What would his life have been back then, now? And her life? That night, storm and rain and the moon like a mandala when the clouds parted, it was the moon that made him know. The baby had lain like the visible corner of a folded map. Traced inside her, faded now, were parents she would never know and a life that had vanished. Alternative routes she wouldn’t take. People she would never meet. The would-be-that-wouldn’t-be. Because her mother or her father, or both, had left the map of her folded on the table and left the room. It was a map of discovery. There were no more North Poles or
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