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Bits and pieces of memory came together in her mind, moments when she’d been only half-awake or half-asleep and believed she was only dreaming.

Rochelle begged a half-awake Keona to let her brush the girl’s hair.

She was half-awake in recovery from a traumatic brain injury when she learned he had died; she hoped it was a nightmare.

The next day I would stumble into the clinic half-awake, and scientists would stick electrodes on my scalp.

Written in an appealingly loose, digressive style — I loved tracing a sentence that went on for nearly a page as our half-awake narrator mused — “The Final Case” is about a horrific crime, but that’s merely the grounding point for a story that seems to whirl and spin on the page — a writer’s mind, endlessly looping.