There were versions of death that existed inside of life, Jane thought. Her drunken blackouts, that time unaccounted for. The state Betty and the other patients here were in, almost the opposite of being ghosts—a body with no awareness, no memory. The shadows of past lives all around in graveyards, in old houses, in Jane’s work as an archivist. In stories. Allison told Jane once that a person’s oldest memories were the last ones the brain held on to, and that every so often, her mother would come out with some story about playing tetherball or going to the Sadie Hawkins dance, even though she
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