Because the earliest anyone could account for Hope’s existence was the moment of her car crash, the obvious explanation for her memory loss was the physical impact of the accident. But Lindsay had learned that psychological trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder could also induce dissociative fugue, or what used to be called a fugue state—a psychological condition characterized by an inability to recall one’s identity or personality. Usually these were relatively short-lived blackouts, but there were reported cases that lasted decades.

If Hope had suffered an extraordinary trauma before her car accident, it might explain not only her absence of recall but also her reasons for being in New Jersey, driving a stolen car from Indianapolis. It could even be the cause of the car accident itself, if she had blacked out behind the wheel. Hope had undergone hypnotherapy in an effort to draw out any buried memories, but, like everything else, it had yielded no further clues to her identity. Scott, of course, knew all of this.

“Did I ever tell you about going to the shooting range with Dad last year?” Lindsay asked.

“Maybe. I assume you go to the range with your father, like, every time you visit.”

After Lindsay left behind roommate living and got her own apartment in the city, her father had pleaded with her to get a gun and a permit. She finally relented, which meant learning how to shoot, something she had resisted until then. The truth was that she kept the gun in a locked safe and didn’t even own any ammunition, but now she and her father finally had a second joint activity to add to jigsaw puzzles when she visited Hopewell.

“But I’m talking about the time we took Hope with us. It was last Christmas, after you went back to the city. Hope tagged along to the range, and Dad talked her into trying it out. He walked her through all the basics. Well, you know his usual spiel.” Her father had dragged Scott to the range the first weekend she brought him home to Hopewell.

“‘Never point your gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot,’” Scott recited from memory. It was one of many safety tips that her father reviewed before letting anyone handle a gun for the first time. He also had a simple process for explaining the mechanics of firing a weapon. He boasted that every one of his pupils managed to hit within the circle of their paper target the very first time.

Until Hope.