We were where we’d always been: caged inside the Vault. His hair fell, a section at his temple dangling out of place for the first time. He didn’t sweep a hand over it and I didn’t reach up to put him back together. He only turned away, leaving me alone in a room that wasn’t mine.

I stayed there longer than I meant to, losing track of time while the day began to fade. Finally Ettie found me during her evening rounds, and I told her what he’d done.

“I am a memory,” I said at last, and for the first time I believed it. “Now I’ll live like one.”

NO. 7

  NO. 7  

The Professor and Camille seemed intentionally mismatched in every physical way, and it only made the couple more romantic. Where her hair was long, he had none. He had such an exceedingly thin frame that whenever he was in front of Camille, she was only partially hidden, her ample curves visible on either side of his. He was a tall man—almost comically so when he stood side by side with his wife—and he had to bend forever for his lips to reach her forehead. It was a sight I’d been missing ever since my recall.

I could pick them out of any crowd, from any distance, and when I knew they were coming, I used to watch from the balcony of my flat. Of course there were no balconies in the Vault. No windows either. And even if I could have watched for them, I’d have seen only Camille. Though she came to visit a second time, I still hadn’t seen her husband.

It was my own fault, I told myself to stave off self-pity. I couldn’t have brought the portrait they’d given me as a housewarming gift, but I could have remembered the picture locket I’d received the night of Mount Royal’s debut. Or, months before my recall arrived, I could have done as the Professor asked and perhaps never have been forced to leave my flat at all.

He and Camille had come to dinner, an occurrence that was too common to be immediately suspicious. But that night in the late spring of 1925, as soon as his wife had volunteered to clear our dinner plates and disappeared into my kitchen before I could protest, his demeanor changed.

“Ma petite,” he began. And it wasn’t that he dropped his voice—there were many things he shared with me to spare Camille the discomfort—but that he hesitated after.

“Something’s the matter,” I noted.

And instead of continuing, he smiled at me, a half dozen folds growing around his twinkling eyes.

“You are perceptive, Dolores. As ever.”

“Thank you,” I answered, so that he would quickly continue.

“If ever things should change,” he said, “I’d like you to promise me something.”