When I was fourteen, I stopped waiting for my nightmares to magically reveal themselves and started researching my family instead. I read about the various exploits of my birth father, Harry Day, under headings such as “Beverly House of Horrors,” and “Crazed Carpenter’s Killing Rampage.” Turns out, not only did my birth father murder eight prostitutes, but he buried them beneath his private workshop as well as our family room floor. The police theorized some of the women had been kept alive for days, maybe even weeks, while he tortured them.

For a while, I was obsessed with uncovering every piece of information I could find about Harry Day. And not just because my past was horrifying and shocking, but also because it was so . . . alien. I would gaze at pictures of the house, a rusted-out bike propped against the front porch, and I would feel . . . nothing.

Even staring at the photo of my own father, I couldn’t summon the tiniest flicker of recognition. I didn’t see my eyes or my sister’s nose. I didn’t picture large calloused hands or hear a faint, deep chuckle. Harry Day, 338 Bloomfield Street. It was like staring at scenes from a movie set. All real, but all make-believe.

Of course, I was only eleven months old when the police discovered Harry’s homicidal hobby and rushed our house. Harry was found dead in the bathtub, wrists slit, while my mother was taken away to a mental hospital. She died, alone and still restrained for her own safety, while my sister and I became official wards of the state.

Some days, when not staring at Harry’s grinning face, I would study my mother instead. Not many photos of her existed. High school dropout, I learned. Ran away from her own family, who lived somewhere in the Midwest. She made her way to Boston, where she worked as a waitress in a diner. Then she hooked up with Harry, and her fate was sealed.

The only pictures I could find were police photos of her standing in the background while detectives ripped up the floorboards of her home. A gaunt-looking woman with washed-out features, unkempt long brown hair and an already broken posture.

I didn’t see my eyes or my sister’s nose when I looked at her, either. I saw merely a ghost, a woman who was lost way before outside help arrived.

Eventually, my nightmares faded. I worried less about the family that had gifted me with faulty DNA and worked harder to gain my adoptive father’s praise. And in turn, my father began excusing the weekend staff, helping me himself with school projects and, in time, even sitting up with me the nights I couldn’t sleep, offering the quiet reassurance of his solid, contemplative company.

He loved me. Despite his academic’s heart, despite my flawed wiring, we became a family.

Then he died, and my nightmares returned with a vengeance.