Martin was kind enough to drop me off at home to get cleaned up and change. I smelled like coffee dregs. He had to pick up Katie at the sitters first, then he’d swing by again and we’d make our way to Hemley Park.

I told him about what happened with the businesspeople and how I was so certain that I knew one of them. He asked what they looked like and when I described them, Martin said he’d seen them before. I agreed that it was the most likely situation of how I knew the man, but still, there was a nagging whisper in my mind insisting that I knew him prior to working at the restaurant. I couldn’t shake the feeling.

As soon as I shut the front door behind me, I started disrobing as I walked up the stairs toward the bathroom. I left a trail of clothes over the steps and the floor, as if I were some sort of molting creature.

I hadn’t been working at the Hemley Hotel restaurant for long, but I’d actually started to enjoy it. At least while I was working, I wouldn’t fixate and worry over the most important aspect of my life: my identity.

Grateful as I was for the semblance of a life that I now had, I couldn’t help dreading my weekly visits to see Dr. Lin at the Hemley Psychiatric Hospital. I knew I shouldn’t complain—I’d been released from inpatient care after a few months and only had to see her once a week for a general evaluation.

It wasn’t because Dr. Lin was harsh or unkind. In my books, anyone who was willing to help a naked, incoherent woman in the park must have a heart of gold. Dr. Lin took me to her home to get cleaned up, gave me food, got me medical care, helped me get a job at the hotel, and arranged for my own residence. Sure, the place wasn’t glamorous, but there was nothing to complain about. There really was no reason to dread seeing her for weekly evaluations, except for my own insecurities involving the hallucinations.

I didn’t want to go back to being an inpatient if for some reason Dr. Lin found me unfit to be a part of society. I feared that most of all.

By the time I was in the shower, oddly enough, my mind began to wander again to thoughts of the gray-eyed man. Who was he? He was waiting by the stairs for someone, wasn’t he? Did he want to speak to me? Just then I realized that he and his colleagues had covered for me by telling Jenny that everything was fine. Why would they do that?

When I got out of the shower, I started combing my tangled black hair. It dangled down to the middle of my back and could have been beautiful if I attended to the split ends that I so desperately needed to rid myself of.

As I combed it, I looked at myself in the mirror, trying to make note of any unique features. Nothing physically, so to speak, was out of the ordinary. The only odd feature was my eyes being two different colors.

After I managed to comb out the tangles, I pulled back my hair to tie it into a ponytail and felt around the back of my neck for the scar hidden below my hairline. It protruded slightly; not a tattoo, more of a burn or branding. It was writing of some sort, though I had no idea what language it was written in. Of course, it wasn’t great that I had a burn mark, but the mark was another clue to who I was. The other thing that was odd was that I could never find a scar on my body. Not one. Hadn’t I ever had an injury as a child? Hadn’t I ever had a fall, a cut, or a bruise?

I stared blankly at my reflection in the window. My origins. When was I born? I didn’t even know how old I was exactly, but an educated guess would say that I was around Martin’s age or a couple years younger. Who were my parents? Did I resemble more of my father or my mother?

Then, my image blurred. Everything faded to black.

Not now.