“I looked different.”
“How different?”
“My face was swollen. My hair had been cut at the hospital because of the head injury. I gave them nothing useful. No birthday. No address. No family name.”
I swallowed.
“What did they call you?”
“For a while? Jane.”
I looked at her.
“Seriously?”
“One of the nurses hated calling me that. She started calling me Beth because I apparently kept responding to it.”
“Rebecca.”
“I know. Strange.”
Except it wasn’t.
Our grandmother Elizabeth had called Rebecca “Becca-Beth” when we were toddlers.
Some fragment of her brain had apparently kept Beth when everything else vanished.
She spent months moving between rehabilitation facilities.
Authorities continued trying to identify her, but leads went nowhere.
Eventually, she began remembering pieces.
Not enough to find us.
A lake.
A red bicycle.
Someone named Natalie.
A dog named Chester.
Our mother’s perfume.
Our father dancing badly in the kitchen.
“But not your last name?” I asked.
“Not for a long time.”
We reached her apartment.
She unlocked the door.
I expected emptiness.
Temporary furniture.
Evidence of someone living between lives.
Instead I walked into a home.
A real one.
Bookshelves.
