I sat because my legs had begun to shake.
Tessa’s hand rested briefly on my shoulder. “The brain protects itself in strange ways.”
“Does it protect itself by erasing people?”
“We don’t know that he’s erased anything.”
I looked at Noah’s face.
He was right there. The scar beneath the bandage was his. The faint notch in his eyebrow from a childhood fall was his. The dimple near his mouth appeared when he slept on his side.
But I had seen his eyes.
I knew what recognition looked like in them.
It had not been there.
The next morning, Leah arrived.
She looked enough like Noah to make my chest ache. Same dark eyes, same sharp cheekbones, though her hair was lighter and her expressions less guarded.
She stopped outside his room and covered her mouth.
“He looks so small,” she whispered.
Noah was six feet tall and broad through the shoulders. There was nothing small about him except the helplessness of his body beneath hospital sheets.
Leah took my hand.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look terrible.”
“You flew all night.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
A nurse allowed her ten minutes.
Noah was awake when we entered. His eye moved toward us.
“Hey, nuisance,” Leah said, her voice breaking. “You really know how to ruin a week.”
He stared at her.
She came closer.
“It’s Leah.”
His brow creased.
I watched the hope leave her face.
“Your sister,” I said.
Noah looked at me, then back to her.
