On the pad of paper in front of her was a simple drawing of a man, almost primitive in design. Beside the pad were two torn out sheets of paper. One had a picture of a little straw boater hat and the other was completely covered, from edge to edge, in tan pastel. On the back of Bertie’s left hand she’d written a word in Indian ink that she couldn’t remember. She kept looking at it and forgetting it, until eventually she looked away.
She pushed her hair behind her ears and examined the pictures. They were so simple a child could have done them. A man. A hat. A sheet of tan pastel. It made no sense. She shuffled them all into a plastic folio and put them away. Then she went to the bathroom and scrubbed at the back of her hand until it was raw, and the word had faded. Her migraine—that she had a hunch was somehow related to the word on her hand—was gone.