Cass dreamt of floating in the sea, one arm wrapped so tight around her mother's neck that she felt it vibrate when she sang. Black bodies surrounded them-orcas, nosing her, nudging her, bumping up against her feet and arms. Their tails splashed salt water in her mouth. Moonlight glistened off slick skin and their breath filled the air with clouds of mist. She rose and fell in the waves of their passing; eddies caught her mother's hair, fanned across the water's surface. Beneath the floating strands, the green of polished sea glass glimmered at her wrist.
A leather cord still held that smooth glass oval at her wrist, but the rest? It never could have happened. Never mind the orcas. The water never warmed above fifty-some degrees in the Pacific Northwest, where they lived before her parents' deaths. It was not the kind of place you took a toddler for a moonlight swim.
In the daylight, at her most reasonable and rational, Cass knew the memory wasn't real-but she'd always wondered what had painted it so clearly in her mind. Every other memory of her parents and the island where she'd spent the first years of her life had completely disappeared.
Now that she was going back, she wondered if she'd remember. And if she did-if the memories returned-she wondered if they would change her into someone else.