“What was the book?” Thomas asks.

“The Broken Ear. Fascinating choice.”

Moose noses my leg for an ear scratch. “Why?”

“It was in French! The main character was a man named Tintin.”

A white dog bounds through my mind. “He had a dog . . . Snowy?”

Dr. Johnson slaps his thighs. “Exactly! Tintin was an adventurer who traveled with Snowy.”

“Did I speak French to you?”

“Other than that first sentence, no. But after that, the dam was broken.”

My memory is still blank. “Did Heidi mention anything about my past?”

“No, she was rather skittish about it, and I wasn’t encouraged to dwell on it.”

“What do you mean?”

The doctor pats the pockets of his raincoat, pulls out a Nicorette pack, and pops a square of gum into his mouth. “Don’t ever smoke,” he warns. “I went to see Heidi, told her that to best help you, I needed to know your history. She showed me a judge’s order that said your files were sealed.”

The promise I felt this morning fades.

Dr. Johnson pops a second piece of gum free and chomps down on it. “I still went down to the county courthouse and petitioned to see your records. Waited a month with no response. I had a friend who worked as a court clerk. Didn’t ask her to do anything illegal, just track where my request was in the queue. Turned out it’d been tossed because there was no information in the system for Sylvie Peters. Must’ve been some kind of filing snafu—it happens,” he explains. “The system is overtaxed.”

Another dead end.

“What was Sylvie like?” Thomas asks.

Dr. Johnson smiles at me. “You were a sweet child, but very lost. You reminded me of that children’s story Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman. Do you know it?”

I shake my head. “What’s it about?”

“A baby bird that hatches while his mother is off finding food. He leaves the nest to look for her. He asks a kitten, hen, dog, cow, even an old car if any are his mother. Finally, he’s returned to his nest by a crane operator.”

Except I was never returned to my mother. Why? Despite my disappointment, I ask, “Once I was talking, what’d we work on during our sessions?”

“Ways to anchor you to the present, discover things you liked. You enjoyed craft projects, made a lot of jewelry with beads. Oh! And you had an obsession with the numbers 9 and 2. Expressed them in watercolors, charcoal, chalk, even made a macaroni collage with those numbers glued to a sheet of construction paper.” He laughs. “It was very creative, actually. I wouldn’t be surprised if imagination plays a part in whatever you do now?”

I glance at Thomas but he has his journalist’s face on. “It does,” I admit.

Dr. Johnson looks at his watch. “Ah. I need to get back to my office.”

Thomas says, “One last thing? You said Heidi showed you a letter from a judge. Any way you’d remember his name?”