Not from the street, not from the store — from somewhere closer, somewhere that mattered.

It sat just out of reach, and the harder he grasped for it the further it slid, and all the while the cold in his stomach spread, because his instincts had understood something his memory hadn’t yet delivered.

When a face is merely a stranger’s, you forget it in an hour.

When a face troubles you like this, refuses to be filed away, it is because some part of you has already recognized it and is trying to warn the rest.

Ellard did not know, standing at that window, that he had known the blonde woman for fifteen years, had fed her at his own table, had watched her and Sidonie laugh together over college stories.

His conscious mind was protecting him, a little while longer, from a recognition it wasn’t ready to survive.