"Oh goodness dearie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Evan’s grandmother takes a step back and gives me a friendly pat before she looks up at me. “Oh, Lyric dear! So, good to see you again, I was just heading home for the day, do stop in some time for tea, will you?”

I nod, a grin splitting my face, it’s so hard not to smile around this old lady. She crushes me in one of those bone-jarring hugs, the smells of lavender and mint surrounding her.

“I’m sure Evan will be pleased to hear from you.” She dabs at her eyes with a blue silk handkerchief.

Evan’s grandmother is everything that you’d expect a doting grandmother to be except she doesn’t look the part.

She’s definitely not the doddering old lady type that wears baggy sweaters and floral prints, and despite the accident and everything that’s happened it seems that she’s adopted me as her own. Or rather my whole family has been adopted by her.

She’s been over for dinner several times since the accident, and from my understanding this is a normal occurrence. She even stopped in for Sunday breakfast a couple of times, which has consistently produced enough food to feed the entire neighborhood.

“I see you dyed your hair again Mama Etta?” She gives me a wide smile and ruffles her newly blue curls.

“Ah yes baby, I felt like it was a blue kind of week.” When I’d first met her, she had bright purple hair and when I’d asked about it she’d given me a deep chuckle and responded with, ‘Once you get to my age it’s about making the most of every little thing, or you’ll just get more wrinkles.’

She pulls out a handful of caramel candies and hands them to me. “You look well?” It’s not so much a statement of fact as it is a question.

I’m about to spill my guts on every tired and depressing thought I’m having, she’s just that easy to talk to, but her head bobs up and down as if she already knows what I’m going to say, and she pats my cheek.

“It’ll get better, dearie. You’re still young and spry,” I can already feel tears prickling the corners of my eyes. It’s so hard to keep all my feelings bottled up around this woman. Tears that aren’t so much sadness as they are frustration. “Ah baby don’t do that now. You’re too pretty and young to let that eat away at you. Come here, dearie.” She pulls me in for another hug, practically smothering me. “Now, now, give us a smile, humor the old woman, will you?” She pats my head and gives me a goofy grin until I start giggling.

“Now there’s that pretty smile. Now you be nice to my boy, and I expect to see you for tea soon.” With that said, she wobbles off, surprisingly fast for a lady with a cane.

That hobble is one of the few things that reveal her age. For a woman in her seventies she’s remarkably young in personality and looks.

Perhaps the only thing that’s changed about Evan since I first came to visit him is that his chestnut hair is now brushing the tops of his shoulders where it once was barely touching his ears.

It’s funny, and maybe a little sad that I’ve seen him so many times over the past few months that I have his face memorized, but I can’t remember what colors his eyes are.

The familiar buzzing and beeping of machinery greets me, and Evan in his green hospital gown amidst the bland white sheets.

“It must be odd, huh?” I say sitting down beside his bed as way of greeting. “Odd that I come to visit you even though I don’t remember you, isn’t it? Your hair is getting longer.”

I take one of his hands in mine and give it a squeeze, partly to remind myself that this is the real Evan, not the spirit I always see, but also to resist the urge to run my hand through his curls that I get every time.

Sometimes he squeezes back, but today there’s no reaction. The first time his hand moved in mine I ran to the nurse’s station, ecstatic, thinking he was waking up, but apparently, it’s just a sign that he is slightly conscious. There’s hope that he’ll wake up, but it’s still rather slim.

“I wish I remembered you. I wish you’d wake up… okay, I know… I know I say the same things every time, but it’s hard, you know?”

I can’t resist the urge anymore, I brush his hair off of his face, pulling apart some of the curls. I wonder if anyone would object to me braiding it? Well, it’s not like he’s going to wake up. And it wouldn’t be the first time I did it. I start working braids though his hair, it gives me something to do with my hands and it’s calming.

“Then again maybe it doesn’t matter whether you’re awake or not. I’m not going to remember you. Sometimes I think I won’t ever get my memories back, but sometimes that… well, it doesn’t bother me as much as it probably should. If I don’t remember, it’s not like I know what I’m missing, but the looks in everyone’s faces… I wonder if you’d give me that same look,” I let out a laugh.

“I bet you would, and you’d tell me stories about me, just like the rest.”

But there’s a difference. Evan wouldn’t just tell me stories of me, he could tell me about the accident, something that no one else seems to know the specific details of.

And that might be part of the reason I like to talk to Evan and visit him even though I don’t really know him. Maybe I hope that one day I’ll suddenly remember the details, or perhaps he’ll wake up and tell me everything. But there’s another reason, besides just our connection with the accident, being with Evan is… easy. There’s no expectations when I’m with him, no disappointment each moment that I don’t remember. It relaxes me.

“So, I almost forgot to tell you about Hei and Mimi.” I’ve braided about a third of Evan’s hair at this point. “Harp’s birthday was a few days ago.” I pause to work my fingers through a knot in his curls, trying to be careful of pulling too hard. It might almost be humorous that I’m trying not to hurt him when he probably wouldn’t wake up if I did.

“I met some people that knew us. We act, and I guess we’re good at it. We got cast as two of the leads. They want to come visit you soon.” The knots out and I comb through the strands before carefully plaiting them.

“I went out for frozen yogurt with them yesterday. They’re… interesting, but they don’t know about the accident. I think there’s something else going on with them too, but maybe I just don’t know them well enough yet, and the weird looks at one another every time Hei’s phone goes off is normal.”

I’d worried that hanging out with them again might be awkward, but it was just as fun as at the arcade. They’re just really easy to get along with. And even though they’re a couple I didn’t feel like a third wheel or anything.

I finally pull my hands out of Evan’s hair, momentarily trying to decide whether to leave the braids in or not.

“You would know, wouldn’t you? But I guess it won’t be that easy...” I sit for a moment and then reach to undo the braids. I yank my hands away at the sound of people in the hall, almost afraid of being caught.

“Is this the right room?” A guy’s voice. I don’t recognize it. But there’s a twinge in my gut, that makes me feel like I should.

“Maybe, I don’t know, it’s not like there was a specific number in the article or that letter.” A girl’s voice… it’s familiar somehow.

“Should we just leave? Maybe this is a bad idea?” The guy again, I wonder if they’re friends of Evan’s. I cross over to the doorway, listening to the voices argue, still trying to place the girl’s voice.

“Okay, okay, you’re right, we should just leave then.” My mind is reeling. No! They can’t leave… what if… what if they know something?

I yank the door open at that thought, but the hall is empty. Completely empty.

There’s no way they could’ve walked off that fast. I fall back into the room, practically collapsing in the chair by Evan’s bed.

“I think I’m going crazy.” And then another thought hits me. I know why I know that girls voice, why it was so familiar.

It was my voice.