"Wait." I close my eyes, trying to chase it. "Maybe... tomatoes? Or tomato sauce?”
"Pizza?"
"No. Not pizza." The image sharpens slightly. A table. Candlelight. A plate of pasta, red sauce, steam rising. "Pasta. With red sauce."
"Pasta's good," she says matter-of-factly. "Mama makes pasta sometimes. But not the red kind. We have the white kind with butter."
The memory, if that's what it is, fades before I can grasp it. But it was there. Something real. Something mine.
"Thank you," I say quietly. "I remembered something."
"See? You're not broken." She sits down cross-legged in the dirt, settling her rabbit in her lap. "What's your name?"
"I told you. I don't know."
"We have to call you something. Mama calls you 'the man in the barn,' but that's not a name."
"No, it's not."
She taps her finger against her lips, thinking hard. "Maybe you're a Stefano. Or a Damon. Or a..." She trails off, running out of names.
The names trigger nothing.
"Maybe," I say, because I don't know what else to say.
"Where do you live?"
"I don't know."
"Do you have a house?"
"I don't know."
"Do you have a dog?"
I shake my head, almost certain I don’t have a dog. "I don't think so."
She frowns. "You don't know a lot of things."
Despite everything, the pain, the fear, the blankness where my life should be, I almost smile.
“No. I don't.”
"It's okay." She leans forward, her expression serious. "Mama says sometimes people forget things when they're hurt. But they remember later. When they're better."
"I hope so."
"Do you have a little girl?"
The question catches me off guard. Do I? The thought of a child, my child, should trigger something, shouldn't it? Some recognition, some feeling?
But there's nothing.
"I don't think so," I say.
"Do you have a mama?"
"Everyone has a mama."
