I went back to the apartment at eight in the morning with a story ready, and Caroline was sitting on the couch in her coat, with her hands in her lap, and she stood up the moment I came in.
"Where were you?" she said. "We've been up all night. We called the police. I thought you wandered into the water."
I let my face go blank for a second, the way I had practiced, and then I let it fill in with something like fear.
"I got confused," I said. "I woke up and I didn't know where I was, and I went outside looking for my mother's house, and then I walked for a long time, and then I found a bus and I got on it, and I rode it to the end, and then I rode it back."
It was a lie I had rehearsed with Marguerite, and it worked exactly the way we had planned. Caroline's face did three things at onc
