It was an admirable level of equanimity to come to with a missing past. Raine wondered about the health of it; but she herself was no model for dealing with lost memories of family.

She paid polite attention to the waiter, and was looking at the menu studiously when Valdis asked again. Her eyes flicked up, bemused but not entirely surprised. “You met my brother, I think,” Raine said, thoughtful. “I suppose I haven’t mentioned— I suffer from a form of trauma-based retrograde amnesia. I don’t remember much from before I was eleven.”

She said it evenly, briskly— trying to make herself remote from the emotions, and put the facts out there simply and quickly. It worked, to an extent.