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took his suitcase upstairs, threw it onto his bed and walked to the window. With the trees still not in bud, he could see all the way down to the storefronts on Railroad Street— the steeple on the United Church at one end, and the tallest building in town, the clock tower on the town hall, at the other. He leaned into the window, letting his breath fog the glass. Everything was still the same. The view from the window was the same view he had had when he was a boy. There was no other place in the world where time had stopped like it had here.
    He turned suddenly, went into his old clothes closet and reached up behind the door frame. There was a hole in the plaster the size of a grapefruit. He stood on his toes and reached into the hole, searching with his hand. He smiledand pulled out a purple Crown Royal bag. He took the bag to his bed, reached into it and pulled out his complete set of Parkhurst hockey cards: 1957 to 1958.
    He lay on his bed and thumbed through the cards.
    There were only two teams in the set. The Canadiens and the Leafs. Fifty cards in all. He took the thick brown elastic band from around them. Doug Harvey, the great Montreal defenceman, was card number 1 ; then the man who invented the slapshot, “Boom Boom” Geoffrion. Jean Beliveau, who could have been Governor General, was next; then Henri Richard, followed by his brother, card number 5 , the great Maurice “The Rocket” Richard.
    The texture of the paper, so thick it was almost cardboard, was unlike anything they use today. And the inks—the primary blues, the dramatic reds and the vibrant yellow accents—were like a whisper in his ear: the siren song of his boyhood calling him, down the kaleidoscope of memory, to the schoolyard, a-bustle with boys, all of them trading and flipping cards like carnival barkers.
    Yo-yos and chestnuts. Stems and strings. Frogs in the creek. Tadpoles in a jar. Red-winged blackbirds and squirrels. His old red bike.
    He sat up and put the cards on his bedside table. He spent the next ten minutes unpacking his bag. He put everything into the empty top drawer of his old bureau. It was like settling into a hotel room. Another chance to start again. Another chance at a life where you hang up your shirts and fold everything neatly. When he had finished unpacking, he put the hockey cards back in the liquor bag and the bag back in the wall.
    W hen Dave went downstairs, Smith Gardner was washing his hands in the kitchen sink. Dave saw him glance at the empty towel rack beside the fridge. Dave, still on the stairs, made to fetch a towel, but before he took even a step, Smith reached for the second drawer to the right of the stove, pulled out a fresh towel and shook it open. This was clearly not the first time Smith Gardner had washed his hands at that sink.
    Dave glanced at the kitchen table. It was set for three.
    “I invited Smith to stay,” said Margaret.
    Margaret sat down in the chair where she always sat, the chair close to the stove. For the last few years Dave had been sitting in the spot where his father, Charlie, used to sit, to Margaret’s right. That chair had a place set in front of it. But so did the chair where Dave sat when he was a boy. Dave saw Smith glance at the table, and it occurred to him he didn’t want to sit in his boyhood chair, not if Smith Gardner was in his father’s.
    He didn’t actually run across the kitchen. But he did lurch. He lurched across the kitchen, beat Smith to the table, sat down in his father’s place and then looked at Smith, half stood up again and said, “I’m not in your seat, am I?”
    Smith said, “I don’t have a seat.”
    But Dave didn’t miss the glance that passed between his mother and this man.
    D inner, as always, was plentiful. There was chicken and mashed potatoes, and a bowl of peas (canned), and a bowl of squash (fresh), and a plate of bread, and butter, and a cabbage salad.
    As they passed things around, Smith said, “My son and I were trying to work