Page 85

“My mother used to give these to me every year on my birthday.” The corner of his mouth twitched with a hint of fondness. “My parents usually gifted me something expensive and impressive—which I very much loved, don’t get me wrong—but it also usually came with strings attached. These, though . . . my mother always slipped them to me after dinner. It was our thing.”

Molly plucked the candy from his grip. It looked like an ordinary soft taffy. She lifted it to her nose; it smelled like oranges.

“She stopped sending them after that Christmas when everything went so badly. My first birthday after that was . . .” He trailed off.

Molly pulled the twisted ends of the paper wrapper, freeing the light-orange candy.

“She stopped sending them,” Molly repeated, trying to understand what implication of hope she was meant to find.

“She stopped sending them to me on my birthday,” he said, taking a step closer. He took the candy from her fingers; the paper wrapper fluttered to the ground. Molly parted her lips, seeing his intent as he slipped the candy into her mouth, fingers pausing a moment too long. “They arrive on your birthday instead.”

It was at Molly’s next appointment, sitting with Aster’s knee pressed to the side of hers, that the rest of her world dropped out from beneath her. Caverns of absolute nothingness yawned wide inside her, swallowing her tender hidden pockets of hope, tasting like orange taffies.

Can you repeat that?

She tried asking, but the blank spaces in her brain had taken control.

Aster spoke instead, visceral bite lacing a tone she didn’t recognize in her new reality. That tone belonged to the old Aster she’d known in high school. Cutting. Dismissive.

“Surely you don’t mean to suggest you’re done investigating a solution for my wife.” Aster meant it as a question, Molly knew he did. But the way he’d said it, it sounded more like a last rite.

Which wasn’t dissimilar from how Molly felt.

Distantly, and through something of a haze, Molly heard Aster laying out the extent of his research, producing notes, itemizing dates and symptoms and the number of NSAIDs Molly had consumed in the last four months.

A stern look crossed Dr. Macmillan’s face around the time that Aster insisted—with poorly controlled fury—that her reasoning simply wasn’t good enough. It was a look that said she would no longer be entertaining him.

Molly crawled out from the pit, shoving her despair aside.

“Mr. Bishop, Molly,” her doctor began, removing her glasses and clasping her hands calmly across her lap. “The fact of the matter is that Molly’s imaging and symptoms have steadily plateaued since the time of her strokes. There are things to celebrate in that. Molly has had no progressive symptoms whatsoever. Plateaus can be blessings in and of themselves. But as such, your insurance has deemed it an unreasonable use of resources to continue such frequent monitoring.”

“And what if a reasonable use of resources didn’t matter? If we were paying out of pocket?” Aster demanded.

“Are you?”

Aster flinched, just barely, as his brain caught up with his mouth. For a moment, Molly imagined he’d been planning to fund whatever research was required with generations of his family’s wealth. She wondered how often he still accidentally slipped into the skin of a wealthy man raised with the ability to bend wills with bank accounts.

He didn’t answer. The muscles in his face tightened as a flush crept up the side of his pale neck.

“We’d like to shift the frequency of your visits to once every other month for now,” Dr. Macmillan said. “At this point, we suspect if your memories do eventually return, it will simply take time. Your diagnosis and your care plan will not change. We’re simply reducing the number of appointments to better suit the present nature of your condition.”

Molly felt both hot and cold, painful yet serene, something adrift and on fire beneath her skin.

“Thank you for your time today,” Molly said, her voice feeling distant. She nodded briefly before tugging at Aster’s hand, forcing him to stand.

He did so reluctantly. A muscle along his jaw had started to twitch, but his outrage would get them nowhere. Molly was but a small component in this enormous contraption called a hospital system, and she’d been rendered irrelevant in what was probably the nicest way they could have done so.

Molly steered them out of the examination room, hand still clasped firmly in Aster’s, and brought them to a pair of chairs in the waiting area.

Aster didn’t sit. Instead, he paced. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Occasionally, Molly caught a muttered “fuck” beneath his breath.

“Aster—”

He lifted a hand. “Just—give me a minute,” he forced through a tense jaw.

Molly crossed her hands in her lap and watched as he resumed pacing.

“Fuck,” he muttered again after several more turns around the waiting room.