Chapter 3

Nora's recovery, both physical and mental, was disjointed and progressed slowly. Nothing in the After—as in, after the accident—felt the same as it had in the Before. Not her body, not her thoughts, not even the world around her. She felt fundamentally changed, which was both exhilarating and urgent—like she was speeding down a highway to something new and exciting, but the engine was on fire and she had to get there before her car exploded.

Some things were more vivid than before, like the feel of sunshine on her skin and the smell of the bouquets of flowers that arrived from friends of the family and office staff to wish her well. She'd been moved to a physical rehabilitation facility, secured for her at a high cost, her father made sure she understood. The patients were mostly geriatric, and no matter how much room freshener they sprayed, the smell of Bengay and bleach lingered. Dad said it was the best facility for "this kind of thing" in Central Texas. Lacey said it was the best facility because it was out of sight of family friends and clients.

Nora didn't care. The only thing she cared about was discovering how different everything seemed on this side of death. Some things felt much duller than they had in the Before. Such as time—she never knew what time it was and couldn't make herself care. At first, her sense of which world she was inhabiting had needed constant readjusting. Her dreams were filled with magic carpet rides and strangers and big tomatoes and crazy cloud art that was hard to distinguish from reality. Sometimes she thought she was in Grandpa's garden, only to wake up and realize she was in a rehab center.

But mostly, steadily, assuredly, she felt increasingly cheerful. Shiny and new. Her experience had rubbed off all the tarnish to reveal the real her, and she was gleaming, just like she gleamed as a girl when she'd been full of life and wonder and dreams of being a pirate or a pop star, because anything had seemed possible. Before she knew that people judged you for the way you looked, or where you came from, or for your dreams. Before life had begun to chip away at her.

She had a psychiatrist now; her parents had assumed Nora would need help with the emotional trauma she'd suffered from dying and coming back to life, so they'd retained Dr.Beth Cass, a middle-aged woman with long silvery blonde hair and lots of bangle bracelets.

Dr.Cass was unabashedly thrilled about treating a client who'd had a near-death experience. According to her, having wonky senses was to be expected. "Your entire perspective on life and death has shifted dramatically while everyone else's has stayed the same. You're a butterfly emerging from a cocoon."

Nora loved that description and imagined herself in full bright-winged glory, emerging.

Dr.Cass said it was so interestingto work with someone who had experienced a different dimension. Nora said she would not recommend near-death as a dimension, as it left a lot of questions in its wake. Dr.Cass said sure, but wasn't it more interesting to answer those questions than to know everything there was to know? And wasn't Nora lucky?

That's what everyone said—she was so lucky for having survived death. She was certainly lucky. But it was more than that—it was rejuvenating. Lucky sounded like she'd won a few rounds of bingo, whereas rejuvenated sounded like true transformation. She woke up every day bursting with an eagerness to be released from rehab so that she could sort out the new life she was determined to have, buoyed by her newfound optimism. She wasn't quite sure what that would look like, as she couldn't fully recall her life in the Before, but she knew she wanted to be a better person. She would read more books. Volunteer somewhere. Tap into herself to make... something!

What did she want to do with her life? She had to think about that. The Before was like a blanket of fog that covered part of her brain. Dr.Cass said that the fog would lift eventually as they did a little digging underneath and delved deeper into her past. She said Nora had arrived at rehab pretty beat up, and it wasn't every day a person drowned and came back to life, and whoo-boy, wouldn't it be strange if Nora didn't need time to recover from her near-death experience?

The physical therapists had reassembled her piece by piece, Humpty-Dumpty style. Now all that was left of her to finish healing was a slowly fading bruise on her face and her busted ankle. "Water has the force of a sledgehammer," said one of the therapists. "Get hit by one good wave and—boom—broken ankle." The orthopedist said it was probably the safety cord on the surfboard that had twisted her up. He said it would be easy to figure out by looking at the surfboard, but no one ever found it.

In the mornings, after breakfast, she would hobble to the small inner courtyard where patients came to smoke. She liked to sit and listen to the birdsong and remember Grandpa's awesome garden and let the sun sink into her skin. She'd never been much of a garden sitter in the Before. Frankly, she wasn't sure what she'd been, other than a little boring and lacking motivation. She didn't want to be that anymore. She wanted to be the woman who went to museum meet-ups and met friends for drinks and ran along the Lady Bird Lake trail so she could say hi to all the dogs. But she didn't know where to start.

Once, she'd asked an elderly woman sitting on a bench next to her if she would do anything differently if she had a chance to start over.

"You bet. I would have divorced my husband long before he died."

"Oh,"Nora had said. She was thinking that maybe she'd wanted to be an astronaut or a librarian or something.

Nora was not bothered by the fractured memories of her life that had begun to come back, popping up like champagne corks, usually apropos of nothing, reminding her that the Before hadn't always been easy. She'd been a little melancholy at times. Dr.Cass was right, and she was a little curious as to why. But for the time being, she tucked those fragments of memories away and carried on with the general sense of joie de vivre she'd felt since she'd come to in the hospital.

Like, one morning, when she was still in the hospital, a nurse was changing the dressing on a wound in Nora's side that she had no idea how she got, and she had the philosophically startling thought that if you found yourself trying to justify the life you lived in the Before, maybe you should take a hard look at that sooner rather than later. This, from someone whose most recent deep thoughts had more to do with what they would serve for dinner and why her left wrist itched.

Lately, her most cogent thinking was about Grandpa's garden. How did he get that tomato to taste so perfect? She missed him so much that her bones ached. Which was only slightly better pain than the searing blame she leveled at herself every time she remembered she hadn't gone to see him when she said she would, and he'd ended up dead and alone on a cold tile floor. Despite her shiny new feelings, she still loathed herself for that.

At long last, her body was deemed well enough to release her back into the wild. She was excited to be going home after weeks in this place.

Her mother was sending a car for her. "The traffic to Georgetown is ridiculous," she'd said.

"Mom! Really?" Nora's disappointment had been swift and deep.

"What? You don't want me to drive in that mess, I hope."

"I thought... I was hoping we could talk about... everything."

"Like what?" her mother had asked.

Like what? Epiphanies galore. About her path going forward. About how an NDE felt.

"Whatever it is, you can tell me later," her mother added before Nora could respond.

"Right. Sure," Nora had said brightly. "It's just that it's been a long recovery—"

"Please don't lay a guilt trip on me, Nora."

Nora recoiled. "No, no, that's not what I meant. I don't want to do that."

But she did want to do that. It hurt that her mother wouldn't brave traffic to be here on what Nora considered to be a momentous day. Alas, Nora remembered that she was used to disappointment. Unfortunately, it was typical of Roberta November to pretend that mothering was an abstract construct and not something she needed to actively participate in. Even when Nora and Lacey were kids, she'd used nannies as a proxy for motherly love.

Nora collected her few things from the bathroom. It was a little jarring to look at herself in the mirror these days. She looked different. Thinner. Her jumbled emotions made her feel like she was looking into a mirror with a crack in it—it felt like the halves of her didn't quite match up.

She stared at the powder-pink ensemble her mother had brought her—a track suit made of indestructible velour that hung loosely on her frame. It was cut with a wide leg that sported jaunty baby-blue stripes down the sides. Her mother had purchased a size large because it was better to "err on the side of caution."

"But I've lost so much weight,"Nora had pointed out.

"Really?"Her rail-thin mother had casually studied her frame as if to confirm that.

Yes, really.A sudden surge of anger caught Nora off guard. As much attention as her mother had paid to her weight over the years, how could she miss that Nora's stomach had hollowed out? That it had taken a drowning for her daughter to end up with the body she'd always wanted her to have? It was enraging to be considerably smaller than she had been before the accident, and yet her mother still couldn't seem to really see her.

As for herself? She felt surprisingly blah about a flat stomach. She was realizing that skinny had never been her goal. Why, then, was it her mother's goal for her? Nora had just blindly accepted that she ought to be smaller because her mother said so, which, in retrospect, seemed a little passive on her part. But the new her had more important things to think about—like the haze lingering over her memory.

An ad suddenly blared out from the TV in her room, startling her. Nora had turned it on for the weather, which thus far the station had refused to give. "If you've been hurt in an accident, call 444–4444. At November and Sons, Austin's premiere personal injury firm, we treat you like family."

The timing of that ad could not have been worse. It happened that she was a November, blood-bound to the esteemed November and Sons law firm, a practicing personal injury attorney. Not the son, obviously. That had been Nathan, her twin brother who'd died of SIDS when they were nine months old. Her father, who had started the family law firm with his father, never changed the name. Hope springs eternal, she guessed.

During her time here, Nora had managed to avoid thinking about how much she hated her job, but a memory hauled off and punched her, startling her. Wake up! She didn't just hate her job; she hated the whole practice of law. At the thought of going back to that sterile, air-chilled abyss, bile rose in the back of her throat. She didn't belong in that job any more than she belonged in this track suit—it was not her. She was, at least on the inside, more free spirit than lawyer, more guppy than shark.

Still, she was not going to let that ad ruin her happiness. She had survived death and rehab and was finally going home. She would worry about what else she had to survive later.

She finished packing and checked the bathroom once more. The paper bag with her prescription medicines—some new to her, some not—was sitting on the edge of the sink. Anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, antibiotics, antianxiety, antitoxin. Anti, anti, anti. It had always struck her as ironic that the drugs that actually helped her feel better could sound so negative.

She leaned over to pick it up and had to brace herself against the sink. Another side effect of her NDE was a buzzy sensation in her head from time to time. It reminded her of the white snow that occasionally rippled across her grandparents' TV. This fuzziness came and went without any discernible pattern, showing up to muddy her thoughts when she least expected it. Dr.Cass said it would "probably clear up on its own" the stronger she got.

Her phone pinged; she dug it out of her jacket pocket. Your driver is approaching your location,the screen said.

Nora picked up the paper bag and shoved it into her larger bag, then slung that over her shoulder. She was getting the hell out of here.

On her way out, she said goodbye to the attendants at the desk, then clomped down the long hallway in her new therapeutic boot.

The suited driver standing next to the town car at the curb opened the car door for her. "Ms.November?"

"That's me!" Or rather, a facsimile of the Ms.November she'd once been. The new Nora, so to speak. But she figured it was probably best not to attempt to explain it all to this guy.

When they were on the road, Nora asked, "We're headed for the Grant apartments on East Riverside, right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Nora didn't trust her mother. "I wish you'd agree to come stay with your father and me," her mother had complained this week over video chat, her preferred method of communication now.

Nora would rather be a troll living under a bridge than stay so much as a night at her parents' house in the swanky neighborhood of Rob Roy. All she wanted to do was lie on her couch and flip channels and eat something that wasn't half-baked chicken and mixed vegetables from a can. She needed time in her own space to regroup, to piece together what everything that had happened meant for her now. Once she figured that out, she would reenter the family sphere and resume her role as a November and Sons dutiful daughter at work and in society.

A sharp stab of pain in her head punctuated that thought, like her body was telling her it was dead set against that. Well, so was her heart. She'd signed a lease on a new life, and she didn't want the old one. But what, exactly, was her new life? She felt so new and different, but she was still struggling to figure out how to be new and different. She needed time to think.

They had reached the river when Nora's mother called. "How close are you?" she asked impatiently. "We're waiting."

Nora's antenna popped up. "Who is ‘we'?"

"Your sister and me, of course."

"Is that all?" Nora asked. "I don't want any surprises, Mom."

"Who else could you possibly expect? You live like a monk. Why do you always assume the worst?"

"Because I always assume the worst?" Nora asked as more of a point of clarification.

"Oh, Nora," her mother said with a heavy sigh, as if the disappointments were already starting to pile up again. "No one is here. And besides, your place is so small.You should have accepted your father's offer to buy you that loft near Zilker Park. I don't know anyone on this side of town, and there are all those homelesspeople."

Nora glanced heavenward, seeking strength from a nebulous god who never granted it. "I'll be there in a few minutes," she said, ending the conversation.

The driver deposited her at her apartment building, and Nora Frankensteined her way to her apartment, a hard slog in her therapeutic boot. At her door, she knocked twice before opening it.

"Surprise!" shouted a single voice, and Nora's heart was suddenly beating out of her chest. She wasn't ready. She looked like she'd been roaming the wilderness—her skin was blotchy; there was a patch on her neck that itched something awful; she was wearing one old Ugg to match her boot. There ought to be a checkout manual for families, things you should do for your loved one straight out of rehab, starting with: no surprises.She felt wildly irritated that she was about to be pushed into something she didn't ask for or want, and her immediate instinct was to flee, to pogo right on out of there—

But it was only Lacey looking back at her. "What?" her sister asked.

Nora tried to see past her. "Anyone else?"

Her mother's head popped into view in the narrow entry. "I told you, me and Lacey."

"And me, Mrs.November."

"And James," her mother added.

James? Her legal assistant? Nora shared an office suite with him, but his presence here did not compute.

"You're acting weird," Lacey said disapprovingly.

The remark snapped like a rubber band against Nora's wrist. Funny how ingrained habits filled in the holes in her brain at the drop of a hat. She immediately understood that she was not acting like a November, a family in which you learned early on to be happy no matter how you felt. She forced a smile. "Sorry. Just... ready to be home."

Lacey grinned, pleased that Nora was playing her part, and pulled her inside.

Whoa.Talk about stepping into an alternate universe. One foot into her apartment and she was immediately thrust back into the Before. Her head felt foggy as she tried to fit herself back into the world that existed inside these walls. It was definitely her apartment, with its view of the parking lot, two bedrooms, two baths. The same exterior brick wall, the same small galley kitchen she rarely used. The sofa and two armchairs that looked like they ought to be in a museum, selected by a friend of the family who was famous for designing houses in West Lake Hills. Near the windows, an expensive dining table where Nora sometimes worked from home and on which she occasionally ironed a piece of clothing.

She took another cautious step into the Before like she was stepping into a dark back alley. "James is here?"

"He came by to drop off some paperwork for you, and I asked him to stay."

"No rush on the paperwork," James added magnanimously from the living room.

"What about Hannah?" Nora asked, referring to Lacey's girlfriend.

"She's at work."

"Dad?"

"He's tied up in court," Mom said and toyed with her earring.

Mom was covering for him. Dad couldn't be bothered to call her, much less be here when she came home. "Gus?"

"Couldn't make it."

Something felt off, in her, around her—she didn't like the way any of this felt. It was not the cheerful I'm so shiny and new! she'd felt in rehab. This felt heavier. Colorless. This wasn't her; this was someone else's life that she adamantly did not want. "But he was invited, right?"

"For heaven's sake, Nora." Her mother took her firmly by the elbow and forced her into her apartment. "Can you just enjoy the effort that went into welcoming you home?"

She would really like to do that, but the puzzle pieces of her brain weren't fitting together properly.

"We're all really glad you're back," James said, appearing before her. He adjusted his trendy eyeglasses and swept a thick lock of hair that always fell over one eye, exciting both male and female staff alike. "Iam, for sure."

"Let me take your bag." Lacey grabbed it off Nora's shoulder and disappeared down the hall.

"You really don't look too bad," James said. "I mean, considering. I was expecting much worse. Your dad said you were pretty messed up, but you've only got the one bruise that I can see." He gestured at the faint mural of yellow and green across her cheekbone and temple.

He leaned closer and whispered, "You're coming back to the office, right? Because Candice has been a bitch. I have so much to tell you."

Nora felt a world away from her job as an attorney, and as much as she enjoyed office gossip, that too. An actual world away. A galaxy. A solar system. She tried to imagine herself walking into the office and the buzz started up, vibrating unpleasantly against her inner ear.

"Earth to Nora," James said.

"Present. Sort of." She smiled. She could not possibly convey how surreal her Before life felt to her now—as if someone had rearranged all the furniture of her memory. Except that everything was exactly where she'd left it. It was an unnerving dichotomy—she couldn't see how she fit into this picture. Was it even possible? It didn't feel possible.

"Look!" Lacey threw her arm around Nora's shoulder and pulled her to the dining table. "Recognize anything?" She pointed to the food on the table.

Beef cubes and tiny potatoes, chicken skewers, little cups of shrimp cocktail. And there in the middle, a sheet cake with something written on it. Nora leaned forward to have a closer look. "Does that say... ‘Turn around, don't drown'?"

"Oh my God," James muttered under his breath.

"What?" Lacey asked. "It's a joke. Too soon?" She genuinely seemed unsure.

But Nora wasn't looking at the cake—she remembered what had been on this table, the things she'd left here. Important things. Her case files, bills that needed to be paid, her checkbook. And more. "Where are my things?"

"What things?"

The buzz in her head was making it hard for her to think. "The things I'd left on the table. Right here." She pointed at the cake. Her stomach was suddenly doing some uncomfortable flips—she had to put a hand on the table to steady herself. What was it about her things that seemed so urgent? "I had everything organized."

"I didn't un-organize. I tidied up, that's all. Your apartment was a mess. Honestly, I don't know how you lived like that. Anyway, I boxed it all up and put it in your closet."

Lacey's response provoked a surprising burst of anxiety. That was something Lacey would have done in the Before, taking care of everything whether Nora wanted her to or not. But Nora wasn't that woman anymore, and it was starting to panic her a little that she didn't know who she was, exactly. But she didn't belong here. Where did she belong, then? "Grow your garden,"Grandpa had said. But grow what?

"Come on, do you recognize any of the food?" Lacey was beaming again. "It's from Chef Borgia's restaurant. Your favorite place!"

Chef Borgia.At an End SIDS fundraiser last year, for the charity her father had founded in memory of her twin, Nathan, Nora had bid three thousand dollars during the auction for a private lesson from the popular TV chef. But she'd never arranged for the lesson. She suddenly realized that was one of the regrets that had flown at her in Grandpa's garden. She'd forever wanted to learn to cook, to be able to make something other than box macaroni, and that had been the perfect opportunity to learn from the best. Why had she let it slip through her fingers?

The disorienting buzz in her head was tinny now, ringing in her ears.

"The teriyaki chicken is to die for," Lacey was saying, but she sounded far away.

Whatever had kept Nora from taking that lesson was hovering just there, right beyond the veil, but she couldn't quite see it.

"Aren't you going to try it?"

Like a robot, Nora picked up a skewer of chicken. Apparently she was still a people pleaser—good to know. She took a bite. "Delicious!"

"This might be the best chicken I ever had," James said. He leaned over to take another skewer, and when he did, Nora caught sight of a shadow behind him. Grandpa?

She hadn't told anyone about the Grandpa shadows. She'd first noticed them in rehab, just fleeting shadows that felt like Grandpa was near. No one would believe her, and besides, she was a little worried she was seeing things. Was it normal that she liked it? It made her feel close to Grandpa and reminded her of how amazing she'd felt in his garden, how an eddy of love had swirled around her. She'd felt so safe and protected. She'd fit there.

She remembered the time Grandpa had taken her and Gus fishing when she was about six years old. Grandpa had shown them how to put worms on their hooks and how to throw the line. But Nora couldn't hook the worms—she hated the thought of touching them, much less spearing them. "I'm sorry," she'd said to Grandpa as he baited her hook.

"For what?"he asked with an easy smile. "For being a girl who cares about living things? Be proud of that, kiddo."

Grandpa. That was where Nora fit. With him. In his garden. Where she could be proud of who she was, no matter what.

"Don't let me eat it all," James said. "Aren't you going to try some, Mrs.November?"

"No, thank you," her mother said, stabbing a single bite of pineapple with a toothpick and carrying it to the window.

The shadow passed Nora's vision again, and when she looked, she saw the small corpse of a plant on her sill. It looked so dry that if someone touched a leaf, it would crumble into ash. Her modus operandi when it came to plants had been to put them in her window with grand plans for nourishing them. But then she'd forget to water, or she'd overfeed or something, and they would die.

But after being in Grandpa's heavenly garden, seeing the dead plant made her feel nostalgic and unsteady. And she was overcome by a terrible, deep shame for having failed to look after his garden here. "My plant died."

Mom shrugged. "Get another one."

Grief thickened in Nora's throat. A familiar sensation she didn't like crept along her spine—emotions hovering just below the surface, ready and eager to fully consume her at a trigger's notice. All that time in rehab, Nora had felt mostly really good. Hopeful. Excited. But then—bam—along came her old apartment and a dead plant to knock her on her ass.

"When will you be back in the office?" James asked. He'd heaped a plate with more of Chef Borgia's food.

She rubbed her forehead and swallowed against a swell of nausea. "I'm not sure." She put down her plate. "I've been thinking... I want to make some changes."

Lacey looked at her blankly. Her mother glanced at her watch.

"Like what?" James asked.

"I... I don't know," she said uncertainly. "But I had this really profound experience, and I want to start over."

"Really?" Lacey sounded a bit skeptical, and Nora couldn't blame her. She wasn't exactly known for her follow-through. She had a vague memory of canceling on Lacey at the last minute a few times. Including once when she'd promised to lend a hand with a fundraiser for Lacey's school, leaving Lacey in the lurch.

"What does that mean, ‘start over'?" James asked.

"Good question. I don't actually know. Yet," Nora said. She must sound like a lunatic to them. "But I have a second chance, and I want to take advantage of it. I want to do better. I want to be my authentic self."

"You're authentic, Nora," her mother said impatiently, missing the point. "Now, I'm sorry, but I have to run." She leaned in to kiss Nora's cheek.

"Now?" Nora asked. "I want to explain—"

"You don't need to explain anything to me, sweetheart. I'm just so glad you're home and everything can get back to normal."

"Have you tried the potatoes?" Lacey asked. "They are sogood."

Her family wasn't listening. And James, who had seemed somewhat interested, was now trying the potatoes.

So Nora tried more of the food, tried to be part of the party, but she began to get a headache, which was a common occurrence since her NDE. Lacey cut the cake and put a thick slab on a plate. "I'll clean up," she said. "You should go rest."

The sun had begun its slide from the city sky when Nora walked into her room. No one had tidied up here. Her clothes were still tossed on a chair and the bed. Two drawers of the bureau stood open, like she'd been searching for something. There were papers and shoes scattered across the floor, and there, through the open door to her very messy closet, on a shelf, she could see her box of things from the dining room with her name scrawled across the side in Lacey's handwriting.

She turned her back on the box and walked across the room. She slid down onto the floor and rested her back against the bed. She just needed a minute. To settle into reality.

"Nora? Can I come in?"

Her eyes flew open. How long had she been sitting here? "Sure, James."

He sank down on the floor next to her and handed her a piece of cake with the letters OW on it.

"Cake, my favorite food group."

"I had to grab a piece before Lacey ate it all," James said.

Nora took a bite. She expected to sink into chocolate ecstasy because, heaven knew, she liked a good piece of cake. But that dark, gooey goodness tasted like paper. She tried another bite. Still tasted like paper.

James drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them. "Don't hate me, but I have to ask—how's your head?"

"My head?" She touched her hair. It felt like straw. "What do you mean?"

James pressed his lips together.

"Wait... are you asking if I have brain damage?" she asked incredulously.

"I'm not! I mean, I'm only sort of asking. Okay, yes, I'm asking. But only because there's a betting pool at the office."

Nora gaped at him. "People are betting if I have brain damage?"

"Of course not, Nora," he said, sounding offended. "Everyone already assumes it. The bet is how many days you'll last before your dad fires you because of it."

Nora gasped. And then she laughed. "That is abhorrent." And yet it sounded like something that would definitely happen at November and Sons. Sharks, all of them. She shoved the cake back at James.

He took the plate. "I agree. But really, how are you?"

She narrowed her gaze on him. "How much money have you got riding on my brain?"

He clucked his tongue at her. "I was not allowed to bet because I work with you every day. And besides, you're my best work friend and I've missed you." He pressed his hand to his heart.

James was her onlyfriend at work. Or pretty much anywhere else. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. "It feels like someone took a leaf blower and blasted it inside my head, but my brain is fine for the most part. My memory is still missing some chunks. Like, I remember taking the week off and going out of town... but I can't remember the accident."

"That doesn't sound good."

"Right? Sometimes it's weird, because I feel like my old self, but I also feel like I'm living in an alternate universe. And I keep thinking about my grandpa." The pang of sorrow hit her again, squarely in the chest. Missing him hurt. "I saw him, you know."

"No way," James said.

"I swear it." She shifted around to face him. "He was so real, James.I could feel him. He talked to me. He reminded me of things I never did. Like... a cooking lesson," she said. "I won a private cooking lesson from Chef Borgia at the End SIDS silent auction, and I never scheduled it. I'd love to learn to cook. And I never went to see the art exhibit Grandpa told me about at Laguna Gloria—"

"Love that place."

"And you know what else? I even thought about the guy from the corner store robbery."

James was nodding up until that point. "Wait... what guy?"

Nora couldn't believe he didn't know who she was talking about. "The corner store robbery, remember?"

"I remember you were in a store when some guy tried to rob it. That guy?"

"No, no—another hostage. He had dark brown hair and clear blue eyes." She remembered his handsome face perfectly. Bits and pieces of memory about him were coming back. "It was cold and wet that night, and he wore a hand-knitted scarf wrapped around his neck." She knew it was hand-knitted because the stitches were so uneven. "I must have told you."

"You did not." James was appraising her through a squint, like maybe he thought this was the brain damage talking.

But oddly, this was one thing she was completely sure about. "We... we had this connection." The spark had been instant. "We hit it off."

"Wait—you hit on some guy during a robbery?"

"I didn't hit on him. I made him laugh while we were being held hostage." They'd stood together watching the robbery unfold and he'd said it was weird how you met people when you least expected it, and she'd said it was weird that the robber was dressed like Darth Vader.

"Well, that sounds totally normal, Nora." James playfully nudged her with his shoulder, then glanced at his watch. He hopped to his feet and picked up the plate of cake. "I would love to stay and hear more about how you picked up a guy during a robbery, but I've got a date. Let me know when you're coming back to work. I've been using your office and I'll need to move a few things. By the way, I'm glad you're not brain damaged. That place is hard enough as it is." He gave her a thumbs-up before he disappeared into the hall.

That place was hard. Nora knew it was; she could feel it in her bones. But an army of ants was running through her brain, so many thoughts and memories vying for attention. She had to pull herself together, had to figure out who or what she was now that she'd come back from the dead.

Then she'd think about just how hard that place was and what she was going to do about it.