Ah Boon realized with a jolt that by fill site, the foreman meant the swampy beach by the kampong, the mud flats where he had, as a child, roamed barefoot with Hia while stalking mudskippers. The shallow waters from which they had, for so many decades, launched their boats. The dimpled shore where he’d collected unusual seashells with the intention of giving them to Siok Mei, but later chickened out. The shifting sand that crumbled beneath his feet as the waves washed in and out, the spot where he had once stepped on a rogue sea urchin and wet his pants from the pain.
