“But they aren’t. Dolores’s parents aren’t hideous. They’re just hers.” I laughed then while I wiped my eyes, dessert spoon in hand. “Why is memory this way? Why isn’t it content to hurt you once? Why must it remind you of all the times you’ve been hurt before?”

“Oh, Elsie, dear.” My friend laid her head against mine for a moment, both our hands too busy still feeding ourselves to hug the other. “It’s all that Banker’s fault.”

Finally I set my plate aside.

“If you had any sense, you’d leave me alone,” I said.

“I know.” She offered me her last bite when it was already on her spoon and I accepted. “I had thought what it’d do to me if the reprint erased you.”

“Had you?”

She nodded, taking both our plates and setting them on the other bed near the still silent radio.

“It would’ve, you know. Erased me. If not for Harvey’s mandate.”

She nodded again. Because, of course, she knew. In the eight weeks since I returned and since her tenure began, there had been at least a handful of reprints performed on Mems who lived in the Vault. Ettie had assisted with more than one removal since the night we’d met, escorting a technician to the part of the clinic where expired Mems went and then coming back to those of us who were still alive.

“I think that it’d be torture, seeing you here and knowing you didn’t remember me.”

“My stupid, stupid heart,” I said, flicking a tear away.

“What’s it done?”

“Realized how Harvey must have felt that very same way.”

“Intent to love them all anyway, aren’t you?” Ettie sighed, falling back against my headboard and cutting her eyes to catch mine. “If you aren’t a real girl, Elsie, then neither am I.”

It was Ettie who told me the Professor was coming later that same day. I knew that it mattered, his coming now, and that it meant that soon my life would change.

He towered in the doorframe when he arrived, looking nothing like the Walter Mem; instead of terror, the sight of him filled me with concern. I could see that he was overwhelmed and it permitted me to admit that I was, too. It could have been years since we’d seen each other last, and the thought that I’d lost track of time in the Vault—that these eight weeks had taken a greater toll than any spent aboveground—frightened me.

“Ma petite,” he said.

At the sound of his voice, I exploded off the bed, nearly falling in the race to his arms. And the first thing I wanted to tell him was how the world had broken my heart. It had happened one person at a time, I wanted to say, but Harvey Parrish had dealt the crippling blow.