That was an imperfection.    There was a clatter from below her.  Jarod.  The room she’d originally had pegged for a pantry was actually a concealment for the small trap door which led to Jarod’s private cellar.    He kept it locked.  He wasn’t nearly as trusting as he seemed to be.    “The Granny Smiths are in the fridge,” he shouted, his voice muffled by the wooden floor.     Son of a bitch.    “Stop nurturing, Jarod,” she called back.  She’d said the same thing to Sydney almost twenty years ago.  He hadn’t stopped, either.    She took a bite of the red apple, just for spite, then threw it into the sink and turned on the disposal.    There was a sucking sound as the apple was chomped away, then a growl as the thing tackled the core.  She turned it off.    Jarod peeked out from the pantry door.  “Well?”    She shot him a scathing look, ignoring the excitement that leapt into her chest.  This was it.  They were going now.  “Well what, brain boy?”    He smiled.  “Are you coming?”    She fought to keep the dour look on her face.  Of course she was going.  She was already there, practically.  She dumped the tea into the sink and walked into the pantry. He took a graceful step out of the way, so she could walk down.    “And they say women take longer,” she sniped, and then she trotted down.  She was going to get a look at Jarod’s secret room before they left.    She stood in awe.  He had built an exact replica of a fully-furnished simlab.  She remembered, because she had been part of a few of his simulations as a child, and they had, of course, utilized the Centre’s simulation laboratory as the headquarters for the Jarod search.  She had selected this area for the new cancer research the Centre was doing, but this…this place was right out of the seventies.    For a short moment, she forgot her emotions. “Christ, Jarod,” she breathed.  “How long have you been building this place?”  She’d gotten the impression that it was fairly new.    The question was supposed to be a rhetorical one, but suddenly, he was right behind her, his breath warm on her face as he leaned over her shoulder and spoke in her ear.  “The underground structure was here already.  Part of some kind of population rescue program from the Cold War.  All I really had to do was get some equipment in here.  I built the cabin over it a few years ago, because I could no longer conceal the work I was doing.  And I needed a place to sleep.”    “This is a bomb shelter?”    “It was.  Once.  It’s the door on your right.”    She took a breath of the damp air and walked toward the door Jarod indicated.  Let’s see, she thought, in the old Centre layout, this would lead to…Sydney’s office.  She opened the door.  If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine the bookcases, the small and simple desk, lit dimly by a lamp and covered with mementos of Sydney’s family and his past.  The comfortable sofa which had been one of the last things her mother had seen before…    Was there something you wanted to talk about, Miss Parker?    No, thanks.  The last thing my mother did before she killed herself was have a session with you, remember?    Jarod’s flirtations with Memory Lane, however, left off at the simlab behind her.  He’d felt no need to recreate Sydney’s office, or the structure of the cellar simply hadn’t lent itself to that.  She made her way down the cement-lined hallway, aware of the functional track lighting and the slight, almost imperceptible decline of the floor.  They were traveling further and further underground.  She had no doubts that this place could survive a nuclear blast.    She wondered if it might have to someday.    If only to fill the eerie emptiness—and remind herself that she was not alone—she spoke.  “You know, if I were you, Jarod, I’d never want to do a simulation again.”   “I don’t ever want to do one again.  For the Centre.”   “But you do them?  In that place?”  Involuntarily, she shivered.  She had many vivid memories of the torturous experiments Jarod had survived in the original simlab.  He had told her about most of them, when they were still friends.  Some, in her training as a cleaner and in her powerful position as Mr. Parker’s daughter, she’d observed herself.   There was no reply.   She halted, turned, and looked at him.  The hall was narrow enough that he couldn’t pass around her.  His expression was harsh, almost angry.   He had been kind, caring, even welcoming to her.  He had made her a place here, a place where she felt safe enough, even if the walls closed around her a bit.  He had not opened up to her in any way, shape, or form.  They were not friends.  They were strangers who had lived in the same house for a week.  Those were boundaries Jarod had set on their new relationship.    Frankly, she had come to the café in New York, where this whole business had started, expecting, even desiring, something different than chase-and-tease.  She’d had no delusions about being whisked away for a brilliant-hero, ass-kicking-heroine wedding; any romantic feelings she had for Jarod were old and dusty, buried in the annals of her memory and focused on a bright-eyed and innocent eleven-year-old boy.  A child’s fantasies, channeled into a familiarity, an intimacy, which even Miss Parker’s chilly façade couldn’t fake into nothingness.    She’d been prepared for friendship, even for an unlikely tearful reunion.  She’d been ready for hostility and bitterness, too; Miss Parker wasn’t much for compassion when it came to Jarod, but she could imagine that he had a few things to say to her.  She’d even braced herself for some sort of twisted, “I’ve always loved you,” testimony, which she would have walked away from, first because it was bullshit, and second, because trying to resurrect that mushy-stuff kid relationship would make them both miserable and angry at each other.    She had not wanted this.  She had come to Jarod looking for a final bit of closure on the last part of her life that had been left hanging.  “Talk to me, Jarod.”    “Miss Parker—”    “Talk.”    His eyes darted away, his expression hurt.  “You want to know, Miss Parker?  Really?  Remember when you used to cry at your mother’s grave?”    Every year, on the anniversary of her death.  She still went, every year, though she hardly ever cried anymore.  She sighed.  “Yes.”  The word breathed from her mouth, gentle.   “That’s what this place is to me.  Refuge.  Where I go to remember.  To fix all the things that went wrong.”  He didn’t look at her.  What did psycho-quacks call it?  Dodging?  Distancing?  Make it easy, and call it pain.    Feel better, now, Parker?  You’ve hurt another person you care about. You can’t escape everything, Jarod.  You can’t just say some magic incantation and fix it.  Some wounds you can’t even heal by undoing the crime.  The words burned in her throat.