“This is so great.” Her forehead wrinkles when she meets my eyes in the mirror. “Umm, I’m Maree, like Mary with a y but with two e’s ’cause I like it spelled that way, and I came up here so you can teach me guitar lessons, and then you said you could put my hair in a beehive.” She stops to catch her breath. “So that’s why we’re in your bathroom. Does that help with your lost memory?”

“Yes, Maree, it does. Thank you.” Her earnestness is a balm to the unsettling way she brings up my memory, and while a part of me squirms with the implication of what she knows about me, the other part is charmed by her honesty and comfortable with her youthful exuberance. Smiling, I begin carefully sectioning the front of her hair, which is thick and soft, and as I work, the pink of her scalp shows through. From above her I can see the slope of her nose, which ends in an upturned nub. “Can you open the top drawer, Maree, and pull out the box of clips and bobby pins?”

She plops the small plastic box on the counter, looks at me in the mirror. “Why do you have all these hair things when you have such short hair?”