"I've been thinking," Sophie announced.
We were all assembled in the living room. Lucas had recovered from his day off and was back to his usual post near the window, his tablet returned, his ears a healthy, well-rested pink. Kevin was at his workstation, cross-referencing archives. Mrs. Nguyen was watering Gerald—still fake, still plastic, still receiving more care than most real plants.
And Sophie was standing in the center of the room holding a cardboard box.
"That's dangerous," Kevin said without looking up.
"I resent that. My thinking has produced some of our best results."
"Your thinking produced the Powerpoint with Comic Sans."
"I have grown as a person, Kevin. I now use Helvetica."
"What's in the box?" I asked.
Sophie set it on the coffee table with ceremonial gravity. "Memory recovery tools. After watching Lucas take a nap for four hours—which was beautiful, by the way, I have photos—I realized we've been approaching this wrong. We've been looking for clues. Notebooks. Hidden notes. We've been trying to solve the mystery of the old Vivian."
"And?"
"And the old Vivian wasn't just a mystery to solve. She was a person. A deeply weird, deeply repressed person who expressed herself in very specific ways." Sophie opened the box. "So I've prepared a series of exercises to help you reconnect with her."
She pulled out a sock puppet.
Not just any sock puppet. A sock puppet wearing a tiny business suit. With drawn-on eyebrows. And glasses made of pipe cleaners.
"This is Executive Vivian," Sophie said. "She's going to help you process your corporate trauma."
I stared at the puppet. "I have corporate trauma?"
"You fired a man for wearing cargo shorts. You have so much corporate trauma."
"This is a terrible plan," Lucas said.
"It's a therapeutic plan. There's a difference."
"It's a sock puppet."
"It's an EMOTIONAL CONDUIT." Sophie pulled out a second sock puppet, this one with curly yarn hair and a tiny spatula. "This is Supportive Friend Sophie. She's going to help Executive Vivian express her feelings in a safe, non-judgmental environment."
"The sock puppet has a spatula," Kevin observed.
"Supportive Friend Sophie is a problem-solver."
"Where did you even get tiny spatulas?"
"The internet. You can find anything on the internet." Sophie thrust both puppets toward me. "Now. Let's begin. Executive Vivian, how do you feel about the quarterly earnings report?"
"I don't know what the quarterly earnings report says."
"Neither does Executive Vivian. That's the beauty of it. She's a puppet."
"Sophie," I said. "This is insane."
"This is art."
---
The sock puppet therapy lasted approximately twelve minutes before Executive Vivian was "fired for creative differences." Sophie was undeterred.
"Fine. Puppets were a warm-up. Now we move to Phase Two."
"There are phases," Lucas said flatly.
"There are always phases. Phase Two: Interpretive Movement." Sophie cleared space in the living room. "Studies show that physical movement can unlock repressed memories. We're going to reenact significant moments from your past through dance."
"Dance," Kevin repeated.
"Interpretive dance. With scarves."
"Scarves."
"I brought scarves." Sophie pulled several long, flowing scarves from the box. They were rainbow-colored. "Each color represents a different emotion. Red is passion. Blue is sadness. Green is—"
"You made this up," I said.
"I made this up professionally. There's a difference."
"Is there, though?"
"Put on the scarves, Vivian."
Against all better judgment, I put on the scarves.
The interpretive dance was, predictably, a catastrophe. Sophie attempted to represent my first board meeting through a series of sweeping arm gestures that knocked over a lamp. Kevin was assigned "emotional support background swaying" and immediately became entangled in his scarf. Lucas refused to participate, which meant Sophie assigned him the role of "Silent Audience Member Who Secretly Longs to Dance."
"Silent Audience Member Lucas," Sophie called, twirling dramatically, "what emotions are you experiencing right now?"
"Regret," Lucas said.
"That's valid. Express it through subtle facial expressions."
"My facial expression is unchanged."
"Your ears are pink."
"The lighting is—"
"If you say 'inconsistent' one more time, I'm adding a second scarf to your role."
Lucas's ears went burgundy. He did not say 'inconsistent.'
---
Phase Three was the puppet show.
"Now that we've explored puppets and dance separately," Sophie said, slightly out of breath, "it's time to combine them into the ultimate therapeutic experience: the reenactment puppet show."
"Sophie," I said. "No."
"Sophie yes. Kevin, you're playing the role of the skeptical investor. Here's your puppet."
Kevin caught the puppet she threw at him. It was wearing a tiny monocle. "Why does my puppet have a monocle?"
"Skeptical investors have monocles. It's a stereotype I'm choosing to embrace."
"The puppet also has a laptop," Kevin observed.
"I made a tiny laptop. Out of cardboard. It opens and everything."
Kevin examined the miniature laptop. "This is actually very well-made."
"Thank you. I used one of your old tech manuals for the screen."
"You cut up my tech manual?"
"I recycled it artistically."
"That was a first edition."
"Art requires sacrifice."
The puppet show was, against all odds, the most chaotic thing I had ever witnessed. Sophie narrated the story of my first hostile takeover using sock puppets, interpretive dance, and what she called "emotional sound effects" that were really just her making business-appropriate noises with her mouth. Kevin's skeptical investor puppet kept asking questions about projected ROI, which Sophie's Executive Vivian puppet kept ignoring in favor of increasingly dramatic monologues about corporate synergy.
Lucas—Silent Audience Member Lucas, Emotional Support Swayer, reluctant witness to the entire spectacle—watched with his ears cycling through colors so rapidly I couldn't keep track.
And then something unexpected happened.
"I remember this," I said.
Sophie froze mid-monologue, her Executive Vivian puppet dangling limply from her hand. "You remember what?"
"The hostile takeover. The company—god, what was the company called?—something about widgets. Industrial widgets. They were going bankrupt and I bought them and everyone said it was a mistake. But I knew—" I paused. The memory was there, fragile and new, like a photograph developing in slow motion. "I knew their distribution network was worth more than the company itself. I sold off the manufacturing and kept the distribution channels and everyone called it genius. But it wasn't genius. It was just math."
"The Norwood Acquisition," Lucas said quietly. "Three years ago. You turned a bankrupt widget manufacturer into a logistics powerhouse in fourteen months. The business press called it 'the Chen miracle.'"
"The Chen miracle was just noticing something everyone else missed." I looked at Sophie, who was still holding the Executive Vivian puppet. "I remember the board meeting. I remember the way they all looked at me when I proposed it—like I was crazy. But I knew I was right. I knew."
Sophie slowly lowered the puppet. "That's a real memory. Not a feeling. Not a flash. An actual, concrete, business-school-case-study memory."
"It's a boring memory."
"It's an AMAZING memory. It means your brain is healing. It means the old Vivian is still in there, somewhere, and she's coming back."
"All it took was sock puppets and interpretive dance."
"I told you it was therapeutic." Sophie dropped the puppets and threw her arms around me. "I helped. I actually helped. Kevin, document this moment."
"Already documented," Kevin said, typing furiously. "Adding it to the timeline. Category: Memory Recovery. Subcategory: Puppet-Assisted."
"Puppet-assisted memory recovery," I said. "That's going to look great in my biography."
"It's going to look incredible in my PowerPoint," Sophie corrected. "I'm already planning the slides."
"Please use a professional font," Lucas said.
"I'm going to use Comic Sans just to hurt you."
"I'll confiscate the projector."
"You don't have that authority."
"I'll acquire it."
---
That evening, after Sophie and Kevin had left and Mrs. Nguyen had retired to her quarters, Lucas and I sat on the couch in the quiet living room. Gerald the ficus was still on the windowsill. The sock puppets were scattered across the coffee table. The rainbow scarves were draped over various pieces of furniture like the aftermath of a very strange party.
"Six years," I said quietly.
"Six years, three months, and—"
"I know. You're still counting."
"It's a habit."
"It's more than a habit." I turned toward him. "You've been counting the days since you met me. You've been keeping track of every moment. Every memory. And I've been fighting to recover a single one."
"The memories are coming back. The Norwood Acquisition. The karaoke night. The sketch of my ears."
"The important things."
"The things you paid attention to."
I looked at him—posture still perfect, ears still pink, six years of waiting in every line of his face. "You were paying attention too. The whole time. You noticed everything about me. And I never noticed you. Not the way you deserved."
"I didn't need to be noticed."
"Everyone needs to be noticed."
Lucas was quiet for a moment. Then, very quietly: "You noticed eventually. The note under Gerald. The sketch on page forty-seven. She noticed. The old Vivian. She just didn't know how to say it out loud."
"You said it out loud."
"I had six years to practice."
I reached over and took his hand. His ears went from pink to luminous. "You don't have to practice anymore. You don't have to count every day. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Lucas Grey—assistant, spreadsheet enthusiast, man of seventeen documented ear shades—squeezed my hand and didn't let go.