Elara came back into Caleb's life as she had left it, on the woman's schedule, smiling, with no memory that anything had been spent.
She was at a Defense Force checkpoint three days after Vesper Street, reassigned to a sector the team had to cross. When Caleb's van rolled up she was the officer who waved them through, and she looked at him with a polite professional warmth that had no bridge in it, no car on a shoulder, no ruined wet smile.
She did not know she had ever pulled over and told him the truth. The woman had taken it back, the same as she took everything back, and left a clean officer doing her job. The cruelty of it was so precise that Caleb had to put both hands on the wheel and breathe before he could speak.
"Mercer," Elara said, pleasant, checking his plate against a list. "You're not on the sector roster, but you're not flagged either. Where are you headed."
"Just passing through." His voice came out level, which cost him. "You look well, Elara."
