I wanted a house with character. A place where I could finish graduate school in an environment I was in charge of.

That’s when I met the purple house, with the strange stump out front someone had carved into three raccoons.

Odd—but it was in my price range and near the university.

Walking through the breezeway, I felt the air shift. I loved fresh air, but here it felt more like the air was trying to escape than move through.

The realtor was the owner’s daughter. A little odd. Probably spent too many weekends eating special brownies, I assumed.

The rental agreement had been typed.

On a typewriter.

White-Out covered the previous rent. The new one was written in Sharpie.

There was one strange addendum:

“By renting this house, you acknowledge that upon termination of the lease, the house will keep one thing.”

What the actual?

I signed.

That year blurred through wine nights, grading midterms, various partners, Scrabble with friends, and one particularly horrid argument with my father.

Nearly ten years later, unpacking musical scores states away, I found a photograph tucked inside one.

It was me.

And someone I didn’t recognize.

We stood in the purple house’s breezeway, the raccoon stump visible through the window.

We looked… close?

The next picture confirmed it.

We were kissing.

An attractive brunette with a solid set of D’s.

Certainly I would remember a lover.

That night, I hardly slept.

How do you forget a person?

A lover, of all things.

I kept looking at the photographs, searching her face for something—a name, a voice, the way she’d laughed. Nothing.

Not even the smallest flicker of recognition.

I texted my BFF, Bre, the pictures.

“Do you recognize her?”

“No. She’s hot!?”

Leave it to Bre.

Two days later, armed with lattes, we drove back to the purple house.

“What are we going to do?” Bre asked. “Knock?”

“Precisely.”

A graduate student with long blonde braids answered. Samantha.

I explained and showed her the pictures.

She dropped her tea.

Without a word, she disappeared upstairs.

She returned holding a framed photograph.

Same brunette.

Except Samantha was kissing her.

2009 was stamped on mine.

2012 on hers.

“I don’t know her name,” Samantha said. “But apparently I loved her too.”

We stared at the photographs.

Then Samantha looked around the purple kitchen.

“I always wondered what it kept.”