The dream came back at three in the morning, which was its preferred time. It had good instincts for timing.
It was always the same. His mother in the hospital corridor, her face young and luminous the way it had been before everything, laughing at something his father had said. And then his father calling her name from the other end of the corridor and her turning with that open pleasant smile, the smile of someone meeting a friendly stranger, and his father's face doing what his father's face always did in this version of things.
Roman woke with his hand pressed flat against his chest.
