Oh, how the memory corrodes, how it distorts, how it deceives. When I think back to our arrival at this house - almost two months ago, now - the lane seems narrower, more densely bucolic, almost suffocatingly so. Why? Why did I experience it that way? Perhaps it was the intense, sweltering heat - the sensation of being one of a group of ants being fried on a sidewalk by a hateful, malevolent preteen wielding a magnifying glass.