The Leaving(13)

Sashor nodded, then sat back in his leather chair. “What’s the earliest memory that you can recall?”

Lucas looked back out the window, where a few meaty clouds had appeared. Dark gray and villainous. He closed his eyes and thought hard and had to push away:


CAROUSEL WHITE FIRE TEETH COTTON CANDY


This time, as he whirled, other images decorated his trips around.


BLUE BIKE. BLOODY KNEE.

SMALL BLACK DOG: WALKER.



BASEBALL MITT. BLEACHERS.

READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!


Lucas said, “I remember learning how to ride a bike, falling, hurting my knee badly. I remember playing hide-and-seek with my mom. That might be the only real memory I have of her before the accident. I remember the crash scene. I remember my preschool classroom, what it looked like. I remember a ball field, like going to watch my brother play? But earliest? I don’t know. I remember our dog, Walker.”

“Your dog walker?”

“No, the dog was named Walker. Because when you took him out it was like he was walking you instead of the other way around.”

Sashor took a note, then looked up and said, “Do you remember a man carrying wrapping paper?”

“A man carrying wrapping paper?” Lucas repeated.

Sashor didn’t make eye contact. “Yes, do you remember a man carrying wrapping paper?”


WRAPPING PAPER MAN CARRYING


“No.” Lucas was tiring of not being able to offer up anything useful.

“What kind of wrapping paper was it?” Sashor asked, as if he hadn’t heard.


CHRISTMAS WHITE BEARD

RED HAT





“Santa Claus.”

“You remember the wrapping paper?” Surprise lit Sashor’s eyes.

“I don’t know. Do I? Or am I just picturing the first random wrapping paper I could think of ?”

“Begs the question.” Sashor took another note.

“Why are you asking me about wrapping paper?” Lucas tried to read the note but was too far away.

“Police asked me to.”

“How are they ever going to catch who did this if we can’t remember?”

“Memory doesn’t always cooperate or align with our goals, but we might get lucky.” Looking back at his paper. “Do you remember anything else at all about the first few days of kindergarten?”

“Kindergarten.” Lucas sat for a minute with the idea of it. The whole notion of kindergarten. Did he remember . . . kindergarten?


CUBBIES. RED.


“Not really. Just the classroom. My backpack.”

Sashor pushed a photo array toward Lucas. Max as a kid, then a series of sketches that aged him. “Have you ever seen this boy?”

“The FBI agents showed this to me,” Lucas said. “And no, I don’t remember him. At all. Before or after. And I have no idea if I kissed him, either. In case you were going to ask.”

Sashor smiled, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. For some reason, Lucas felt eager to please him. He also wanted a professional opinion. So he made this deal with himself: He would talk about the carousel.

Not the tattoo.

Not until he found out tonight if the others had tattoos, too.

Not until he spent at least a little time trying to figure out what to make of it.

A camera shutter tattoo.

What did that even mean?

“I do remember one other thing really vividly,” he said tentatively.

“What is it?”

“Riding a carousel. It was by the ocean. I get dizzy whenever I think about it.”


BLUE-AND-WHITE HORSE. GOLDEN SADDLE.

OLD-TIMEY PIANO.



PEANUTS.

ROUND AND ROUND.


It sounded even more ridiculous when spoken aloud than it had when it had just been in his head.

“How old were you?” Sashor seemed to pep up.

“I don’t know. It feels recent. Like I was too old to be riding a carousel but I liked it anyway?”

“No such thing as too old to ride a carousel,” Sashor said.

Lucas smiled. “Do you think it really happened?”

“Well, there were no drugs in your system, nothing that could cause hallucinations. So either it happened or it was put there as a decoy, a distraction.”

“How would someone even do that?”

“False memories are actually pretty easy to create. Like if your brother told you that when you were kids you dropped your ice-cream cone and cried so hard that the woman in the shop gave you a new cone, you’d believe that it happened, even if you didn’t remember it. And then you’d eventually tell the story as your own and even add details, like what flavor of ice cream it was and what the weather was like.”

“Seriously?” Lucas couldn’t think of his own favorite flavor.

“Seriously.”

“So do you have a diagnosis?” Lucas asked. “Like a name for it? Apart from us all just generally being messed up.”

Sashor explained anterograde amnesia, which is the loss of the ability to create new memories after an event, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past. And how it was possible to suffer from this condition while long-term memories from before the event remained intact, which was why he remembered his father, his brother, the house. This was also typically in contrast to retrograde amnesia, where most memories created prior to the event are lost, while new memories can still be created.