Page 12 of Lupo

"Wait." I close my eyes, trying to chase it. "Maybe... tomatoes? Or tomato sauce?”

"Pizza?"

"No. Not pizza." The image sharpens slightly. A table. Candlelight. A plate of pasta, red sauce, steam rising. "Pasta. With red sauce."

"Pasta's good," she says matter-of-factly. "Mama makes pasta sometimes. But not the red kind. We have the white kind with butter."

The memory, if that's what it is, fades before I can grasp it. But it was there. Something real. Something mine.

"Thank you," I say quietly. "I remembered something."

"See? You're not broken." She sits down cross-legged in the dirt, settling her rabbit in her lap. "What's your name?"

"I told you. I don't know."

"We have to call you something. Mama calls you 'the man in the barn,' but that's not a name."

"No, it's not."

She taps her finger against her lips, thinking hard. "Maybe you're a Stefano. Or a Damon. Or a..." She trails off, running out of names.

The names trigger nothing.

"Maybe," I say, because I don't know what else to say.

"Where do you live?"

"I don't know."

"Do you have a house?"

"I don't know."

"Do you have a dog?"

I shake my head, almost certain I don’t have a dog. "I don't think so."

She frowns. "You don't know a lot of things."

Despite everything, the pain, the fear, the blankness where my life should be, I almost smile.

“No. I don't.”

"It's okay." She leans forward, her expression serious. "Mama says sometimes people forget things when they're hurt. But they remember later. When they're better."

"I hope so."

"Do you have a little girl?"

The question catches me off guard. Do I? The thought of a child, my child, should trigger something, shouldn't it? Some recognition, some feeling?

But there's nothing.

"I don't think so," I say.

"Do you have a mama?"

"Everyone has a mama."