For starters, Elliot said, half of them are said to a doll that you pretend is talking back to you.

I stared at the stuffed humanoid figure for a moment. I knew it wasn’t alive and that I wasn’t actually having a conversation with it. Yet I found it comforting envisioning a kindred spirit that keeps me company in every new life.

“I don’t know why I tell you anything,” I said.

Because you have no one else to tell.

After finishing my coffee, I make my way to the bathroom, past the bedroom filled with boxes and sketches and lined with paintings. My work. My usual distraction. The canvases and tacked up pictures are mostly of historical places I’d witnessed, atte...

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