"Tell me what he was like," Mara said. "Before."
It was past midnight. They were on the floor of Mara's spare bedroom — no chairs, just two women with their backs against the bed frame and two mugs going cold between them. The room smelled like bergamot candles and old comfort.
Elara stared at the ceiling.
"He remembered everything," she said finally.
"Like what?"
"Stupid things. Things you say once and forget you said. I mentioned once — once, Mara, we were half-asleep, I barely remember saying it — that my mother's favorite flowers were sunflowers." She paused. "Eight months later, he showed up to my studio opening with forty-seven of them. Exactly forty-seven, because I'd mentioned I was turning twenty-seven and he said one per year didn't seem like enough."
Mara was quiet.
"He used to leave coffee on my desk," Elara continued. "My exact order. Still hot. No note, no announcement, just — there. Every time." She looked at her hands. "I asked him once how he always timed it so perfectly and he just said, 'I pay attention to you. I always pay attention to you.'"
The radiator clicked.
"He sounds like someone I would hate for making the rest of us look bad," Mara said.
Elara almost smiled. Almost.
"He walked into a car for me, Mara." Her voice changed — flattened, like she was reading the words off a page she'd memorized from a distance. "We were crossing the street. I didn't see it. He did. He shoved me back and took the full impact." She stopped. "Cracked three ribs. Fractured his skull in two places. Was unconscious for nine days." She stopped again. "When he opened his eyes, I was sitting right there, right beside the bed, and he looked at me — he looked at me like I was a stranger."
Silence.
"And Victoria was there," Mara said carefully.
"Victoria was there." Elara's jaw tightened. "She'd been there every day while he was unconscious. I found out later she'd told the nursing staff she was his girlfriend. I found out later she'd had a conversation with him — the very first conversation he had when he woke up — without anyone else in the room." She pressed her lips together. "I don't know exactly what she said. I can imagine."
"Elara—"
"The cruelest part," Elara said, "is that he was protecting me. He threw himself in front of that car to save my life. He gave up his memories of me — he gave up five years of us — to keep me from getting hurt." She looked at the ceiling. "And I have to live with that."
Mara reached over and covered her hand.
They sat in the quiet for a long time.
— ✦ —
Later, when Mara was asleep, Elara sat at the small desk by the window with her sketchpad.
She drew nothing. She just held the pen and let herself be still and tried to remember the last moment — the very last moment — when everything had been right. Before the accident. Before the hospital. Before Victoria Ashford put her polished hand on Callum's arm and rebuilt the world inside his head.
She found the memory.
Their kitchen. A Sunday. He was making coffee. She was stealing the newspaper crossword from him. He'd reached over without looking and covered her hand with his to stop her, and when she'd looked up at him he'd been watching her with that quiet, private expression — the one she thought of as hers alone.
"You're a menace," he'd said.
"You're slow at crosswords," she'd said.
He'd laughed.
She'd kept his laugh in her chest like a stone she was still carrying.
She opened her sketchpad to the first fresh page.
She wrote three words at the top: VOSS CREATIVES — YEAR ONE.
Then she started drawing.
At 2:47 a.m., her phone buzzed.
She looked at the screen. Unknown number. She rejected it.
It buzzed again. Same number.
Then a text came through: *Don't hang up. This is about the accident. The real version. You need to know what I saw.*
Elara stared at the message for a long time.
She put the phone face-down on the desk.
She picked it back up.
She called back