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“There you are.”
“I am the villain, you mean?” Her tone was teasing.
“You know I did not.” Kenver kissed the top of her head. “You could never be.”
“I suppose it isn’t a wise choice,” she replied. “The villains’ dark plots are always exposed in the end.”
“In novels.” Not always so neatly outside them, Kenver thought.
Sarah nodded against his shoulder. “The post-obit fellow threw himself off a cliff in the Arabian Sea and was devoured by sharks. They chewed him to pieces.”
“You seem to relish the thought. I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty.”
“Well, he had been extremely wicked. And it was Arabia.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“It is a wild and violent place,” she said.
“According to this novel? What was it called?”
“I–I don’t remember.” Sarah sighed. “Sometimes my brain feels like the ocean after a shipwreck. There are so many odd bits of flotsam floating about. They’re often interesting but not always useful.”
“I’m sure it is more organized than that,” Kenver objected. “Your brain is overflowing with marvelous information.”
“Some of it is,” Sarah acknowledged. “And Ihavedone systematic studies of a number of subjects.”
“Of course you have.”
“But so many other bits just bob up, not really attached to anything in particular. I tried the memory palace to put them in order, but it didn’t work for me.”
“What is the memory palace?”
She turned to look up at him. “You are not really interested in this.”
“I am!” As Sarah eyed him, Kenver acknowledged that he was fascinated byherand thus ready to hear whatever she wished to say. The topic might not draw him, but the person always did.
“Well, it is a method for storing and retrieving memories,” Sarah said. “You recall a familiar place, where you have actually been, one you know thoroughly. Then you move about it, in your mind, and put away things you want to remember. In a drawer, say, or a cabinet. On a shelf. When you need that particular fact, you walk through your palace, find the right spot, and there it is.”
“But I am continually forgetting where I have put things away in my actual home,” Kenver said.
“And I kept getting distracted by other memories,” Sarah agreed. “Things that had happened in that place that had nothing to do with what I was trying to store away. They made me recall other incidents until I’d embarked on a…memory journey. By the time it was done, I’d forgotten the one I came with.”
Kenver laughed.
“Ridiculous, I know.”
“Not in the least. You are never ridiculous. You are fascinating and adorable.”
“You don’t have to flatter me.”
“I am only speaking the truth.”
“But I’m not really pretty.”
“What. Of course you are.”
She rose on one elbow and looked down at him. “It’s all right. I know I’m not a…a diamond of the first water.”
