The name arrived in her mouth without her summoning it. She heard herself say it and felt the rightness of it the same way she had felt the rightness of Ruby landing in exactly the space it was built for.
Max looked at her from the doorway.
Something moved through him at the sound of his name in her voice. He kept it off his face by the thinnest possible margin.
"By chance," he said gently. He moved just slightly into the room, keeping his voice easy and unhurried, not wanting to overwhelm the moment with everything that lived underneath it.
"You don't remember, but we have a foundation. It funds heart surgery and treatment for children with heart disease." He paused. "That's how I found out about them. Through the foundation."
Ruby looked at him.
She held his gaze for a moment, that searching, careful look that had replaced memory for her, the way she read things she couldn't yet recollect, and she nodded slowly.
