They have a copy just like the one she is holding at home, or at least they used to.