[NOTE: Okay, so the scene ends after all, and quite nicely if I do say so myself.]

“No, Mister Crowther, that goes way beyond remarkable, and deep into the territory of the utter and unqualified mind fuck.”

Aaron said, “I concede your point. And I’d like to make a point, if I may be so bold. What you’re saying is that your interest in Jeremy is not entirely for his benefit.”

Foley thought for a minute. Of course Aaron was right. His purpose in following Jeremy to the library and his purpose in ‘rescuing’ Jeremy from the police had been mostly for his own benefit. He had hoped that Jeremy’s experience could help him understand his own.

But Aaron did not know the depth of Foley’s interest. Foley wanted to keep it that way. “Well, that wasn’t what I was trying to say, but I suppose I’ll return the favor and concede your point.

“When I saw Jeremy that morning at the school with Gil, I decided to follow him. Clearly he was experiencing something extraordinary and devastatingly painful. It seemed clear to me that it was connected to what had happened a year earlier. Perhaps, I thought, if I understood more about what Jeremy was going through I could understand what had happened to me. That’s why I followed him to one library and then another. And that’s why I intervened, perhaps foolishly, with the police. So, yes, my initial interest was selfish. But I did, and do, care about Jeremy for his own sake.”

“I understand completely,” said Aaron. “I must say that my own initial interest in Nils was mostly curiosity. What he was doing was very strange. But the more I talked to him, the more I saw how wrenching his situation was for him.”

From behind the counter, Karoline said, “Pie?”

Foley and Aaron both nodded at Karoline.

Foley said, “So Nils was reeling from the realization that nobody knew him. How did you go from there to running your program in the basement of his father’s church?”

“The first thing was that I just got to know Nils. He seemed to know some details of my life, like how I had come to know his father–”

“And about your family?”

“No, I never really talk about my family with anyone. Jim asked a few times, but that’s not something I ever talked about. At least until Jeremy appeared.”

Foley wondered whether that were true. “I wonder if you ever talked to Nils about your family. Before you forgot him.”

“No, I asked him about that. He says I didn’t want to talk about my family.”

“Why didn’t you want to talk about them?”

“I still don’t want to talk about them,” Aaron said. “But of course Jeremy complicates things. It will be hard to help him cope with his Forgetting without talking about his family. My family. Maybe I will let Nils do most of the work with Jeremy. And maybe you can help with that.”

“And stay aloof yourself?”

“Like I said, it’s complicated. Jeremy remembers me, but I don’t remember him. I don’t know whether my involvement will help him or hurt him. He will be looking to me for signs of recognition, and I just won’t be able to give them.”

“Didn’t Nils have to go through that with you?”

“Yes, that’s true. But the relationship he remembers between us was minimal. I was just a friend of his father’s, a member of his father’s church. Apparently we had talked a few times, but at the time his attention was mostly elsewhere. Kids his own age.

“So even though Nils knew me, I was essentially a stranger to him. He didn’t have the kind of strong memories of me that I fear Jeremy might have.”

Foley said, “Perhaps the decision of how to involve yourself would be better made by Jeremy.”

“Maybe,” said Aaron. “It isn’t clear to me that a twelve year old boy would know how to decide that.”

Foley started to respond. Why would a twenty one year old know any better how to make that kind of decision? He couldn’t think of a way to ask that question without being antagonistic.

“Did Nils see his father often after he returned?”

“Some. Not often. The better I came to know Nils, the more I believed that he wasn’t crazy. That was a real puzzle for me, and I didn’t know how to resolve it. Neither his father nor I remembered him, but he seemed sincerely to remember us. I essentially split myself in two about it. When I was with Nils I believed his story. When I was with Jim I talked about the situation from his perspective.”

“And when you were by yourself?”

“I tried to make sense of Nils’s story. The most sensible thing was to dismiss it. But that didn’t work. He knew details that he could know only if he were Jim’s son.”

“What did Jim think of the details that Nils described?”

“He was torn. Even he was empathetic toward Nils. That makes sense, I guess, given his calling. But it was hard for him.

“Nils wanted me to check out some things in the house, things he remembered. His bedroom, for example. He had bookshelves and games and toys and all of his clothes. ‘Go and take a look,” he said. ‘You’ll see. Why would Jim have a kid’s bedroom in his house if he doesn’t have any kids?’

“I talked to Jim about that. He took that especially hard because Jim and his wife had wanted children. They tried for years with no success. When she died the thing Jim grieved about most was that he had never been able to give her the children she wanted.

“So when I told him that Nils wanted me to look in the bedroom, he said, ‘Why don’t you bring him in so that he can see for himself?’ The idea was to present the truth to Nils as directly as possible so that he couldn’t deny it any more. I thought Jim was being almost heartless, but he said–then any many times since–that no matter how painful, the truth is always gentler than a lie.”

“Jim sounds like a wise man.”

“Yes. You can see why I like him so much.

“So we invited Nils into the house. He went right to the bedroom. When he got to the doorway he looked in, hesitated for moment, then physically recoiled. I had never seen anybody do that before. He looked at Jim with tears in his eyes and said very quietly, ‘Is this how it was? You didn’t change it?’

“Jim said no. Sarah had used the room as a guest room, and sometimes a sewing room. After Sarah died Jim couldn’t bear to change it.

“Nils said, ‘What about the closet door?’

“Jim didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Nils said that every year on his birthday they had marked his height in pencil on the inside of the door.

“At that point Jim began to cry. He pointed toward the door with his hand, inviting Nils to take a look. As Nils went to the door, Jim turned and walked down the hall to the living room.

“I watched Nils open the door. I knew what he was going to find, and I think he did, too.”

Foley said, “There were no markings on the door.”

“Right. Bare wood. Nils just stood and stared. I’m glad it hadn’t been painted, because that would have given Nils false hope.”

“Maybe the door had been replaced,” Foley offered. He remembered how inventive he had been in finding ways to deny the reality that so differed from his memories.

“Nils thought that, too, but just for a second. Then he saw the words, ‘Jerry Williams Doors’ stamped into the wood near the top of the door, and the nail scratch that ran down through the doormaker’s stamp at an angle. It was exactly the way Nils remembered it. And he was sure that the knots were just as he remembered, too. No, this was the same door. The only thing missing was…”

Foley finished the thought. “The only thing missing was Nils.”

“Yeah. Nils stood there for a long time. Then he looked up at me and said, ‘Let’s go.’ He walked past me down the hall to where Jim was looking at the fireplace. ‘I’m sorry for bothering you,” Nils said, and walked out the front door.

“I started to run after him, but Jim stopped me. He looked at me with tears running down his face. ‘Aaron, If there’s anything I can do for that boy,’ he said. ‘Anything.’”