If Memory Serves

And far too often, it doesn't

I had a memory from childhood of walking through a half-demolished house — no roof, walls laid bare down to the stone, and an old, broken piano sitting there, exposed to the elements.

It was a strange, disjointed memory. I couldn’t place it in time, only that I must have been very young. In the memory, my stepdad was with me, showing me these houses in a…