He blinked. “Not once.” Then he looked at Novo and said, “Please. Can I see us?” and when Novo nodded, the bright room went dark, and Henry’s memory played out in front of us like old film, soft at the edges, scratched and jumpy. Dulcie, larger than life and sheer as a ghost, graceful and smiling, reached out from some ephemeral half-place for Henry’s hands, and part of him watched with us while another seemed to move before our eyes with the strength and power of his younger self, sweeping Dulcie off the ground, her black skirts turning in a circle, her bare feet. Images crowded the room in hologram layers, a chaotic slideshow. Her head on his shoulder. Their joined hands. A face in close fragments—the corner of her mouth, a tiny scar by her eye. A walk in the long grass. Stone beach by a river. The flat sea rolling from the deck of a ship. Cities and deserts. Mountains and palaces and canyons. Countless memories, speeded to a blur like the moving blades of a fan, passed over us like whipped air. And then, lastly, rooms in a house, this house, different but familiar. A painted chair. And Dulcie, sitting up in bed now, thinner, older, smiling at us all with a world of sadness spinning in her eyes.

She faded slowly, and then the room was bright again, the window open, the seagulls calling for Henry, crying for more.

“She always wore black,” Henry said. “Every day of her life. Black dresses. A black robe. Her wardrobe was like a funeral parlor. Look.”

He unlocked one of the giant wardrobes taking up space against the wall, and it jostled with the swing of black skirts—silk and wool and organza and lace. Elaborate and old-fashioned, they smelled of mothballs, and Henry ran his hand across them like a pianist, and bowed his head and closed the doors.

“What happened to her?” I said.

He gave a sad smile. “She died, Jude. She lived and we were happy together and there was a lifetime in each heartbeat, a million perfect Nows. And then she died.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He looked at Novo. “It was a long time ago.”

“And you’ve been here ever since?”

Henry nodded.

“I kept everything,” he said. “At the beginning, I was sure she would come back. I couldn’t understand it, not really. I pictured her rushing in the front door and scolding me for getting rid of all her things.”

I thought of Mrs. Midler’s life laid out like that, the flesh picked off its bones, those plates, split apart like orphaned children.

“Later,” he said, “when I knew she wasn’t ever coming back, when I finally understood her death for what it was, as something permanent, I just couldn’t bear to part with them.”

“What else was hers?” I said.