Squinting against the partial sun as though her eyes are no longer used to outdoor light, she walks with pace, trying to generate some lifelike heat within her sedentary skin. A wince as she walks through Sunil’s empty parking space in the driveway, avoiding the oil patch that is all that remains of his sky-blue car. Another as she steps over the curb and glimpses herself and Nirav sitting to the right, news-punched, on the night the police came. Then she rolls over another memory as though tipping into a pothole. It surprises her, thrusts her off balance, makes her wobble.

“Remember that summer you made a skate ramp at the end of the driveway, Bear? You must’ve been about eleven or so. I guess I was about six? You made me watch for cars. I was so scared you were going to hurt yourself, but you were always taking risks like that. Your skateboard went flying and you landed on your ankle. I can still see you clutching your high-tops, rocking side-to-side. I could see the tears in your eyes, but you kept your voice calm and told me to go inside and get Mom. We got into so much trouble. And you got a cast. I was so proud to be the first to sign it.”

Could that really have been almost twenty years ago? Do these pothole memories always wait here? How does her mind choose which memory is visible or felt?

Why the dip in the sidewalk across the street, in front of the Cyr’s split level, where they played hacky sack while waiting for the school bus? Why the stop sign on the corner where the station wagon blew a tire and Sunil taught her how to change a flat in minus twenty degree weather, their hands pink and protesting, their throats sore with winter wind so cold that it seemed too bare to hold oxygen. Why the countless night runs they took through the streets of their neighbourhood, which were such a part of their summers until she moved away with Nirav, that she sees now like time-lapsed videos, the past superimposed over the present?

Will she always stumble into these dips, loose-ankled? Will the memory reel always through her off balance when she does?

Stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jean jacket, she rubs the rakhi with one hand, clutches the blue river stone with the other, and carries on to Zellers.

Half an hour later, she is back at home, fumbling for her keys, when she freezes. Muffled shouting pounds the front door. She hurries inside. At the top of the stairs, she finds her mother and father wrestling with the orange photo album as if it is a rope and they are playing a hostile game of tug-of-war.

“Let go!” her mother yells.