Maya was at the back of the garage, dressed in her standard outfit of black jeans and T-shirt, standing over a piece of driftwood the size of my leg. Purple earbuds firmly in place, she swayed to whatever she was listening to, running her hands over the wood, her lips moving without making a sound. Because I wasn’t paying enough attention, my foot caught on a frayed, faded orange rug and I stumbled, almost crashing into the shelf full of neatly arranged tools and supplies. Maya looked up and pulled out an earbud, her face breaking into a smile.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Her grin faded a little. “You okay? You’re really pale.”

The red bathwater images pushed and shoved, once again making sure they were the only thing I could think of. “I remembered something...at least I believe so. I’m not sure.”

I ran a damp palm over my hair. This was impossible, trying to sort out reality from dreams, fact from fiction, truth from confabulation. How could I live like this? Weren’t we humans, at least in part, the sum of our experiences? Without a firm grasp on my history, how was I supposed to move on? How could I know, or have any kind of trust in who I was?

Maya walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. “Tell me what you saw.”

“A blue door with a brass handle. I think it was a...”

“Bathroom.” Maya exhaled deeply. “Wow, of all the things to come back...” She grabbed my hand and led me to a green bench at the back of the room near some open framing, where she made me sit down and gently said, “You’re remembering what happened to your mom.”

“Rosalie?” I said, the name still strange and unfamiliar on my tongue.

“Yes. When she committed suicide...you found her. In the bath at home. Her wrists...”

“Christ,” I whispered. I’d found my mother, veins slashed, bleeding out in the family bathroom. It must have been terrifying, life-defining, something I’d surely wanted to forget. “That’s one thing I wish my brain had made up.”

“Me, too.” Maya rubbed my hand as she looked at me with her huge eyes. “You never talked about it much, you found it too distressing. God, I wish you could leave it behind.”

I shook my head. “I’ve already told you. I’ve got to take the good with the bad, and at least real memories are coming, bits and pieces of them, anyway. I mean, this thing with my mum...obviously it’s horrendous, but it’s also significant, surely, even if the entire memory didn’t come back.”

“Thank God. But you have to be patient. And you need to rest.”