She could not remember having any brothers or sisters, but there’d been another man living with them, hadn’t there? An uncle? One of her dad’s old army buddies? She could not remember his precise relation to them, could not recall his name, but she could see him in her mind, a nattily dressed man with a thin mustache. She didn’t think he was British, but something in her memory of him reminded her of an elegant English actor whose name she did not know.

There had been another child, but she had not lived with them, had only come over to visit, to play.

Dawn.

The girl from down the way.

The girl she’d promised to marry.

Laurie remembered her now, remembered her name, but her appearance was confused with that of the girl from the alley, the girl in her dreams. Dawn was the one aspect of her previous life that had not been submerged and buried, that she had not entirely blocked out, but in her reminiscences, the girl had been another hippie kid who lived down the street from where she remembered growing up, and Josh had known her as well. She realized now, though, that her memory had transferred the girl from one place, one time, to another. Dawn had been from before. Before her birth parents had died, before she’d been adopted.

In her mind, she saw Dawn standing between two redwoods, smiling at her, beckoning her toward the forest.

The dimensions of the scene expanded as she mentally reconstructed details of the memory. She had not been allowed to go into the woods surrounding the house. Her parents had instilled within her a fear of the forest, and she’d been aware of the dangers lurking therein since before she’d been allowed to play outside the house. Dawn knew perfectly well that she wasn’t supposed to go into the woods, but the other girl tried to lure her in anyway, cajoling her, calling her names, promising her fun, excitement, and lifelong friendship.

Laurie hadn’t succumbed—not this time—but Dawn had not quit trying, and it had been a constant battle between her parents’ orders and her friend’s desires.

Had Dawn had a hand in her parents’ deaths?

For some reason, Laurie thought she had. What a small child could have to do with the murder of two adults she did not quite understand, but the feeling was there anyway.

The murder of two adults?

Yes.

This was getting a little too creepy.

Laurie finished her coffee, tossed the paper cup into a wastebasket next to the entrance of a small café, and tried to concentrate on the here and now, focusing on the street, on the shops, on the people walking by, trying not to think about her newfound memories.