Isabelle's memory is fairly unreliable and shifts a lot, so the timeline of them tends to be off. However, she does have a few memories she can single out as among the earliest. The first one involving Viola is at a Christmas party, and is mostly just an impression: Viola, beautiful and sparkling in a red gown, laughing and talking to other women who could never compare to her. Isabelle distinctly remembers feeling a sense of distance between them, that Viola had something she would never possess.

Meanwhile her earliest memory of Alec is a little more concrete, and takes place when she's around two or three years old. It's Alec sitting in a hallway at a pediatrician's office with her, reading the poem Hurt No Living Thing. He started teaching her to read fairly early, and a lot of her first memories of him involve reading.