Page 37 of Never Quite Gone

“Your handwriting hasn't changed much,” he said, his voice gentle with memory. “Even after all this time.”

I started to protest that he couldn't possibly know my handwriting from centuries ago, but the words died as he opened the journal. The script that flowed across those aged pages matched the notes I'd been making all evening – the same precise slant, the same tendency to cross t's with slightly too much force.

“This is impossible,” I whispered, but my fingers reached for the journal without conscious thought.

“No more impossible than remembering ancient Greek medicine,” Alex replied.

Outside my office, the hospital settled into its quieter night rhythm. Monitors beeped and the nurses who made their rounds by the hour.

“Do you trust me?” he asked suddenly, his voice soft but intent.

The question should have been absurd. He was practically astranger;. Every logical part of my mind screamed that I shouldn't trust him, that this whole situation was insane.

But my soul...

“Yes,” I heard myself say. “God help me, but I do.”

Alex stood, holding out his hand. “Then come with me. There's something you need to see.”

I stared at his offered hand, feeling the moment balance on a knife's edge. Behind me, my laptop screen still displayed medical studies and scientific papers. Before me, Alex waited with patience learned across centuries.

The choice felt bigger than just whether to leave my office – it was about which truth I was ready to accept.

“My car's downstairs,” he said quietly. “And I promise, this will make more sense than anything you'll find in those research papers.”

My hand lifted of its own accord, fitting into his like it had done a thousand times before. The contact sent recognition sparking through my entire being.

As we walked through the hospital corridors, Alex's hand warm and steady in mine, I realized I'd just crossed a threshold. Whatever came next would change everything.

And somehow, that didn't feel as frightening as it should.

Alex's car glided through empty streets, Manhattan sleeping around us. The leather seats probably cost more than my first car, but nothing about the luxury felt ostentatious. Like everything else about Alex, it simply was – comfortable, precise, chosen with care rather than flash.

I should feel uncomfortable, I realized distantly. Should question the madness of leaving my office in the middle of the night with a man who claimed to know me across centuries. Instead, I found myself studying his profile against passingstreetlights, noting how the changing shadows caught the distinguished grey at his temples.

“In Florence,” I said suddenly, the words rising unbidden, “you used to watch me paint like this. From the shadows.” The memory surfaced like a bubble breaking, clear and perfect and impossible.

Alex's hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel, but his voice stayed gentle. “What else do you remember about Florence?”

I closed my eyes, letting the motion of the car rock me back through time. “Light through studio windows. The smell of oils and pigments. Your voice speaking Italian – not textbook Italian, but something older. Tuscan dialect, maybe.”

When I opened my eyes, I found Alex watching me in brief glances between traffic signals. The intensity in his gaze should have been unsettling. Instead, it felt familiar. Safe.

Michael had loved Florence too. We'd planned to visit for our tenth anniversary, had looked at villas and art tours and...

“It's okay,” Alex said softly, reading my tension. “All of it – the memories, the grief, the confusion. It's okay to feel everything at once.”

The car turned into the West Village, where historic architecture stood proud against modern development.

“Here,” Alex said, pulling into a private parking spot beneath an old converted warehouse.

He led me through a discrete entrance, up stairs that creaked with age.

“I've kept things,” Alex explained, his voice soft in the midnight quiet. He paused before a heavy wooden door, key sliding home with well-oiled precision. “Pieces of our lives. Proof, if you need it.”

The space beyond caught my breath in my throat. Part gallery, part archive, it held the kind of careful curation Michael had always admired in small museums. Paintings lined the walls – some ancient, some newer, all carrying an energy I recognized inmy bones. Track lighting illuminated each piece precisely, creating pools of warmth in the midnight shadows.

My hands reached out without conscious thought, fingers hovering over a signature on the nearest canvas. My own name, written in Renaissance script I shouldn't know how to read.

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