For a horrible moment, when he begins talking, she thinks he means that Number 2 is still alive somewhere and sending these flares of pain, somehow. One kind of horrifying prospect if that isn't true; another kind if it is.

He continues, and the momentary horror collapses into one much more drearily familiar.

I don't know if I'll ever believe she's really gone.

"Are you ..." She swallows again, tastes that tang in the air that should mean snow on the way. "I don't know exactly how to ask this. Is it his memory you want to kill, or ... to somehow have him alive again so you could kill him? Or something else?"