Treated myself to a haircut at a chichi salon today. Cost three times more than Tammy’s trims back home—oops, I mean in Hopewell, because this is home now, this is home now, this is home now (sigh)—but the accompanying scalp massage was heaven, and the blowout made me tempted to open an Instagram account just so I could take a hundred selfies with perfect hair and plenty of wardrobe changes.

Unfortunately, the little bounce in my well-coiffed step vanished outside the salon. I saw a man across the street parked in—guess what? A white pickup truck—and he was definitely looking toward the salon. That probably wouldn’t have freaked me out by itself, but the guy definitely looked familiar. It’s always an infuriating feeling when someone or something looks familiar. It would probably be annoying for anyone, like your memory is betraying you, like you feel like the answer is right at the tip of your brain but keeps getting lost. But for me? I don’t know if he looks familiar because I saw him on the street last week, or because he looks like an actor in some movie I saw once, or because . . . 15+ years ago? If I see something that feels familiar and can’t pull up the connection, it turns into yet another reminder that I don’t really know who I am. Or who I was, at least. And can I know who Hope is today if I don’t know who she was— Ugh, see I’m doing it. Fifteen years later, and I’m calling Hope—ME!!!—a third person she.

OK, just took some deep breaths to calm down. Anyway, white-pickup-truck guy: parallel parked at a crowded curb, so I couldn’t get his plate. But the fear factor is apparently getting to me. Went to Rowdy Hall for dinner. Ate my weight in ham and Swiss while I worked the crossword. When I realized how late it was when it was time to leave, I asked poor Joe to walk me to my car. He probably thought I was crazy. My eyes darted toward every passing car, searching for the white pickup. So . . . yoo-hoo, if someone finds my body chopped to bits in the woods, look for a handsome dark-haired man who I may or may not know from either the recent or distant past, who drives a white pickup.

Lindsay flipped the page to blank white space, then turned to the next pages and the next. Was that Hope’s last entry, or had she started in on another notebook?