His father's expression carried none of his mother's flicker of hesitation — instead, an immediate, confident answer arrived with a fluency that felt, somehow, even more wrong than the earlier stumbling had.
"Baxter," his father said. "Golden retriever mix. You cried for a week after he disappeared."
We never had a dog. I don't know where that answer came from, but it wasn't from any memory that actually happened. It's not even a plausible guess — it's specific, detailed, confident, and entirely invented.
Rohan managed a small, strained smile and let the subject drop, understanding now that pressing further would only confirm what he already suspected — that whatever answered him wasn't drawing from genuine memory at all, but generating plausible-sounding content on demand, filling gaps with whatever seemed most likely to satisfy the question being asked.
