“How long have you lived here?”
“Three years.”
“And before?”
“Farther away.”
I put the book down.
“Start with the accident.”
Clara sat across from me.
She explained that she had been thrown clear of the car before it burned. Disoriented from a serious head injury, she apparently wandered away from the road before another driver found her miles from the crash site.
She had no identification.
Her memory was badly damaged.
“I knew how to use a spoon before I knew my last name,” she said.
Eventually, her first name returned.
Then fragments.
Our mother’s yellow kitchen.
The sound of someone singing in the shower.
A dent in a bedroom wall.
“Was the shower singing me?” I asked.
“You were terrible.”
“That was definitely you.”
For half a second, we almost sounded like sisters again.
Then I asked the question that mattered.
“When did you remember me?”
Clara looked down.
“Sarah…”
“How long?”
Her eyes filled.
“Six years ago.”
Everything inside me went still.
“You’ve known I was alive for six years?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew I believed you were dead?”
“Yes.”
I stood.
“Did you call?”
“I tried once.”
“Once?”
“I found Mom and Dad’s old number. It had been disconnected.”
“And after that?”
“I wrote letters.”
“Did you send them?”
She said nothing.
I laughed bitterly.
“Then you wrote them for yourself, Clara. Not for us.”
She flinched.
I grabbed my purse.
“Sarah, wait.”
“You had six years.”
I left.
That night, I didn’t tell Mom and Dad.
That was my choice.
Clara had controlled enough of the truth.
I went home, opened a kitchen cabinet, and stared at those two blue mugs.
For ten years, I had been buying replacements for someone who was still alive.
The next morning, I called my mother.
“Are you sitting down?”
“Sarah, I hate when you say that.”
“Please.”
Her voice immediately changed.
“Okay.”
“Clara’s alive.”
There was silence.
Then, very carefully, “Sweetheart…”
“I saw her.”
Another silence.
“She knew things nobody else would know. It’s her.”
Dad eventually came onto the phone.
He didn’t ask twenty questions.
He simply said, “What do you need from us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then we’ll start there.”
Two days later, I drove them to Clara’s apartment.
Mom stopped just inside the door.
Clara stood near the window.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then Mom crossed the room.
