Which reminded me about his meeting with Rousseau. He’d gone into hiding after, which was fine with me. I needed a break from his good intentions. I was still holding his mother idea at arm’s length, not quite ready to try it on for size. If only I could suss out who else it could have been. Too old for a sister. Maybe a favorite neighbor, or some other relative? Either way, she must have been someone I’d cared about. The loss came back fresh each time I thought about her.

And what he’d said about looking in a mirror . . .

Didn’t have many in Unca Joe, unless like Jake or Jenn you’d traded for some little shard, say, from a woman’s compact. But why waste credits you could eat or drink instead? There was one decent-sized chunk propped up in the women’s, a half-rectangle broken off a larger piece. If you stood back a bit, you got almost a full-body view.

I mostly gave it a pass, a habit from my early days out of the Ward, when staring at a bruised, lop-haired, empty-eyed skeleton didn’t exactly speed my recovery. Lately, with my hair grown out curly and near to my shoulders, and a few pounds on in the right places, the occasional glimpse no longer brought the black clouds rolling in. Even liked what I saw, which was a relief, but not like the absolute making of my world, y’know?

So you’d think I’d have been better prepared.

Mid-afternoon, the sun came out, fired up the solars and put the showers back online. Everyone queued up for an overdue scrubbing. I came out into the impatient crowd, dripping and toweling, then glanced up and saw the memory woman standing not three feet away.

Right there, staring back at me.

I shoved my towel into my mouth to smother a scream. Only the other bodies shoving past me brought me to my senses.

It wasn’t her, of course. It was me in the mirror, with the same wet blond hair draped like seaweed down the same oval face, the same brown eyes, as horrified now as hers at the moment she slipped from my grasp.

I turned and ran for my bunk.

Soon as I was dressed, I dropped down to Jake’s bunk, borrowed scissors from his precious shelf of personal hygiene, and before I could think better of it—or even why—I snipped my hair nearly to my scalp. I stared at the pile in my lap, then gathered up every strand and pitched it out of my bit of window, to be scattered by the sunny afternoon wind.

When I returned the scissors, Jake was just back from checking up on storm damage at the Souk. He gave me a long look, then shook his head. “Back to square one again? What happened this time?”