The group met every other Thursday in a room that had the particular smell of a space used for similar purposes for many years. Vorra had been coming for two years. She was one of the longer-tenured members, which was the word some of them used for themselves.
The man speaking tonight was named Orrel. He had archived his husband eight years ago, and had accessed the archive once, six months after the archival, and had not gone back.
"I'm not sure it helped," he said. "I'm not sure it hurt. It was him, in there. He seemed well. He didn't seem to know how much time had passed." He paused. "The continuity was seamless from his side. That was harder to sit with than I expected."
The facilitator asked how Orrel felt now, eight years out.
"The same as last year," he said. "Not the same as before. Just the same as last year."
Vorra listened. She had not accessed Edlan's archive in thirty-four years. In the beginning she had thought it was too soon. Then she had thought she was waiting to feel ready. Then she had stopped naming what she was waiting for.
She was one hundred and sixty-one. Edlan would be, in the archive, near the age he had been when they decided: fifty-nine, sixty. She had been one hundred and twenty-seven.
The question she kept returning to was not whether it would help or hurt. She had turned that one over enough to see it had no bottom. The question was whether she wanted to know how he seemed. Whether that was something she was owed or something she owed him. The distinction kept shifting.
Orrel finished speaking. The facilitator thanked him. Vorra looked at her hands.
She was not sure if what she felt was a reason to look, or not to look.