“I came here once, with a friend,” I said while I could still remember, and then I forced my voice above a whisper. “And I learned that they don’t forget it all. Part of the extracted memory stays behind, or at least the feeling that went with it. Even when they extract us, they’re never really free.”

If we were at the Vault, he might have written it down in his breast pocket notepad, flipping through the pages while he idled in my dorm. Maybe when he saw her and while preparing us for reprinting he would think that was all I’d seen in Dolores and I wouldn’t be able to explain.

“None of us will be free of you,” he said. “Even when we’re gone.”

The smile set a glimmer in his eyes and I was sure. We had traded sides completely. The truth had given him hope and had stolen it away from me.

“We can leave, Elsie. Together. Tonight.”

“Harvey.”

“You never have to go back inside the Vault—there’s no reason to take the chance.”

“You’d lose everything. I’m too important not to be missed, remember?” I said, trying to smile.

“You’re too important not to last,” he insisted. “Whatever happens to me, at least I’ll know these memories will last forever in you.”

“Nothing has to last forever,” I said, my heart still breaking that he could not.

His hand slipped behind my neck, his fingers sliding into my hair while he pulled closer to me. He pressed my copper waves away from my cheek again and admired the color of my skin, his pale eyes studying me as though his memory was not the one he could rely on. Finally he kissed me, closing his eyes before I closed mine. His palms were dry, his breath steadfast. It was not the dramatic kiss of new love, when the eyelashes flutter and hands roam adventurously. The last kiss Harvey and I shared—the one he gave me back—was certain. It was a kiss for which there was no comparison, even on my beloved silver screen.

NO. 10

  NO. 10  

When a day had passed without word from Lyman Shepherd and I could not spend another hour in my quiet dormitory, I sought out the Professor and the distraction of his work. In the Vault, the most intriguing development was often bittersweet, and the Keepsakes were no exception. The trio had indeed been a creative inheritance, but they did not last.

We learned that the dowager lived in a vault of her own now, overtaken so rapidly by dementia that she’d been placed in a convalescent home. Not only was she not deceased, but her executor had barely been made aware of her decline before one of her children was requesting that the Mem bequeathed to him be made available for reprinting.