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Morgan leaned closer and grinned at me in the mirror. “Wanna know the best part?”
“That since the swelling has subsided, we know for a fact I have no hideous facial deformities.”
Her smile dropped a bit. “Well, yes, that’s good, too. I didn’t realize we were worried about that. Was I supposed to be worried about that? Have you been thinking all of this time that the hammer caused permanent damage?”
Her attention felt too much like concern and caring, which were misplaced emotions she shouldn’t give a stranger. Neither of us knew what kind of man I was.
I turned to her. “You shouldn’t worry about me at all.”
She rolled her eyes. “We’re not having that conversation again. Anyway, youdowant to know the best part?”
“All right.”
“I know your face. We’ve met before.” She beamed at me, like this was the best news either of us could have hoped for.
“We must not know each other well,” I said.
“Nope, or I would have recognized you sooner. But now that I have, I know exactly where we need to go to move along our investigation.”
“Where’s that?”
“The carnival.”
I didn’t feel like a carnival-visiting person. The clothes I’d been wearing when I woke up at the hospital didn’t look like they belonged to a carnival-visiting person.
“I see your skepticism,” she said. “I raise you memories.”
I frowned at her. Maybe I looked like someone else, this person she was remembering.
“I know,raise you memoriesdidn’t work out loud the way it did in my head. I was going for clever, not confusing. Anyway, it’s going to be great. We’ll go to the carnival tonight after I get done atthe studio.”She shivered and frowned, as ifthe studiowas the third circle of hell. “I have to go now. I’ll see you here at seven-ish, ’kay?”
“Sure.”
She squeezed my biceps, made a smallsqueesound, and hurried out the door.
Morgan was apparently far more excited than I was about this new revelation. Whatever she knew about me pre-accident, she seemed to like. Me, on the other hand, I was stuck on the lines on my face—the ones that suggested the life I’d had before wasn’t so great. What if the truths we discovered were terrible, and I’d have been better off, happier, not knowing?
There was a definite possibility that was the case. Equally likely, when Morgan found out those truths, she’d run. All of these hypotheticals revolved around her being right about my identity.
Still, I had to know. And it wasn’t as if I could sustain my current situation indefinitely.
I got dressed for the day in a fresh set of tattered jeans and another dark t-shirt. This one was charcoal gray with a faded pattern on the front. I was thankful that I’d bought pre-packaged cinnamon pinwheels to eat at the store yesterday, and not just food that required preparation. No way did I want a repeat of yesterday’s macaroni disaster.
I got directions in the hotel lobby and walked to the local public library.
Like much of the downtown area, the three-story library building was built of steel and glass. Inside, I was met by an abrupt chill, a hushed quiet, and a bright and airy atmosphere.
It smelled like happy memories. I wasn’t convinced I had any happy memories of my own to unlock. If I did, they were here, or somewhere very much like this.
I walked around looking to see if anything was familiar.
Books of all shapes and sizes filled tall shelves. An assortment of cozy chairs and tables invited readers to relax. Sounds of shuffling papers and faint tapping of keyboards danced in the air. A low murmur of voices echoed off the high ceilings.
The more details I took in, the less familiar the library felt.
I found a table lined with communal computers, took a seat as far from the only other patron in the area, and popped the troll USB into a port.
A folder appeared in the corner of the screen.
