After a car accident I pretended to have amnesia as a joke. My husband looked at the floor and told me he was my brother — and it took me eleven days to work out that the only thing I had actually forgotten was the two hours before the crash, and that those two hours were the whole story.

I read that letter in my own kitchen and my hands were steady enough to fold it in thirds.

I have thought about that woman standing at the counter a great deal. She had eleven days of not knowing left, and about six hours of knowing, and then a van at an intersection took the six hours away from her and gave her back to me four days later in a hospital bed, mid-joke.

I would like to have met her. She sounds like she was handling it.

PART 4

Harriet Nunn practices out of two rooms above a bakery on Corliss Street and has been doing this for thirty-one years.

She told me three things at the first meeting, and I wrote all three down.

One: do not confront him. Not once, not about anything.

Two: everything in that apartment that has my name on it, photograph, do not remove.