The Broken Parts

At twenty-six, Sonnet Vance makes her living as a medical illustrator specializing in neuroanatomy. Strong emotions register in her mind as anatomical damage: a fracture, a constricted vessel, a wound that healed badly. Sonnet calls it synesthesia.

When an editor claiming to represent a respected medical publisher commissions an atlas of disorders affecting memory, perception, and identity, Sonnet believes the project could define her career. Working from clinical notes and anonymized case histories, she creates visual studies of amnesia, fugue states, dissociation, and distorted memory.

Then details appear in her drawings that no one gave her: her own birthmark. Wallpaper from a recurring dream. An apartment she has never entered. Some of the images were begun during hours she cannot account for.

A woman is found murdered. The crime scene is identical to Sonnet’s illustration, completed three days before the body was discovered. A copy bearing her name was left beside the victim. Someone wants to point the police directly at her.

As Sonnet searches for an explanation, the commission unravels. The publisher has no record of the atlas. The editor cannot be found. The case histories contain fragments of her own past. Someone is using the project to lead her toward the truth; someone else is prepared to kill to keep her from it. Both know her mind from the inside.

With police closing in, Sonnet must recover what happened during her missing hours and decide how to answer for an act she may have committed but cannot remember.