Ellie watches her do it, doesn't wonder at the way she lingers. She'd do the same if their situations were reversed.

Abby came when her friends' deaths were fresh. She's had even less time to process than Ellie has.

Or maybe it's that she's been processing since they were fourteen, and she found what Joel did in that hospital.

She holds out her hand to accept the knife back, holds it in her palm a moment as Abby asks, weighing what to say, because there's... so much. Abby recognizes it, Ellie knows.

"It used to be my mom's," she says, rubbing her thumb over the inlay along the side. "Never met her. She and Marlene were friends, though. A long time ago."

For the first time, she wonders, threads things together. Abby's father was a doctor. Her mom had been a nurse. Had they known each other, all those years ago? Before Abby or Ellie came along?

She banishes the thought, relegating it to the back of her mind. One more thing to chew over when she can't sleep.

"I lost it, in Santa Barbara," she adds. "But in the Fade, I dreamed I had it. So it came through the Rift, too."