The bug man is gone. His office is cleared out. I went to see. Now I talk to the bug woman. The young doctor from the hospital fixed me up with her. The bug woman comes to the house sometimes and sometimes I go to her office, which is like the inside of an iceberg, cool and white. It contains a normal amount of chairs. She is very nice and doesn’t look like a bug at all. But I still have trouble with names. And so much has changed. Maybe I need one tiny thing to stay the same.

She suggested that I play back my recordings to see what I have forgotten. I’m surprised to find I’ve used up twelve cassettes. I really didn’t think I recorded that much but that’s why I need the tapes, isn’t it? Because my memory’s so bad.

They’re numbered so I start with 1. The first twenty minutes or so is what I expected. There are a couple recipes, and some stuff about the glade, the lake. Then there’s a pause. I think maybe it’s finished, so I’m reaching over to switch off the recorder, when someone starts breathing into the silence of the tape. In and out. Cold walks up my arms and legs. That’s not my breath.

Then a hesitant, prim voice starts to speak.

I’m busy with my tongue, she says, doing the itchy part of my leg when Ted calls for me. Darn it, this is not a good time.

My heart leaps up into my mouth. It can’t be—oh, but it is. Olivia, my beautiful lost kitten. I never knew she could speak. No wonder I could never find the tape recorder. She sounds sweet, worried and teacher-like. Hearing her is wonderful and sad, like seeing a picture of yourself as a baby. I wish we could have talked. It’s too late now. I listen on and on. I don’t know why I’m crying.

It is called integration, the bug woman tells me. It happens, sometimes, in situations like ours. Integration sounds like something that happens in a factory. I think they just wanted to be together, Olivia and the other one. Anyway, Olivia is gone and she won’t be back.

The bug woman always tells me to let feelings in, not shut them out, so that is what I try to do. It hurts.

There are other voices, among Olivia’s recordings—ones that I don’t know. Some don’t use language, but grunts and long pauses and clicks and high songs. Those are the ones that move through me moaning like cold little ghosts. In the past I tried to shut them in the attic. Now I take time to listen. I’ve spent too long covering my ears.