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night’s rigid dinner. Colin was relieved to hear his granddaughters laughing. Even Paula seemed a little less on edge.
    After the meal, Paula loaded their luggage into the hatchback and the four of them stood on the driveway not saying much of anything.
    “Safe trip,” Colin said at last.
    The girls piled into the car. Paula ordered them to put on their seatbelts before urging Colin to take a few steps out of earshot.
    “I’d like to come back next weekend, Dad.”
    “Oh fine, fine. It will be nice to see you and the girls again.”
    Paula shook her head. “I’m going to see if Stan would be willing to bump up his weekend with the girls so that you and I can have some time to talk some things out.”
    Unable to react, Colin merely stood while his daughter informed him that she would be “making some calls this week” and would talk to him “real soon.” She leaned in for a cursory embrace, then drove off without so much as glancing at him.
    Colin stood on his lawn. A shape of lurid colours leaked into his periphery, and Colin craned his head to see Millie pretending to shower her rosebushes. He waved at her but Millie must not have noticed. Colin went inside and plopped down on an armchair.
    Feelings cascaded through him so swiftly Colin could barely register one before the next came racing along. He worried over Paula’s almost threatening promise to return in a few days. He pined for the days when his wife would unfailingly balm his anxious spirit. But chiefly, Colin thought about the chapel, specifically why his granddaughters had decided to omit the building from their recollections of yesterday. Perhaps they had merely sensed the incorrectness of the place and opted to will it out of their memories. If this was the case, Colin wished the girls would teach him how to do the same.
    But he had seen it, had even wandered its nave. Whatever havoc his flaking brain had been playing on him these last few months, the chapel was a different matter. It was palpable, visceral. Even if the crazy story Millie had told Paula was true, even if he had taken some wrong turns while walking with the girls, Colin was staunchly certain of what he had seen and felt inside that marshside temple.
    Yet he’d also been certain of his ability to navigate the footpaths, and how to pour himself a rye-and-ginger, and the myriad other minutiae that were becoming more tedious and fleeting with each passing day. And if Paula doubted these tiny day-to-day trivialities, what would she do to him if he told her of a lascivious church?
    He needed proof, if for no other reason than to pacify himself. And he knew precisely how he might obtain it.
    The Polaroid camera Bev had once given him as a birthday gift was still on the closet shelf where he’d stored it, some twenty years ago now. He was pleasantly surprised to find that he still had some film left on a cartridge, but was sceptical about the device’s working ability after so many years in storage. Nevertheless, the thin possibility was enough to inspire Colin to don his puffer vest and his hiking boots.
    Even after filling a hip-bag with a good deal of water and food, he found himself unwilling to depart for the paths just yet. He stood rigid in the centre of the living room, the heat rising around him, wondering if he could bring himself to face those woods again so soon. But Colin had always been a man of strong resolve. He knew that not facing the mystery that had swayed him from his accepted course would cause him to lose faith. He set off.
    He felt like a mischievous child as he skulked past Millie’s house, out of view of her windows. His passing by a young couple stirred another flash of panic in Colin, but this too passed once he stepped onto the path and began to hike.
    The natural layout of the footways seemed to have been restored, for Colin discovered that the lanes invariably led to the familiar groves, and in no time at all he found himself back at the main road, having