The Laughter by Sonora Jha

When Chesterton was a child, his sister died. In all his years, nobody around him, not even his father, with whom he was close, talked to him about the dead girl. She was the only thing about which his father did not speak. Chesterton was left with little to go on. He did not remember his sister's death, but he remembered her once falling off a rocking horse. In his head, for years, the little memory grew and grew until it became something else and he came to imagine that his sister had been thrown from a real horse and killed. When he examined how he had come to conflate the rocking-horse incident with the separate and unrelated incident of his sister's death, Chesterton concluded that the real difficulty about remembering anything was that we may remember too much because we remember too often. The only true memory is the one that comes back sharply and suddenly, he believed. In that piercing instant, we remember things as they truly were.

I have avoided thinking about Ruhaba's visit to my office on November 1st. I have neither remembered it too much nor remembered it too often. Now, I am sitting before my fire at home, Edgar at my feet, awaiting what I hope is the final visit from the federal agents before they make their address at their big press conference this afternoon. They want this all tied up. The presidential election is tomorrow, and there is much greater work to be done.