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I thought long and hard. “Maybe. But I'm not sure. It doesn't stand out.”

“You were trying to see how fast you could go, and when you hit the brakes, they didn't work. You don't remember hitting the big oak before the creek?” I shook my head no. None of that rang a bell. “Well, you ended up going over the handlebars and hit your head on the trunk of the tree. You got a small concussion from it, and I didn't think it was a big deal at the time. But Dr.Jones and Dr. Henson mentioned something to me that makes sense. It's called Confabulation.”

“What is that? Is it bad?”

“Well, it may or may not be bad. When you told me about France, I didn't remember this, but your mother used to play a game with you when you were little where you'd use the furniture and pretend to fly to different places. It came to me at work. I remembered coming home one night, and you two were pretending to be in Paris. I think my colleagues might be right because you didn't go to Paris. Confabulation is like an error in your memory. Your mind creates a memory, and it's so believable that you don't even know it's false.”

“Is this what Mom has, too?”

“Not exactly. Mom has something different. I do want to run some tests on you to see if maybe you inherited what she has. There's a chance it could be passed to you.”

“I thought you said I didn't have what she has? You said—”

He held up his hand and placed it on my cheek. “I know what I said, but I might be wrong. And that's okay. I don't want you to worry, though. If you do have what she has, we can treat you before it gets worse, and you'll be just fine.”

“I don't understand. Why can't she get better, but I could?”

“Because your mother went undiagnosed for a really long time. It's much harder to treat someone like that. You, however, are still very young. I can make you better. Besides, Mom has a hard time taking her medicine and following directions. But you can do that, right? You can follow directions for me?”

“Of course. I know how to listen, Dad.”

“It's one thing to listen, Pumpkin. It's another thing to do it.”

“I'll do it. I don't want to be sick.”

“Good. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. I'm going to make sure you get better.”

I wished I could remember more of my childhood. There were so many blanks, so much blackness that I couldn't feed with images, gaps that had nothing. My memories went from lunch at school to Christmas months later.

From the age of ten to fourteen, my father had to fill the memories in for me. He would ask me about something that happened. Did I remember being in the hospital when I had my appendix taken out at twelve? Did I remember the trip we took to Florida during one of my mother's “good” months? Did I remember the Christmas when I got my first cello?

I remembered some. But I also remembered the loud yells in the basement, the scary men who came and went, and the folders of people I had seen on the table. I also still remembered, or thought I remembered, going to Paris and Venice with my mother. Yet, my father insisted none of that happened. He told me it was my imagination. He was convinced my mind was playing tricks on me.

How could I decipher reality from fiction when I didn't know the difference?

I remembered nights when my mother screamed in agonizing pain and cried that people were trying to kill her. I remembered the police bringing her home after she was found wandering the streets late at night in her nightgown without shoes, babbling about spirits and the devil poisoning her. My father validated some of the memories of my mother and denied others. He said she never screamed in pain; that that was just a dream. He said she had been brought home by the police that time but denied people were trying to kill her, stating it was my mother's illness causing her delusions.

I was as crazy as my mother. I had inherited her disease. Chaos was all I knew. Chaos was my dreams and reality bleeding together, and I had no way to tell them apart. They all felt real.There were details so fine I never understood how it could be a dream.

What was reality for a person like me?

What if my entire life was a lie?

But what if I wasn't crazy at all?

Chapter Thirteen

Poppy

I woke up in a cold sweat. A sweat so icy it chilled me to the bone. I sat up straight, my breathing short and spastic. For a moment, I forgot where I was. I looked around at the unfamiliar space, at the log walls and the hanging tapestries. My eyes darted between the boar head and the antelope bust.

“What's wrong?” Vega asked. My eyes shot down to his. He sat up beside me and wrapped his arm around my waist. “Are you alright?”

“Everything was a lie. Wasn't it? My entire childhood was just a stage for my father.”

“Why do you say that? What did you remember?”

“The manipulation. The false sense of family. My life was a lie. I can feel it.”