Chap­ter I takes place in New York City on a chilly morn­ing, March 10, 2014, where a woman named Jess lies in bed beside a man named Toby. The two have spent the night togeth­er, but the woman’s true iden­ti­ty remains hidden—she is, in fact, Addie LaRue, a woman with a his­to­ry long erased from the minds of those around her. She has long giv­en up on expect­ing any con­nec­tion to last; her true self, her past, and her very name are bur­dens too heavy for fleet­ing rela­tion­ships to car­ry. For Addie, adopt­ing the name “Jess” is an act of tem­po­rary escape, some­thing she can offer oth­ers so that they can enjoy a brief inter­ac­tion with­out the weight of her unchange­able past.

As Toby begins to stir, Addie watch­es him, her feel­ings a mix­ture of ten­der­ness and qui­et res­ig­na­tion. This pat­tern of imper­ma­nence is noth­ing new to her—she’s walked this path count­less times, and yet, each encounter still stirs some­thing with­in her. Though she longs for a deep­er con­nec­tion, she knows the inevitable truth: Toby will soon for­get her, as every­one else does. His pres­ence in her life is just anoth­er in a long line of tran­si­to­ry moments, ones where she leaves her mark but nev­er tru­ly stays. With qui­et grace, she slips away from his side, walk­ing out of the bed­room and into the liv­ing room where she is sur­round­ed by the detri­tus of his life—a musi­cian’s clut­tered apart­ment, the tan­gi­ble evi­dence of a man liv­ing, while she mere­ly exists.

In the soli­tude of the apart­ment, Addie makes her­self a cup of tea, wrap­ping her­self in a blan­ket as the morn­ing air bites at her skin. She sits by the win­dow, reflect­ing on her eter­nal soli­tude, lost in her thoughts about the fleet­ing con­nec­tions she’s made over the cen­turies. Her fin­gers idly find their way to the piano, a famil­iar com­fort, and she plays a soft, lilt­ing melody. The music fills the room, a frag­ile thread con­nect­ing her to a world that doesn’t remem­ber her, a world that moves on with­out ever notic­ing the marks she leaves behind. Toby, now ful­ly awake, stum­bles into the room, lis­ten­ing to the tune, con­fused yet strange­ly famil­iar with it. He express­es an odd sense of recog­ni­tion but can’t place where he’s heard it before. Addie qui­et­ly smiles to her­self, know­ing that this, too, will fade from his mem­o­ry once she’s gone. It’s the only form of per­ma­nence she can ever have—an unre­mem­bered influ­ence, a small act of cre­ation that leaves the small­est rip­ple in a vast sea of obliv­ion.

Despite their brief exchange over the music, Addie knows that her time with Toby is run­ning out. He doesn’t chal­lenge the fleet­ing nature of their con­nec­tion, accept­ing her pres­ence as some­thing that must sim­ply fade into the back­ground of his life. His con­fu­sion, his inabil­i­ty to place her or the music, speaks vol­umes of the curse she carries—she is the spark that ignites inspi­ra­tion in oth­ers, only to dis­ap­pear from their minds as soon as she’s gone. For Addie, this para­dox defines her existence—an eter­nal observ­er, a tran­sient par­tic­i­pant. She strug­gles with the painful real­i­ty of her sit­u­a­tion: she is alive, but unteth­ered, for­ev­er absent in the mem­o­ries of those she encoun­ters.

As she stands to leave, Addie is met with the famil­iar ten­sion between desire and the inevitable con­clu­sion of their encounter. Toby’s polite requests to stay or revis­it the moment only high­light the chasm between them. She silent­ly acknowl­edges the dif­fer­ences in their experiences—her cen­turies of life, his fleet­ing hours—before walk­ing out of the apart­ment and into the bustling city. The sense of hope she car­ries with her is bittersweet—she con­tin­ues to long for a deep­er con­nec­tion, even though she knows she is des­tined to remain a ghost in the lives of those she touch­es. Addie leaves, her depar­ture almost unno­ticed, as she steps back into the city that moves relent­less­ly for­ward, indif­fer­ent to the woman who has walked its streets for cen­turies, car­ry­ing with her the weight of end­less for­got­ten mem­o­ries.