Her eyes light up slightly at that. "Massachusetts! My husband has been looking into a professorship there, now that he can again. I'm planning to apply to one of the medical schools--I'm a nurse, but I'd like to get my M.D."

She doesn't recognize him, that's obvious. But she's a healer, and now that's stated. And she shifts a little, to be more comfortable.

The action puts her face in sunlight and reveals what shade from the leaves had hidden.

Faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth are missing. A scar should be on her right cheek, and isn't. And her hair is brown with a mix of red and gold, rather than the same but with the faint strands of silver that seemed to put all her hair in a strange, if subtle, sort of luminance, and had been brought on by the one thing that could do so: time.

Everything else, except her clothing, is perfect. Too perfect to be a descendant who merely took after one ancestor strongly due to the strange way genes had mixed when she was conceived.

And that's his answer, too: again, time.

Bloody time. That, and her last words to him, during that particular meeting when she'd hid and healed him: understanding shared.