She's Not There by P. J. Parrish Page B

realized that yesterday her hair had been hidden beneath the canvas hat. “Bad perm,” she said with a smile.
    Hannah shook her head and went to the coffeemaker. “You going to want more coffee?”
    “No, I’m good.” Amelia sipped her coffee, watching Hannah pour out the carafe and wipe down the already spotless counter. “Hannah, I need to buy some toiletries and some clothes. Is there someplace downtown?”
    “Downtown? Nah, not unless you wanna pay five hundred dollars for a sweater in one of those tourist places.” She stooped to get the dog’s bowl and refilled it with water. “I’m heading out to my doctor’s appointment and I could drop you off at the mall if you like.”
    Amelia reached down and gathered the dog into her arms. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
    “No trouble at all, hon,” Hannah said. “You’d better buy a jacket while you’re there. We got a cold spell coming.”

    The mall was just opening when Amelia walked in. A yawning girl was rolling open the metal grating at Aéropostale, and the smell of baking pretzels from the Auntie Anne’s kiosk mixed with the scent of lemons oozing out of the Bath & Body Works shop. All down the long wide aisle, lights were going on in the shops. The smells, signs, window displays, colors—it all came at Amelia in a rush of sensation, and for several seconds, she had to just stand still, letting her brain absorb it all and scan for connections.
    Of course she had been in a mall before. But when and where? Nothing . . . nothing was coming.
    But then she heard music and she recognized it immediately as a Christmas carol, though she couldn’t recall which song it was. Amelia felt a stab of sadness that she had forgotten something so simple, that she couldn’t remember the last Christmas she had celebrated or any Christmas in her entire life for that matter.
    She squared her shoulders.
    No. No more sadness.
    Anger was what she needed right now. Not the anger of frustration, but the kind of cold anger that would help her form a plan for going forward, that would force her brain to be calm and calculating enough to let her deal with whatever shit was thrown at her.
    Shit?
    She didn’t even know if she was the kind of woman who used words like “shit.” No matter, she decided. She was now.
    She found a mall directory and decided to head to JCPenney. But halfway there, a light went on above an imposing wall of glass. She stopped and looked up.
    It was a white apple. No name, just a giant glowing apple.
    The lights inside the store flickered on, revealing rows of sleek white tables and walls of blue screens. There were four people milling around inside, all wearing jeans and bright blue T-shirts with large square pendants hanging around their necks. She had the crazy thought that it all looked like some strange alien spaceship.
    But then she looked up again at the white apple and it clicked in her head. Apple. She once had something with that emblem on it. Was it a computer? Computers could tell you anything about anybody, Hannah had said.
    Amelia went inside and walked slowly down the aisle of computers that were lined up like artwork on the white consoles. She stopped, staring at the image on one screen. It was moving, a swirling nebula of green and blue, like her bubble dream.
    “Can I help you?”
    Amelia turned and looked down into the round face of a young woman, who smiled at her from beneath her fringe of heavy black bangs. The pendant hanging on her chest was a name tag with the name M ARIA , and below that were two flags, an American flag and a red, white, and green one Amelia didn’t recognize.
    “Yes, I need some help. I need a computer.”
    “Well, this is the MacBook Pro,” the clerk said. She tapped a key, and the nebula disappeared, replaced by a bright blue screen. “It comes with eight gigs but you can always add more RAM. What do you need it for mainly? Watching movies? Are you a gamer?”
    “No, I just need to look things