"When was this taken?" he asked, holding the photo up, watching his father's face carefully.
His father studied it a moment too long before answering. "You must remember that one. Summer before you started secondary school. Baxter was still with us then."
Baxter. I don't know that name. I've never had a dog. I would remember owning a dog.
Rohan closed the album slowly, a cold unease beginning to thread through the warm, comfortable haze he'd been living in for the better part of a week.
Two small things. Two memories that don't quite match what everyone else remembers. That's still not much. People misremember things all the time. I've been through something no human framework was built to properly process — maybe my own memories are the ones getting scrambled, not theirs.
He wanted, desperately, to believe that. He almost managed it.
The third crack, when it finally arrived, refused to be dismissed at all.
