of the sender. Seth Besson. He’d sent a gift for Mia’s birthday. He always made sure to send something a few weeks early in case Quinn didn’t approve and the present needed to be returned or exchanged. Quinn brought the box inside and opened it carefully, gasping with delight at the beautiful dollhouse Seth and Kathy had chosen. It came with about fifty pieces of furniture and a family that had a mum and dad, an older sister, a middle brother, and a little girl, just like the Russell family. Quinn hid the gift in the cellar and went to call Colin.
“Hello there,” Colin said cheerily. “You caught me just in time. I was about to begin a postmortem.”
“Hi. Colin, I was wondering if you might help me with something.”
“Certainly. Did you find anything else that had belonged to the victim? Assuming this person was a victim,” he added. “We really don’t have anything concrete to support the theory that he was murdered.”
“No, we haven’t been back to the burial site. My question is more hypothetical. If a person were to lose their memory as a result of a blow to the head, how long would it generally take to regain it?”
Colin considered this for a moment. “I’m not an expert on memory loss, Quinn. Why do you ask? Have you learned something that might suggest our man had been hit on the head?”
“No. This is for a different case,” Quinn lied. She could hardly share her findings with Colin. “An educated guess will do,” she prompted.
Colin considered his answer for a moment. “This type of memory loss would fall under psychogenic or dissociative amnesia. It’s usually caused by severe trauma and can last from hours to years.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Quinn asked.
“Dissociative amnesia is the loss of episodic memory. A person will still remember language and be able to perform everyday tasks but won’t be able to recall any personal details, such as their name, their past, relatives and friends, or their work. Generally, this type of amnesia is treated by exposing the person to familiar faces and places to jumpstart their memory.”
“And would the memory come back all at once, do you think?”
“Probably not. It would start returning with brief flashbacks, I should think, and not necessarily the important bits first. Perhaps the brain would release images that were easy for the patient to handle. But again, this is pure conjecture on my part. You would have to consult a specialist if you were after a more scientific explanation.”
“Thanks, Colin. I appreciate it.”
“Anytime. Happy to help. Regards to Gabe,” he said as he rang off.
Quinn didn’t think she needed to seek an expert opinion. If Colin’s hunch proved correct, then within the coming weeks, Jocelyn should begin to recall events from her life. Quinn would just have to be patient and allow the story to unfold. In the meantime, she had the children to collect.
Chapter 23
Having finished their snack, the children went down for their afternoon nap, and Quinn returned downstairs, where she settled on the sofa with her laptop. She had some time until she had to start on dinner, and she was ready to delve into the history of Long Island, and Milford in particular.
She had visited the Hamptons once, years ago, and remembered the seaside community as being peaceful and picturesque, with multi-million-dollar homes and gorgeous boats moored off the piers. She hadn’t liked its residents nearly as much as she had liked the views, finding their snobbery and sense of entitlement off-putting in the extreme. But that was the way of the rich the world over, and despite her standing in the scientific community and Gabe’s newfound status as a bestselling author, Quinn could never see herself rubbing shoulders with people who were drawn to the Hamptons’ overpriced shores.
But this was now. In the eighteenth century, Long Island had been a rural community, a backwater sparsely populated by farmers and fishermen. It had encompassed what were currently known as Brooklyn and Queens as well as Nassau and Suffolk counties that made up modern-day Long Island. Brooklyn, known as Kings County, had been the setting for the Battle of Long Island, the largest Revolutionary War engagement between the British and the Continental Army, but the rest of Long Island had seen virtually no military action. It had been occupied by the British during the latter years of the war, and relations between the colonists and the occupiers were for the most part cordial.
The locals