She smiled. Not the wide smile she used on Rhea. A small one that lived only at the corner of her mouth and did not reach the other corner. A careful smile. A smile that knew what it was being careful around.
I looked at her. I kept looking. The light from the window above the headboard was on the side of her face. The pendant on her chain sat in the open neck of her shirt. A small flat bar of gold with a character cut clean through the middle of it. I knew the shape of that character without knowing how I knew.
Something at the back of my head moved.
Not a memory. Not yet. The shape of one. The shape of one coming forward through the dark the way a thing comes forward in a hallway when the light has not been switched on, and you cannot see it, but you can hear the way the air changes around it.
I was in a bedroom that was this bedroom.
I was in this bed.
The light was the morning light from the window above my head, gone gold along the edge of the sheet.
She was at the foot of the bed in one of the soft grey hoodies from the guest room down the hall, the sleeves down past her knuckles. She was holding a bowl in both hands and the bowl was steaming. Her hair was a tangle she had not bothered with.She was looking at me the way a woman looks at a man she has decided to be careful with.
The image was one second long.
It was a single beat of a memory and then it was gone, and the back of my head went white at the edges of my vision, and the temple set up that dull steady pulse that had been my warning sign for a month.
I put a hand to my temple. I bent my head forward.
"Easy."
She was instant. She was close. She had moved before the word was out. Her arms came around my shoulders from the side and she held me there, the tablet pushed off her lap onto the floor with a soft slap I barely heard.
"Breathe. Slow. Don't chase it. Let it go."
Her mouth was at my ear. Her breath was warm at the side of my neck. I breathed. The white at the edges of my vision pulled back by a fraction. The pulse at my temple stayed dull and steady and then started to slow. I let her hold me. I let her hold me because the holding was the thing the body had been waiting to be done to it and had not known it was waiting.
The pain came down a step. Then another step. Then it was just a pressure at the side of my head and the small warm weight of her arm across the back of my shoulders.
She did not let go. I turned my face an inch toward her.
"I saw you."
"Okay."
"Soup. You brought me soup. In a bowl. I was in this bed."
She went very still for a beat. A breath she did not take. Then she nodded once against the side of my head and I felt the small movement of her jaw against my temple.
I lifted my head. My eyes were on her face. Hers did not leave mine.
"You're not a random nanny, are you?"
"Don't push it. You'll know when the time comes."
"Why won't you just tell me?"
"Because I do not want to put my version of you in front of yours. Let your memory introduce me to you. I will wait. You have to be patient."
The words came out of me without me choosing the shape of them. The contractions fell off. I did not notice them falling off.
"I do not like being patient."
She made a small breath at the back of her throat that was almost a laugh.
"I know."
