If there's anything Karen could have expected, it isn't that. In a way, she wonders if maybe it shouldn't be so surprising. After all, things like this happen here all the time, or so she's been told, lucky enough to have little experience with it herself. Even so, for a moment, she's speechless. She'd assumed he was off doing something for work, something he couldn't tell her about, at least not until after the fact. She couldn't have guessed that someone would be gone, or that it would be Harold, who's become so important to her in the time she's been here, part of what's given her a real purpose, one of the few people she can be honest with, inasmuch as she's ever honest with anyone.

For John, she knows that's even more the case, remembers too well what he told her the day she found that newspaper in the other Darrow. Her face falls, then, the weight of it hitting her at once, and her hand slides down so she can lace her fingers through his. She doesn't ask if he's sure. He wouldn't be here, wouldn't be telling her this, if he weren't.

"Come on," she says, soft, "come sit down. I'll — Can I get you anything?"