7

The narrator of Witness Testimony 369B opens by noting she is healing from an injury and is now strong enough to explain how she became involved. She chooses to begin just before her supposed sixteenth birthday, when she discovered that the date she believed was her birthday was a lie told by her adoptive parents, Neil and Melanie. Their deception angers her, but because both are already dead, she can only argue with memories, and she feels guilty, believing their murders were her fault.

She recalls anticipating a driver’s licence more than a party, and how Melanie’s usual celebratory cake and song became unbearable once Melanie was gone. This realization—that she is a forgery, “done on purpose”—marks a sudden hardening in her self-image and launches an identity crisis that narrows her focus.

The narrator describes Neil and Melanie’s lives and their store, The Clothes Hound, a secondhand clothing shop on Queen West with an old-fashioned pink poodle sign and the slogan “You’d Never Know!” Melanie managed the floor, curated “Wearable Art,” and sang show tunes while sorting donations. Neil handled the finances upstairs amid his cluttered collections: clocks, wind-up toys, old cameras, and other machines.

One day, when Neil’s safe was open, the narrator noticed not money but a small metal-and-glass object inside. Neil deflected her curiosity, promising “maybe when you’re older,” and closed the safe. She forgot the object until later events gave it meaning, suggesting hidden significance tied to her identity and her parents’ secrets.

She situates their ordinary home life in a nondescript suburban house, implying that anonymity was intentional. The chapter closes with this contrast—an unremarkable exterior life masking concealed truths—setting up how the lies about her birth and her parents’ deaths will pull her into a larger story.