The memories didn't come back all at once.
That was what Elara hadn't understood — she'd imagined it like a light switching on. The sessions continued, twice a week, and each one pried something loose. A song she used to hum. The way she took her tea. The sound she made when she laughed at something that surprised her.
Each thing Callum recovered, he told her the next session. Not to be sentimental — she understood that. He told her the way someone confirms coordinates. *This matches. Does this match?*
It did. Always.
The fifth session, he remembered their first argument.
"We were in the kitchen," he said. "I'd said something about your work hours. Something unkind."
"You said I cared more about my clients than our evenings," she said.
"And you said—"
"I said our evenings would still be there in an hour and my deadline wouldn't." She looked at her hands. "I was right. You knew I was right. That was why you were more annoyed."
He almost laughed. "Yes." He looked at her. "How long before we—"
"Twenty minutes. You came and sat next to me at my desk and read a book until I finished." She paused. "Without saying anything."
"That sounds like—" He stopped. "That sounds like something I'd do."
"It was."
Dr. Harmon watched them the way a man watches a fire he's coaxed back from almost nothing — carefully, and with some relief.
— ✶ —
Outside the sessions, things moved on their own schedule.
The police investigation into Victoria and Marcus Webb was formal and slow and involved lawyers at every turn. Victoria had returned from Heathrow to her Kensington apartment and issued a statement through her attorney that described everything as fabricated, vindictive, and motivated by Elara's failure to accept the end of the marriage.
The audio file her attorney called a deepfake
The financial records her attorney called circumstantial.
Callum's legal team called them a very clear trail that any competent prosecutor could follow.
The press found out on a Thursday.
By Friday morning, *Reid — Ashford — Voss* was on the front page of every business and society column in the city. Elara's phone rang fourteen times before nine a.m. She answered none of them. She went to the office. She worked.
Nathan put a coffee on her desk without being asked.
"Thank you," she said.
"The Farrow account wants to check in given the — publicity," he said. "I've pushed them to next week."
"Good."
"Also." He sat across from her. "Callum Reid called the office line this morning."
She looked up.
"He wanted to know if you'd had breakfast," Nathan said.
A pause.
"What did you tell him?" she asked.
"That I'd pass on the message." Nathan's voice was even. His eyes were not quite. "And then I told him that if he called the office line again, I'd route him to our automated phone system and leave him there."
Despite everything, Elara almost laughed.
"Nathan."
"I know. I know." He stood. "I just—" He stopped.
"You're allowed to have feelings about this," she said quietly. "I know this isn't easy."
"What isn't easy," Nathan said, "is watching you sit in a room with a man who broke you twice and trying to work out whether what you feel when you look at him is hope or just — muscle memory of hope." He picked up her empty coffee cup. "I'll get you a refill."
He left.
She sat with what he'd said.
Muscle memory of hope.
She hated that it was the most accurate thing anyone had said to her in months.
Her phone rang at six-forty-seven that evening. She was still at the office. Nathan had gone.
Callum.
She answered.
"I remembered something," he said. His voice was strange — quiet in a way that wasn't his professional quiet. Rawer than that.
"What?"
A pause.
"The night you told me you loved me the first time," he said. "We were in the car. It was raining. You weren't going to say it — I could tell, you were trying to hold it back — and then the rain got very loud and you said it very quietly and then immediately looked out the window like you hadn't."
She gripped the phone.
"And I didn't say it back straightaway," he continued. "Not because I didn't feel it. Because I—" A pause. "I pulled the car over. And I just looked at you. And you were so embarrassed that you started talking about something else entirely. Something about a film."
She remembered this with the precision of a photograph.
"And I said—" he started.
"Don't," she said.
"Elara—"
"Callum, don't. Please."
A long silence.
"Okay," he said softly. "Not yet."
She pressed her hand over her eyes.
"The sessions are working," she said. Steady. Professional. "I'll see you Thursday."
"Elara."
"Thursday, Callum."
She hung up.
She sat in the quiet office and let herself feel exactly one minute of every feeling she'd been refusing for weeks.
Then she picked up her pen.
She got back to work.