People incorrectly talk about memories like they're a static category: identical crates piled up in storage somewhere in the brain. While there are some neat rows of bushes in the garden of the mind, there are also large, beautiful statues and tiny pebbles. There are trees that dig deep and dominate the landscape, and there are small puddles that cease to exist when the temperature rises. Sometimes we don't remember what we had for breakfast; in fact, most of our days are entirely forgotten not long after we live them. But there are other moments that we cannot forget: moments that leave such an indelible mark we can remember what we were wearing and what we smelled. We can relive it as easily as walking through a doorway.

For Antonio Rossi, there were only a few moments like that. One was when Angelo Bianchi, his boss and mentor, had made him the floor manager at The Sand and the Sea. There was another that involved an older woman and a Ford parked under a bridge. But the clearest memory he had was from another lifetime.

He was only a boy. Five. Six. Old enough to know the world, but not old enough to understand it. His parents were at work. They were always at work. Every day, he'd come home from school, spend a few hours with them, and then they'd be off to work doing whatever they did. One time Tony saw his father put a gun into his pocket, but he wasn't sure, precisely, what kind of job that implied. 

That night, however, he learned. Mrs. Milton had already put him to bed when he heard the door get kicked open. Three men burst in. One of them stayed with the old lady in the kitchen, but two of them came to his room. Tony grabbed a baseball bat and swung as soon as the door opened, but the man walking in easily caught the bat and ripped it from his hands, pointing at the bed with it. Tony sat down, glaring.

The man who spoke was in his prime. Short, but powerfully built. A dark trench coat with bulging pockets. A mustache. Hard, grey eyes as feeling as stone. And a deep voice that rumbled through the bedroom.

"Kid, there's no good way to say this. Your parents are dead. Killed in an accident. I'm an... acquaintance of theirs. My name is Angelo. They asked me to take care of you. Pack your stuff. One or two bags. We leave in five minutes."

Even now, he could see every detail of the man, every detail of his childhood bedroom. He remembered every article of clothing he packed, his bat, his picture of his parents and himself, a few favorite toys, and his baseball cards. 

He remembered silently shuffling past Mrs. Milton, who was frozen in terror, and walking downstairs and into a waiting car- off to his new life. His new existence with Angelo Bianchi, criminal and businessman, who would become his only guardian for the rest of his life. The man who taught him everything he knew. The man who give him a job at and 20% ownership of the best club in Philadelphia. The man who, Tony secretly learned years later, had killed his parents.

But what do you do with that sort of information? Act on it and avenge your parents by killing the person who'd raised you? What would that accomplish? Instead, it became a secret grove in the garden of the mind, a place to go to sit and think, but never to act. 

Fixing his tie, Tony sighed and knocked on his boss's door, ready to update him on last week's profits.