"I had a different life. For a brief window when I was a child. I remember helping my mother gather herbs in the woods. She read me stories about knights." He hesitates. "Those memories, they belong to another boy. I don't feel like that life was stolen from me. It feels like it was never mine."

So maybe he understands what she means, though the circumstances are different. That separation your mind develops for reasons he can't explain. Like her, sometimes he feels that loss, a curl of bitterness that will always lurk. Other times it's a distant memory that he brushes past because it doesn't matter when he's long become someone else.

He's truthfully never learned to reconcile the two childhoods he'd had. He's not sure he wants to try. They've remained separate to this day—not quite left behind, but not wholly a part of him. That's the way he's moved on. Perhaps that's what she'll find she does, too.

He huffs. "Aren't we fucking all."