"The door is the night of," she said. "If I can get to the door memory, I can get to what came after. The system — the palace — everything I need is in here." She gestured at the apartment. "I put it all in here for exactly this reason. I just need to find the right objects. The right loci."
Nair looked at her. The inspector's face was doing the thing it did when she was assessing something carefully — the slight narrowing, the quality of thought. "You understand that if you recover memories of that night, you will need to tell me everything you remember. Regardless of what it is."
"Yes," she said. "I understand."
"And you understand that what you remember may be — may not help your legal situation."
"I understand," she said again. "But I need to know what happened. I need to know what I did or didn't do. And I need to know for myself, before I know it for anyone else." She looked at Nair. "I will tell you everything. But let me find it first."
Nair sat back. She looked at the ceiling briefly — the gesture of someone making a decision about something they were not entirely comfortable with. "I'll give you today," she said. "I'll be here. I will not interrupt the process unless something requires immediate response. But I'll be here." She paused. "And Rohini. When you find something — when a memory comes — you tell me immediately. Don't sit with it. Don't decide what to tell me and what to keep. Tell me what you find."
"Yes," she said.
It was the first time the inspector had used her name. Her name — Rohini. Rohini Sharma. She heard it and it landed in her like something returning to its correct position after a long absence. Not completely — there was still the gap, the before that was inaccessible, the full self that the night had displaced. But her name, said aloud in her own apartment, had a weight she felt in her chest.
"Rohini," she said. She said it herself, quietly, to hear it in her own voice. She looked at the inspector. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," Nair said. "What comes today may be very difficult."
"I know," she said. "Show me anyway."
