Once, Again, Always

Molly Graham wakes in an unfamiliar bed with a splitting headache and a strange man's arm around her. The voice is not her boyfriend Simon's, but it is disturbingly familiar. She opens her eyes and finds Aster Bishop, her bitter academic rival from Laburnum Preparatory Academy, an elite Connecticut boarding school. Molly collapses from pain and regains consciousness in New Hope Regional Hospital. She answers that her name is Molly Elizabeth Graham and that she is 21 years old. Both answers are wrong. Aster bursts past security, shouting that she is his wife, and is dragged away. The doctor explains that Molly is 27, her legal name is Molly Graham-Bishop, and two small strokes caused by bleeding in the brain have erased six years of her long-term memory.

Short flashback chapters titled "Before" trace the history between Molly and Aster at Laburnum. Molly attended on an academic scholarship, the daughter of a roofing contractor; Aster was a wealthy legacy student. He called her "Charity Case," tallied his wardrobe's cost against her tuition, accused her of plagiarism, and reduced her to tears. She retaliated by lodging her own cheating accusation and beating him for the valedictorian title. These chapters gradually complicate the picture: Aster was a miserable teenager crushed by parental expectations, and beneath their antagonism, moments of vulnerability surfaced on both sides.

In the present, Molly's childhood best friend Roy Waters and her closest girlfriend, Alannah Clay Waters, help orient her. Alannah, now married to Roy with two small children, explains that Molly and Simon Clay (Alannah's twin brother) broke up years ago, and that Molly is happily married to Aster. Alannah urges Molly to return to the apartment she shares with Aster, arguing she should trust the version of herself who chose this life. Despite her fear, Molly agrees. The apartment is cramped with antique furniture, including an enormous royal-blue brocade sofa from Aster's family collection. Molly reunites with her elderly cat, Pawntès. Aster confesses he deleted content from her phone to prevent her from being overwhelmed; Molly is furious, but his sincere apology, the first she remembers from him, stuns her into a hesitant truce.

A tense cohabitation follows. Aster tracks her symptoms obsessively and treats her with a guarded tenderness that baffles Molly. At a group dinner, Molly sees Simon for the first time and feels no romantic longing for him, but she stares too long and inadvertently humiliates Aster, who retreats to the bar. Afterward, at Roy and Alannah's home, Molly learns how she and Aster became a couple: He hit her with his car on campus due to a malfunctioning crosswalk signal, breaking her leg. Wracked with guilt, he walked her to every class, drove her to physical therapy, and apologized daily. When Molly holds Roy and Alannah's toddler Jessa, the child reaches for her instinctively, and Molly realizes she is not two different people; she is simply missing context.

Elliot "Eli" Reyes, Aster's best friend from a wealthy family, defies Aster's instructions and reintroduces himself to Molly. He delivers blunt assessments: Aster is sleeping on the sofa, starving for affection, and tracking every time Molly calls him "Bishop" instead of his first name. Taking Eli's advice, Molly calls Aster by his first name and asks him to share their history. He tells her that watching her forgive him after the accident was the moment he fell in love. Their relationship deepens through shared routines and objects Aster pulls from a locked spare room, each accompanied by a story from their life together.

At a birthday party for Alannah's youngest child, Molly watches Aster teaching children to hold baseball bats, and the sight stirs something powerful. A comment from Alannah triggers a realization: Molly and Aster were trying to have a baby. Their first real fight erupts. He argues he could not tell a wife who could barely look at him that they wanted a family; she insists he has no right to decide what she can handle. In the charged aftermath, they share a barely-there first kiss that strikes Molly like lightning.

Subsequent revelations reshape Molly's understanding. Justine Dawson, a former Laburnum classmate, reveals she is Molly's best friend and business partner at an independent bookstore; Eli later reveals that Molly is a part-owner of the store, with himself as the primary investor. Aster tells the full story of his estrangement: After a disastrous Christmas dinner where his parents insulted Molly, he demanded his own disinheritance and refused his trust fund. He tells Molly he loves her: "More than my name and more than my money, more than all of it" (226). At Eli's estate, Molly meets Bentley Burke, another of Aster's friends.

When a doctor uses the word "irreparable" about her memory, Molly stops waiting and proposes a date somewhere new. They find a quiet Thai restaurant and hold hands across the table; back at the apartment, Aster places his hand over her heart and kisses her deeply. On her birthday, he flies her via Eli's private plane to a vineyard in New York where Aster once proposed. Molly asks for her wedding ring, a sapphire-and-silver band that belonged to Eli's late mother. That night, they sleep together for the first time since her amnesia.

Molly tells Aster it is time to stop researching her memory. He refuses. Their tension sharpens when she demands he unlock the spare room and he will not. The standoff reaches a crisis at his tutoring office, where she finds stacks of brain trauma research. She asks if he could love her without her memories; he insists that is not the issue and reveals the key's hiding place, asking her to wait before opening the room.

Molly returns home to find the building evacuated due to a gas leak. She sprints past caution tape. Aster catches her from behind just as an explosion tears through the building. The last thing she sees through the doorway is the blue brocade sofa.

She wakes in the hospital again. The original six years remain lost, but she retains everything since her stroke. She says Aster's name, and he knows she remembers him. He tells her the spare room held the beginnings of a nursery: They had been expecting a baby and lost it just shy of the second trimester the year before. He locked the room at her own request, unable to put her through that grief again. The doctor reveals that a chronic gas leak in their complex likely caused Molly's strokes; without continued exposure, there is cautious hope for improvement.

Friends rally. Roy furnishes a new town house and tracks down a matching replacement for the destroyed sofa. Aster produces the one possession that survived: Molly's copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, which he had at work. On the new sofa, Molly tells him she wants to fill the house with memories and children.

An epilogue set one year later finds Molly's original memories still lost, but the urgency has faded. She discovers she is pregnant; Aster kisses her with overwhelming joy. At Christmas, their full circle gathers: Roy, Alannah, and their three children; Eli and Bentley, now a couple; and Justine, who deduces the pregnancy within minutes. Molly suggests the name Flora for a girl, a flower name that also belongs to an asteroid, honoring Aster's family tradition of celestial names while making something new. If she ever recovers her memories, she reflects, she will know what it is like to fall in love with him twice.