“Jointly, with her husband, she has the home in West Island, but that wouldn’t be considered. I assume he’s the primary signatory. On her own, she has a portion of her father’s estate and portfolio, which ironically involves the board of directors for this clinic, though he shifted to emeritus status a year or so ago.”

“Her husband?”

Now he glanced up at me. My heart skipped a beat.

“Did I—did she marry him?”

“Did she marry whom?”

I didn’t remember his first name, not at first. Of course it was impossible for me to remember any part of Dolores’s life after the accident—whether my father had carried on with our brunches or whether we’d proceeded immediately to the clinic, though the latter seemed too sensational to be discreet.

“Shepherd,” I said at last. “A Mr. Shepherd.”

“Mr. Lyman Shepherd,” he confirmed with a nod as he replaced the notepad in his pocket. “Indeed she did.”

Now he stood, his fingers lacing behind him and his gaze surveying the room once more so that I knew he meant to leave.

“Wait. Don’t go.”

He stopped as though we were children playing ‘Jean Dit.’ As though he were under some enchantment that kept him there but did not require that he turn from the door.

“Not just yet,” I added, closing my eyes as if to seal myself up and breathing again only when I heard him reclaim his seat before me.

“Was it well attended?” I asked, though I didn’t care. I tried to imagine planning the wedding with my mother and Lyman’s—whomever she was—but could conjure only flickering pictures from a movie screen or portraits of brides in magazines. None of it calmed me or hinted at whether it was Walter’s attack, the Vault walls, or something else that made me feel so strange.

“It certainly looked that way to me,” Harvey said, and my interest was piqued.

“You were there?”

“I was. But I’m afraid I won’t be of much use describing the gown or the flowers or the way you wore your hair.” He cleared his throat. “The way Dolores wore it.” He adjusted in his chair and recrossed his legs. “I was a child when she was married, barely eight years old.”

For some reason, the thought made me smile. A child-sized Harvey. A little boy in a child-sized lab coat with pale eyes and a stern expression.

When I laughed out loud, a flicker of a smile surfaced on his lips but didn’t bloom.

“Is that funny?”