He “woofed” his way across parts of Europe—Italy, Greece, Spain—although France turned out to be his favourite. He got into yoga while working at an organic winery in the Burgundy region of France. Every morning, the childless couple he worked for practised and meditated for an hour before breakfast. In the beginning, he could barely sit still for ten minutes. Soon, though, he got hooked on the stillness, amazed that it was a state he could access all on his own. He thought of Sequoia. Although she wasn’t into granola trends, he hoped it might help her manage her condition.

He returned in time to watch her cross the stage in her cap and gown. Her gaunt and worn appearance—as though there were only the barest of flesh between her skin and her bones—startled him. His parents let him know she had relapsed a week before her final project was due. The stress triggered her old patterns. She hadn’t told him during their weekly phone calls because she didn’t want to ruin his trip. Instantly, he knew it was his fault for leaving her behind.

They moved back to Ottawa and lived with their parents for a while. They got Sequoia on another treatment program waiting list. He started attending yoga classes and researched teacher training courses. She started experimenting with new media—stencils, airbrushes, brick walls. That summer, she painted the mural in their parents’ yard. Its composition burst with meaning as bright as its colours. The kelp forest because of her love of bc. The koi fish because they symbolized good fortune and prosperity, her hopes for the future. Flowers because they were beautiful and carefree and made her smile. At last, she seemed to find her artistic voice, the media and subject matter that made her soul happy. Hawthorn seemed to find his calling, too, in teaching yoga.

For a time, life seemed to slowly spiral upward rather than down. But there were always breaks, times of stopping and shifting, descending and ascending like an Escherian staircase. He had been away again for her last descent, when she let go of the railing altogether. In that instance too, he knew it was his fault for leaving, even though he had gone to the workshop in Costa Rica for her, to learn therapeutic yoga that might have helped her. Part of him knew they weren’t meant to be apart, that together they formed a balanced entity, like the symbol for yin and yang.

Now it is spring. The month of their thirtieth birthday, which coincides with the fragrant bloom of magnolia trees, flowers that, like Sequoia, blossom first and lose their petals too soon.

Hawthorn invited Kavita to his family home to help him with a task he didn’t disclose beforehand.