“Oh?” I shouted over the car engine, as if to cover my own irreconcilable thoughts. It was impossible to relegate Harvey’s image to the back of my mind, and at the moment it seemed undeniably due to Lyman’s presence. But why? The two men didn’t resemble each other in any way. Lyman was bred for society life. To be honest, by the way he stood when I first laid eyes on him, Lyman Shepherd reminded me of the champion stallion introduced to us when the Professor, Camille, and I visited Blue Bonnets years before. Princely and fortunate, everything about his appearance was expensive, though somehow the exact cost was kept intimidatingly quiet. When I was a part of Dolores, Lyman was exactly the type of man I’d expected to marry. He smiled easily and, most likely, often. He was the type I knew I should find immediately charming and imagined that if he’d been outside the restaurant that day when I’d fallen into hysterics, he’d have known exactly what to say to calm me down. Whether he’d sided with my father or voted against the clinic, his decision would have been altogether reasonable. And he would never have worn a cologne, let alone one as strong as Harvey’s. When I was lucky, I still sometimes caught that fragrance on the edge of the Vault’s circulated air.

“You’re the age you were when we met, but you don’t know me. It’s terribly odd.” He glanced at the road and then returned to me as though helpless to resist. “You don’t remember. You’re not my wife. But you are. It’s impossible.”

“I know what you mean,” I ventured. “I know of you; I know I was on my way to meet you but never did. Even though, had I not been extracted, I would be part of the Dolores you know so well.”

And immediately I felt my face flush with heat at the way my words might be interpreted. The inside of my hands immediately damp, I wrung them together in my lap. If my word choice hadn’t similarly struck Lyman, he most certainly inferred the accidental innuendo by my obvious embarrassment. Strange that he would lay his hand over mine then, as though touching me would lessen the discomfort. I kept my palms clasped together so that his curling fingers couldn’t reach them. At least when he released me nothing more was said until after we left the main road and passed beneath a wrought-iron archway.