CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

New York City

Tillie stared at the death certificate in blank horror, then spread her hands out in front of her, heart racing. Wildly, she thought of The Sixth Sense . Maybe she was dead and just didn't know it?

Don't be an idiot.

She was very much alive, sitting on the battered wooden planks of her loft floor. The clouds of earlier had cleared, and bars of sunlight fell on her thighs. A scent of coffee mixed with gesso perfumed the air.

She was alive.

And yet, this death certificate had her exact name: Matilda Magdalene Morrisey. Not exactly Jane Smith .

Who was she? And if it wasn't her, then who was this Tillie?

Anxiety invaded her body, making her heart race, blurring the edges of her vision. She leaped to her feet to pace, reminding herself to breathe in, breathe out.

In, out.

She rounded the room, end to end, breathing, trying to calm the anxiety she felt.

She looked at the paper in her hand. Matilda Magdalena Morrisey. Died age three.

She wished she could call Jon, but he'd clearly been in sleep mode.

In the meantime, there was Google. She sat down at the laptop set up on her kitchen table, called up the search engine, and typed in the name. Her own name. The name of this child who'd died.

And there, on the first page, was an obituary from the Los Angeles Times , dated March 12, 1989. It featured the same photo of the little girl that was in her mother's things. A chill ran down her spine.

Matilda Magdalene Morrisey, age three, died on March 9, a victim of the Valencia firestorm. She was survived by her mother, Arlette Morrisey.

Arlette was Tillie's mother.

Tillie stared at the article for long moments, her hands shaking. She had to rub them against her thighs, trying to calm herself. "Mom!" she said aloud. "What the hell?"

She ran a search for Valencia firestorm and found that it had blasted through a canyon in Los Angeles in 1989. It had started in a nearby open area and, fueled by Santa Ana winds, roared through a small residential area, burning so hot and fast that it killed four people, two seniors, a young mother, and Tillie's namesake. They couldn't get out in time. Three people huddled in swimming pools. Most of the other residents were at work or school and returned to the ashes of their homes.

Horrific. The black-and-white photos showed the now-familiar moonscape left by devouring fires.

Tillie thought urgently of her imaginary friend, who'd kept Tillie company throughout her lonely childhood. Could this be her? A sister who died? A shivery sense of loss moved through her, and unconsciously, she reached for the scar on her head, where her hair grew white. Was this fire the trauma that marked her? Was it the thing she couldn't remember?

Filled with a tangle of emotions, she shoved away from the computer and stood, pacing away to the far end of the studio, then back to the kitchen for fresh coffee.

While the water boiled for the French press, she headed for the table in the studio and looked at the girl riding the cat. Her black and brown hair, her smile and exuberance, arms up in joy. The photo in her mother's things was in black and white, but this could be her.

Maybe.

What she did know was that she'd long had an imaginary friend who had been very real to her. Her name was Sunny, and they had a secret language so adults could not understand them.

The kettle whistled, and she headed back to the kitchen, aware of a thread of genuine panic winding through her lungs. She poured hot water into the press. Across the room, the box stood open, yawning. More answers were there, she suspected, but how could she reach her hands into a cavern of dragons?

None of this made sense. How had Arlette survived when this child died? And if the girl was Tillie's sister, where was Tillie at the time?

Why did Arlette call Tillie by her sister's name? What point was there to that?

And why hadn't Arlette ever told her about living in Los Angeles? About the child she lost so tragically?

Electrifyingly, she thought, Do I have other family?

Her childhood had been deeply lonely—just Tillie and her mother at the farm, the animals, and nature, all good company but no substitute for friends or family. She'd read novels filled with sibling sets and cousins swarming, aunts and uncles and grandmothers, friendly neighbors who dropped by for tea, and ached for them.

What if she did have family somewhere? How could she find out?

She thought suddenly of the painting at the gallery. Could it be that it reminded her of something from that time? If she could talk to the artist, maybe it would help jog something.

The panic started to grow, and abruptly, she donned her apron and her gloves and turned toward painting. It was the only thing that would keep her sane today.

Putting music on the speakers, she forced herself to leave the cat painting alone and instead addressed finishing one she was very fond of, which would go in the show. It was a fairy-tale rendering of Arlette as a wise woman hen, her long hair depicted in gray-and-brown feathers, her face beaked with Arlette's bright eyes. A raccoon and a rabbit sat at her feet. In the tree branch overhead was an owl. Tillie added very tiny details that forced her brain to focus—the nearly invisible black line along the owl's feathers, brushstrokes to thicken the raccoon's fur, layers to her mother's feathers.

But while it was helpful, it wasn't as therapeutic as she'd hoped. She kept thinking about her mother having an entirely different life she'd never told Tillie about. A life with a child who had her same name.

Why? Why hide this?

The image of the cat walked across her imagination, inserting itself insistently between her eyes and the painting. Walking beneath a gigantic leaf, and Tillie following behind, hiding in the shadows as the feet of another child ran past. She held the cat close and giggled—

She blinked.

The painting before her was entirely transformed. "No!" Tillie wailed. "No!"

The rendition of her mother as a hen was now dark and menacing, her hands turned to claws, her hair in black raven wings, her soft figure carved into the wasp shape of a young woman, bosom and bottom divided by a tiny, tiny waist.

Tillie stared, unable to fathom what the hell she had done. She'd worked on this painting for months, and now, it was a completely different thing. She wanted to cry. She wanted to fall down and howl. She wanted to—

Picking up her phone with a shaking hand, she called Jon. Voice mail picked up, and she texted: Something is going on with my brain, and I'm scared. Call me.

The phone rang immediately. "What's up, baby?"

In a wavering voice, she told him about the painting, about the fugue state in which she painted without remembering anything, and she couldn't help a little catch in her voice. "There's more, but I want to tell you in person. I'm really scared. Can you come over?"

"Give me twenty minutes."

"Thank you."