The clinic room was ordinary. That was the first thing she noticed — that Dr. Harmon had made it deliberately ordinary. Two chairs. A small table. A window with afternoon light. Nothing clinical on the walls. It smelled like fresh coffee and old books.
Callum was already there when she arrived.
He stood when she came in. She wasn't sure why that hit her — he'd always stood when she entered a room. Always. She hadn't thought about it in two years.
"You came," he said.
"You told him I'd say no."
"I thought you would."
"I almost did." She sat in one of the chairs. He sat in the other. Across from each other, two feet of space between them, their knees almost but not quite aligned. She set her bag on the floor. She looked at him. "Let's be clear about something before we start."
"Okay."
"I'm here because recovering your memory is the right thing for this legal situation and for your wellbeing. I'm not here because I—" She stopped. Started again. "I'm not here for the reason you might think I'm here."
He held her gaze. "What reason do I think you're here?"
"Don't."
"I'm asking sincerely."
"Callum." Her voice was quiet and final. "Let's just do the session."
Dr. Harmon entered then, which saved them both from whatever would have come next.
He explained the protocol — gentle, structured, no pressure. He would introduce stimuli from the relevant period. Elara would provide context, answer questions, fill in the narrative. Callum would respond honestly to whatever arose. The session could be stopped at any time by either of them.
"First stimulus," Dr. Harmon said. He placed a coffee mug on the table between them.
Elara recognized it. Her chest did something complicated. It was from a specific cafe — a small place near her old studio, the one they'd gone to every Saturday morning for three years. She'd given Callum a mug from there as a joke gift the year they'd been married. *In case you miss me when I'm working,* she'd written on the card.
"Do you recognize this?" Dr. Harmon asked Callum.
Callum looked at it. "No." A pause. "But it makes me—" He stopped. "It makes me feel like I should recognize it. Like there's something around the corner of it."
"Elara," Dr. Harmon said, "can you give it context?"
She looked at the mug. She looked at Callum's face.
"There was a cafe," she said. "On Alders Street. We went every Saturday. You always ordered the same thing and I always stole half of it and you always pretended to be annoyed." She paused. "You bought me this mug one day without telling me why. I still have it."
Callum looked at her while she spoke. Something shifted in his expression — not memory, not yet, but something reaching in the direction of one.
"Why did you steal half?" he asked.
"Because I could never decide what I wanted."
He almost smiled. "That sounds—" He stopped. "That sounds right."
The session ran ninety minutes.
At the end of it, Callum sat very still while Dr. Harmon made notes.
Elara was gathering her things to leave when Callum said, "The garden."
She stopped.
"The lavender," he said. He was frowning at the middle distance. "South fence. You planted it yourself. In a yellow dress. I watched from the deck." He looked at her slowly. "I told you you'd stain the dress."
Her hands had stopped moving inside her bag.
"You said it was worth it," he said.
She couldn't speak for a moment.
"Yes," she said. "I did."
He looked at her with something new in his face — not the cold assessment he'd met her with in the boardroom, not the guilt from her kitchen, not the careful professional register of Heathrow. Something older. Something that recognized her.
"There's more," he said. "I can feel it. Like pressure behind a wall."
"It'll come," she said.
"And when it does?" He held her eyes. "When I remember all of it — what happens then, Elara?"
She picked up her bag. She looked at him.
"I don't know yet," she said honestly.
She walked out.
In the corridor, she pressed her back against the wall and closed her eyes and held herself very, very still