She covered her mouth and dissolved into sobs. "I'm your wife. The person you love most in the world. Alan, you actually forgot me?"
I stared at her, trying to dredge up something from deep in my memory to match what she was saying. There was nothing.
"I don't remember you," I said. "Not at all."
She collapsed against me and wept openly.
"Do you remember," she gasped between sobs, "that on my birthday you came home with a bouquet of white roses in your arms... I was out in the garden, sitting on the swing in the low-cut blue dress you gave me, waiting for you..."
White roses. A blue dress. A swing.
Alan, I'm sorry. But Victor needs this opportunity more than you do.
The words surfaced suddenly from somewhere deep in my mind.
I closed my eyes and used every bit of strength I had to
