She cringed at the thought of what he might remember.

“I remember lawn tag\” And he tapped her on the shoulder and went hobbling away.

She pretended to chase, smiling to herself. All that last summer, they had played lawn tag through the long evenings. Daddy was the town doctor in Bruce, a little Canadian prairie town, a one-road grain town; of all the lawns in Bruce, the Gates’s lawn was the biggest.

Lawn tag was a simpleminded chase: under the privet hedge, past the willow tree, mustn’t stray beyond the border of the sidewalk, around back, past the doghouse. Annie, a year older, could have caught Bobby anytime. But she liked the sound of his laughter when he dodged her hand. Some evenings she tagged him once, twice, played hard to get, then let him win. Some evenings she let him win from the start.

Now… she could scarcely believe he was running again. The sunlight was radiant on the big Wellborne lawn; the air was silky cool. He moved in a slip-jointed lope, his jeans threatening to fall off his bony hips. It would have been easy to catch him.

She pretended to chase. Bobby looked back and laughed out loud. Annie savored the sound.

Sometimes, of course, he made her mad.

The hardest part of Contact had been facing this memory. But it was a memory that had to be faced: Most of Annie had said yes to the Travellers, but this memory part of her had said Annie doesn’t deserve to live.

She was ten. Only ten. A child. Impulsive. Wasn’t every child?

Bobby and Annie were playing on the roof of the house on the hottest day of summer.

It was easy to get onto the roof. Bring the ladder from the old bunk beds in the basement, step onto the tiny balcony outside Annie’s room, up to the steep and baking slope of the shingles. You could lie there and see all the way out past the water tower, past the highway, past the granaries, past yellow quilts of wheat to the horizon.

Bobby was scared of the roof. Annie always helped him up, helped him down. But she sometimes took a shameful pleasure in his fear. Bobby, the younger, often got more attention than he deserved. Bobby was the baby of the family. Annie was expected to help with the dishes. Bobby never did.

Today—well, it was hot. Prairie-summer-itchy-sunburn-tight-clothes hot. Bobby had been whining about it. So she went up on the roof by herself, hoping he wouldn’t follow.

Of course, he did.

He pulled himself over the eavestrough and scuttled up the shingles behind her, clinging to her foot until he could safely lie down. Stay still, silly, and you won’t slip. But that’s not what Annie said.

If you get scared, she said, your hands get all sweaty.

Bobby’s frown deepened.

And if your hands get sweaty… you might slip. He looked at her aghast across a space of cedar shakes and hot air. Annie, don’t.

It’s a lo-o-ong way down, Bobby.

Panicking a little, he grabbed her left foot with both hands. Hey, let go, no fair!

But he hugged it tighter. She was wearing shorts and no shoes. In the hot air, his fingers felt sticky as tar… his touch was an intolerable itch. Bobby! Let go of me!

She kicked her ankle out to shake him loose. Annie, he said, don’t.

Now she was starting to get scared. Her gaze drifted down from the blue deeps of the sky, across those farms, grain elevators, houses, streets, to the rain gutter and the paved walk down below. Mama had put the garbage out. The garbage cans shivered in the rising heat.

She thought of Bobby tumbling down there and carrying her with him.

She shook her foot again, harder.

One hand came loose. Bobby scrabbled against the shingled roof. She kicked again. Annie. Please don’t.

It was peculiar, it was maddening, how calm his voice still sounded.

Annie kicked to pry him loose, felt his hand separate from her ankle. She had turned her head away and when she looked back she caught the briefest glimpse of him as he disappeared over the edge, an expression of vast surprise on his face.

She scrambled down the bunk-bed ladder and looked over the edge of the balcony and saw Bobby on the paved walk beside the garbage cans. She looked for a long time, unable to make sense of what she saw. His head was broken open and some of what was inside had come out.

When Bobby left the hospital, he was back in diapers. Mama had to change him all the time.

Once, she shook a soiled cotton diaper in Annie’s face. “This is your fault,” Mama said.

Bobby’s head was curiously flat on one side and he didn’t talk, but whenever he saw Annie coming he curled away from her and closed his eyes.

Mama died a couple of years after that.

Annie had hoped to win back her father’s affection with a medical degree; but he died, too, while she was away at school.

She finished her degree anyhow. Bobby was institutionalized, and the estate was paying for everything, but that money wouldn’t last forever, and she would need a good income—a doctor’s income—to keep Bobby cared for.

Her residency was the hardest part. The sight of a head wound still made her dizzy.

When she took up the partnership with Matt Wheeler, he talked about his wife Celeste and how he had lost her. Annie never talked about Bobby. Bobby was a secret. It kept them apart, but Annie understood that this was what they both needed: something more than friendship, something less than love. Matt was guilty about loving someone after Celeste. And Annie… Annie wasn’t convinced she deserved to be loved.

The Travellers had stirred up these memories, but the Travellers had offered something in return: objectivity, as cool and cleansing as mountain water. The ability to forgive herself.

Annie forgave Annie, a quarter-century down the line.

But it wasn’t her own forgiveness she really craved.

Bobby tired himself out playing lawn tag, so they retreated to the shade of the patio at Wellborne. Annie brought out two glasses of lemonade from the staff cafeteria. The lemonade was tart and perfect. They sat on the steps, drinking it.

“We’re going on a trip,” Bobby said.

She thought he meant the Wellborne patients. “That’s nice,” she said. “To the seashore, Bobby?”

“No, I mean—us. We’re all going on a trip.”

“Oh. That trip. Yes.”

“Are you excited, Annie?”

“It’s not for some time yet, Bobby. A few months, anyhow.”

“They have to build the spaceship.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I have a lot of growing up to do.”

“There’s no rush.”

“I got kind of… left behind.”

She wanted to say, “I’m sorry!”—but couldn’t find her voice.

“I’m getting stronger,” Bobby said. “Annie—look what I can do!”

A wooden railing ran all around the patio of the Wellborne building. Before she could say anything, Bobby had boosted himself onto the banister. He was clinging to the narrow timber with hands and feet… then he stood up, like a tightrope walker, balancing himself.

His hips stuck out in bony ridges from the loose jeans. His arms, thrown out for balance, were fragile as twigs.

A brisk wind could knock him down from there. She felt a surge of panic. “Bobby, stop it!”

“No, Annie, look\” He took two tentative steps. Proud of his balance. Proud of his new life.

“Bobby, you’ll hurt yourself!”

“No, I—”

But she was up without thinking about it, running to him, grabbing him around his painfully thin waist and lifting him down. He was lighter than she expected. He was as light as a nine-year-old.