Chapter 29
CHAPTER 29
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
I want to leave this place. I need to get out of here.
I looked at the words I’d written in my journal and frowned. Someone had violated my home as I sat, institutionalized. I didn’t even know if Mary had alerted the police. She hadn’t answered her phone last night; hadn’t accepted even one of my countless calls. Wasn’t it just like her to call me in a panicked state, get me all worked up, then never answer her phone? A thought occurred to me: what if she was unable to? What if she took it upon herself to go to my place and snoop around, only to get herself beat up or... I couldn’t think about it. I chewed on a thumbnail. This was going from serious to bizarre. I needed to get home; figure out what the hell was going on in my life. I crossed out the negative sentence and wrote, I am looking forward to going home, to being in my own space, with my own things around me.
I hoped that the latest entry—combined with the others I’d made since the day before—was positive enough to persuade Dr. Ellison to release me from the hospital this afternoon when he’d promised to swing by my room. After Mary called last night, my stomach twisted tighter with each passing hour, reminding me of an overworked rubber band on the brink of snapping. And even though I’d felt a spark of relief that the woman I’d seen at 21 Pine Hill must be real—because why would anyone be breaking into my house if not for what had happened over there?—the implication was frightening. I was still in danger.
But what could an intruder be looking for? The nail fragment had been my only evidence that a woman had been harmed on Pine Hill Road. With that gone, there was nothing tying me to the incident. I knew that, but did the intruder? Only if he or she had been the one to take it. Could there be more than one person snooping around my place?
I shivered. Why hadn’t Mary called me back after she’d phoned the police? I recalled again how I’d tried her number a dozen times and got no answer. I glanced at the basic hospital-issue clock on the bare wall over the nurses’ station just beyond the doorway of my room. It was just past eleven thirty in the morning. Maybe Dr. Ellison would visit me just after noon. If I could convince him to release me, I could be back home as early as midday. Meanwhile, what the hell was I supposed to do with myself until then? I decided to walk around the floor to release some pent-up energy.
I stood up and pulled one of the flimsy white woven blankets around my shoulders in lieu of a bathrobe, which I didn’t have. It was too cold on the floor to be wandering around in the threadbare nightgown the hospital staff had supplied me with. I had no slippers, but the bright green socks I’d been issued by the same staff had puffy nonskid markings on the bottom, which I assumed operated on the same principle as slipper treads.
I cycled around the floor, dragging my IV with me, glancing in rooms with half-dead-looking folks hooked up to monitors and breathing machines as harried nurses buzzed around me like bees in a hive. I spotted what looked like a waiting room off to the side of one section and stepped into the only space on the entire floor devoid of people. Scanning the row of metal seats with garish neon-blue vinyl plastic seat cushions and backs, I plopped onto one and perused the reading material on a battered coffee table plunked in front of the chairs. Passing up magazines about parenting, health, or fashion, I opted for a local newspaper with today’s date.
Flipping the pages, I scanned features about inflated food prices, impending recession, and an opinion piece on the inaction of Congress. I rolled my eyes and turned the page, my gaze settling on the story of a house fire. I frowned. One person hadn’t been able to escape the flames and was pronounced dead at the scene. Underneath the photo of a smoking pile of embers, a headline proclaimed a local woman missing, her prominent family searching for the interior designer named Ava Hansen. She’d not been seen for a number of weeks. Such a pretty name, I thought. Too pretty to be touched by such ugliness. Police had questioned her husband, who claimed to have no idea where she might have gone. I tossed the paper on the table, disgusted. When a woman turned up missing, it was usually her husband behind the disappearance.
But my gaze lingered on the paper. Staring at a portion of the headline’s block letters, I turned the lovely name over in my mind. It touched off an odd sensation in me, something akin to déjà vu. Had I heard it on the radio or in a TV news story? I had no time to ponder. Footsteps in the hall signaled Dr. Ellison’s arrival on the floor. As he walked past me, a folder in one hand, I jumped up and joined him.
“Good afternoon, Caroline. I was just on my way to your room. How are you today?”
I had to convince him to let me go. “I’m okay. Just stretching my legs.”
“Good idea,” he said. “Did you place an entry in your journal today?”
I nodded as he gestured for me to enter my room first. I heard his footsteps behind me. I snatched the notebook from my bedside table and held it out to him.
He circled around the bed and settled in the small chair beside it, reading. He stared at the page before saying, “I see introspection here, Caroline.” He closed the book, placed it on his lap, and looked at me, now sitting on my bed. “Is this a difficult task?”
“No,” I said quickly. Too quickly. I pressed my lips together and took a deep breath, adding, “Sometimes.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything for a few seconds. It seemed like a few minutes. I looked away from his probing gaze. Finally, he said, “I think it’s time to move on.”
I looked back at him, raised my brows. “No more journal?”
“Oh, I think you should incorporate journaling regularly into your life, just like you have these past two days, but there’s more to do now.”
I looked down at my hands, noticed how they bunched into fists. It was suddenly hard to get enough air into my lungs. “I thought I was doing everything I had to.”
“You were,” he said. “But now there’s more.” He handed me the journal. “I notice you wrote about your mother in these pages. Tell me again about her—about both of your parents.”
I scraped my teeth over my lower lip. His words sparked a battle in my chest, my lungs releasing with the relief of not having to talk about Emmy, but my heart suddenly raged upward, beating too hard, too fast for my chest cavity. I took a deep breath. I had to get out of here, so I might as well play along. “What would you like to know?”
“You told me back at the institute that your father was a salesman and your mother a nurse.”
“Yes. An RN.” If I talked readily, he may be more likely to release me. I had to get to Mary.
“Right.” Dr. Ellison tapped his temple as though tucking the information into his head.
“I told you what I could remember.” I nodded, hoping he’d get to the point quickly.
“Yes, and you mentioned family activities when you were young, but you always resisted talking about the day your dad died. Why do you think that is?”
Something sharp and unbidden twisted in my chest. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s tied up in that pattern you all tell me I have.”
A half smile crossed his lips. “Are you willing to talk about that day now?”
“Would sharing get me out of here quicker?” I tried to sound flippant, but my voice carried the hollow echo of worry. I wondered if I should tell him about Mary’s phone call but decided the news would only add another layer of information that would need to be sifted through.
“Why are you in a hurry to leave us?”
Good question. Besides ensuring Mary’s safety, what was the pressing need? To install an alarm system in my house? What was I protecting?
The truth .
As I’d wallowed in the hospital bed, I’d had time to reflect on recent events, and the one that kept jumping out at me was what had happened at 21 Pine Hill Road. A woman was harmed there, perhaps fatally. If I didn’t get out, I suspected the truth about what happened to her wouldn’t either. Maybe that was my purpose—my sole purpose. My final, and maybe only good deed.
“I have to move on with my life, don’t I?” I swallowed. “That’s what you keep telling me.”
“Yes, I do, Caroline. I’m glad you understand.” His smile was gentle. “Tell me, do you think your parents strongly influenced you as a child—and to this very day?”
I rubbed my forehead, thinking about that. “As you know, my dad died when I was six, so I guess my mom had the most influence.”
“Do you ever hear her voice in your head?”
I looked warily at him, unsure where he was going with this. “Yeah, sometimes...”
“Do you ever hear your father?”
I rubbed my lips together. “I don’t even remember what his voice sounded like.”
“That’s very difficult for you, isn’t it?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“Is it because you feel guilty?” His tone was soft, almost tender, but I looked sharply at him, saying nothing. “Your mother told you he died because you rocked the boat the three of you were in that last day, right? You shifted the balance, which unsettled all of you.”
“Kind of, but mostly she told me it wasn’t my fault,” I said, pushing my hands away from me. “She always told me it wasn’t my fault.” I sighed. “The more she said it, the less I believed her.”
He said nothing, just looked at me and nodded into the silence.
“Maybe she was trying to convince herself.” I glanced away; looked at my lap.
“Why did you just mime a push?”
I looked back at him. “I didn’t.”
“You did this with your hands as you spoke.” Dr. Ellison placed his hands, palms outward, against his chest and pushed them quickly forward, as if shoving away the air in front of him.
“That’s nothing,” I said. “A dismissive gesture.”
“Meaning you dismissed your mother when she said you were not to blame for your father’s death?” His words shot forth like bullets.
I shrugged. My heart rate ramped up, and I fought the urge to duck. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”
“I think you do.” Dr. Ellison’s voice was firm. “Did you knock your father out of the boat?”
“No!” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
The doctor ignored me. “Were you pushed out of the boat?”
“No, I don’t want to?—”
“Someone was pushed out of the boat that day.”
I snapped my eyes open and looked at him. His jaw had a determined set to it. “Why do you think that?”
“Based on your reaction right now, and what we discussed for months, Caroline, at the institute. As I said, the only thing you don’t want to tell me about your parents is what happened that day. The only thing you steadfastly refuse to talk about.”
“I don’t remember!”
“I think you do.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do or I don’t.” I looked into his hazel eyes, usually so compassionate, now so unyielding. “It’s over already.”
His gaze softened. “Am I upsetting you, Caroline?”
“No,” I said. But he was.
He smiled. “Let’s talk about something else for a while, shall we?”
I nodded.
“Do you recall all the release forms you signed in the hospital?”
“Sort of.” I shrugged. “There were a lot of them.”
“True. For your previous stay as well as this one.”
“You mean when I was in the psych ward?”
He nodded and held up the folder. “One of the forms was to access your childhood and family health records. You and your doctor—in this case me—have the authority to review not only your files but those of your deceased parents.” He placed the folder on his lap and opened it, revealing a sheath of white papers covered in notations.
“Oh, yes. Dr. Gleason’s records. My mom worked for the GP for years before he retired.”
“Hmm,” he said, glancing at the papers he was rifling through. “There’s nothing remarkable in your father’s records, but did you know your mother was being treated for bipolar disorder?”
Something slippery darted through my chest, flipping my heart over in its wake. “I had no idea.”
“She was on lithium citrate for years. It’s a mood stabilizer commonly used to treat the disorder. The problem is, it has a couple of harsh side effects. The most severe compromises kidney function. And your mother did indeed have renal deterioration.”
I took a deep breath, not sure why I suddenly felt so unsettled. I continued looking at the doctor, not knowing what to say.
“Your bloodwork suggests that you also have compromised kidneys.”
“Really?” My breath left me in one shot, like a balloon deflating.
He held a hand up. “It’s okay, Caroline. We can handle the kidney issue. We caught it early. Yet I wonder why you have it.”
“It’s probably genetic, right?” Adrenaline rushed from my chest to my limbs, as if preparing me for impending disaster.
“It could be.” He nodded. “Or perhaps you were taking lithium too.”
“Me?” I kneaded a brow with my pointer finger. “Did Dr. Gleason’s records indicate I have bipolar disorder?” That was all I needed. Another mental-health issue.
“No.”
“Then why would you think?—”
“You told me your mother played a little game with you when you were young. To get you to eat your veggies or take your medicine?—”
“Half a pill for you, and half for me,” I said. “But my mother?—”
“An adult dose of Lithium, even half an adult dose given to a young child on a regular basis, would cause a number of short-term and long-term problems.” Dr. Ellison spoke softly, as though his tone could counter the harsh message.
I willed the world to stop spinning. Why would my mother give me a medication I didn’t need? I asked the doctor what he thought about that.
“Extended lithium usage can cause impaired memory, poor concentration, twitching, drowsiness, blurred vision, and confusion. I believe your mother, a practicing registered nurse, knew about the side effects—relied on them even, to help you forget what happened in the boat that day.”
My mouth dropped open. “Why are you telling me this now? I was at the psychiatric ward for two years.”
“I just received these medical records,” he said. “This is the first I’m seeing of your chart—and your mother’s. We’d previously been able to dig up your father’s records, as he went to a different physician.” He paused before adding, “I don’t know if you remember, but most of Dr. Gleason’s files were destroyed in a fire at his office in the late nineties. When our office first contacted him, a new doctor was running the practice. He told us what Dr. Gleason revealed to him about the fire ruining nearly all their records before they’d had a chance to enter them in their new computer system. He also mentioned Gleason retired earlier than planned. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”
I pictured the jovial doctor who’d always been kind to me—sad about his dementia, which was news to me. As was the fire in his office. “If the files burned up, how did you get them?” I looked at the papers resting on the doctor’s lap. “Why aren’t they even charred?”
“They were hand-delivered to our office yesterday, in perfect condition.”
“What?” That seemed impossible. “Who gave them to you?”
“A friend. Someone who’d prefer to tell you about it when the time is right.”
“When the time is...” I rubbed my forehead. “Are you kidding me? Don’t you have a professional obligation to?—”
“I do, but the person left no name with the front desk staff.”
“Then how will I track down?—”
“Caroline, you’re deflecting.”
My eyebrows bunched. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s likely your mother was drugging you—perhaps for years—but you don’t seem interested in those details.”
I felt the sudden urge to cry. Angry tears. Furious tears, just like that day in the boat.
“Was it your mother?” Dr. Ellison asked softly. “Was she pushed out of the boat that day?”
A memory flashed in my mind, mingling with my fury: my own hands, pushing outward, connecting with my mother’s pale arm. I dropped my head, unable to speak. I felt my heartbeat in my ears.
“It’s okay, Caroline. You can tell me what happened. You won’t be in trouble. Did you push your mother out of the rowboat?”
My mouth was dry, making the next swallow painful. I willed the pounding in my ears to stop, the echoing in my head to cease.
“You’re safe now,” said the doctor. “You can tell me.”
“She couldn’t swim,” I whispered, looking back at him, feeling tears washing downward, like someone had turned on a spigot in my head. I opened my mouth to say more, but the words dissolved on my tongue. Gone before I could speak.
“Did you know?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t known that she couldn’t swim, had I?
“I wanted her to stop, to just stop.”
Dr. Ellison’s gaze didn’t waver. “What did you want your mother to stop?”
“Talking, yelling, complaining, all of it. It was endless, you see, endless...”
“What was she saying?”
I closed my eyes, picturing the harsh, angry shapes my mother’s mouth was forming. “She didn’t want to be there, didn’t care that my dad and I had longed for the outing... I don’t know the rest. The same stuff as always. How nothing was ever good enough.”
“So you pushed her out of the rowboat.”
I blinked as the tears increased. My entire face felt wet. My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my jaw.
“It’s okay, Caroline. You aren’t in trouble. You don’t have to protect yourself or your mother any longer. She’s gone now, and she didn’t look out for you as she should have. For your own sake and your father’s memory, you need to tell the truth.”
I just watched him, unable to speak.
He closed the file and rested his hands on the folder, clearly willing to wait me out.
Eventually, I whispered, “I... pushed her.”
He had no reaction, said nothing for a few seconds. Then, “What happened next?”
“I... I lost my balance and I fell in too.” I recalled the sudden shift from blinding sunlight to the murky brown beneath the pond’s surface. Instant, numbing cold encased me. I saw legs flailing uselessly in front of me, her body wavering underwater, like an image in a dream. “I swam toward her, reached out... and she grabbed me, pushing me downward in her effort to lift herself up.” I took a deep breath, remembering how my lungs tightened painfully as I sank lower. “I knew I couldn’t breathe, or I’d die.” I recalled the muffled explosion behind me, a cannonball into the water, and arms wrapping around me from behind. “My dad, he yanked me away from her. Pulled me outward, upward?—”
“He rescued you?”
“He did. After we broke the water’s surface, he made me hold on to the side of the boat while he went back into the water for my mother.”
“And he saved her?” Dr. Ellison said. “Did you all get back in the boat?”
I blinked, trying to focus. “No, she was able to get back in with my dad’s help.” I stared at the white bedsheet covering my legs, struggling to remember climbing in behind her, but all I could recall were the noises. Her noises. My mother coughing, shrieking, sobbing, and accusing. “I was frightened. Mother was screaming that my dad left her to die. That he never cared about her as he should. How she could never mean as much to him as I did.”
My throat felt like it had been burned. I looked at the water pitcher and empty glass on my bedside table.
Dr. Ellison followed my gaze, reached over, and grasped the pitcher with one hand and the glass with the other. “Did your dad drown while helping you back into the boat?”
“No, after he lifted her from the water to the boat, he began lifting me, telling her to grab me...”
“Did she pull you up, into the boat?” He poured the water and handed me the glass. “Do you remember?”
“I remember she was angry. She wouldn’t stop yelling. But I was also pleased because I thought she was right about my dad. He loved me more, cared more about saving me.”
“Did you think she’d hurt you?”
I gulped the water, recalling her reaching toward me with one hand, the other clutching the side of the boat to hold herself in place. The water from my glass tipped too quickly into my mouth and throat. I sputtered and coughed.
“Hold on,” said the doctor, reaching for my glass. He took it from me and the water spilling over its rim reminded me of the way the pond water sloshed over the edge of the rowboat as my mother leaned forward.
I couldn’t stop coughing. I was back in the pond, not yet back in the boat, the water splashing against my chin, overtaking my mouth, my nose...
“Look down,” commanded Dr. Ellison, standing and pressing his fingers to the back of my head, as water trickled out of my mouth.
I reared my head up, terrified, feeling the hand at the back of my head, forcing my face downward, into the murky water. My mother’s hand. I flung my head back against the pillows, putting space between me and that hand. I coughed again, panted.
“Are you okay, Caroline?”
I looked toward the voice, expecting to see my mother, relieved when the image rearranged: the doctor, and his concerned expression.
“Breathe in through your nose and slowly exhale through your mouth,” he instructed. I did as I was told. After a few minutes, my heartbeat regulated, and my pulse was no longer throbbing in my temples and wrists.
“I’m all right now,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“I can come back?—”
“No.” I had to get this over with.
“Do you recall what your father was doing during your mother’s meltdown?”
“He was yelling too, and holding on to me very tightly. He threatened her, told her he would take me and leave...” Oh God, he had said that hadn’t he? Then why was I picturing Tim talking? “Telling her she wasn’t keeping her child safe...” Tim’s lips moving, his face red. I closed my eyes, let my head sink deeper into the pillows.
“What happened next?”
I forced myself not to think about Tim. “The water, there was so much water. My dad had his arms around me from behind, his voice yelling up at her in the boat. I tried to talk, but the water kept washing over my face, flowing into my nose and mouth.”
“Continue, Caroline,” said Dr. Ellison, his voice demanding, direct.
My heart beat so fast I couldn’t breathe properly. “There was something floating right in front of us.” I tried to get more air into my lungs. “A thermos from our picnic. Heavy, metal, on the open lid of our floating plastic lunch cooler. We’d dumped the cooler into the water when we fell in. I saw our sandwiches stranded inside their plastic bags. They reminded me of those tiny little ships inside bottles as they bobbed on the water. My mother reached out and grabbed the thermos handle, and she...” I saw the glint of sun on the rounded edge as she held it up, then leaned over us and smashed it down on my father’s temple. My body was jolted by the memory.
I looked at the doctor. He gazed back, his silence an invitation to continue.
“Mother smashed Daddy’s head with the thermos,” I whispered. “His hold on me loosened and he started sinking. I reached for him but my hands only cupped water. I used both hands, trying to grab hold of something—his fingers or a shirttail even...” A tremor shook me from my shoulders down to my feet.
“What happened next, Caroline?”
“I kept reaching, reaching for him, but I couldn’t even see him anymore.”
My body was shaking as if still in the frigid water. I pictured my arms extended, but they were no longer those of a child. My adult hands plunged into the bathwater, scooping up the baby’s lifeless form, Tim screaming from beside me to move out of the way. I blinked, shook my head, and looked at the doctor, wondering how I could make him understand. “I couldn’t do that twice, don’t you see? I’d let my dad go. I couldn’t let Emmy sink to the bottom of the tub. I reached her. I pulled her out! But Tim yanked her away from me.”
How could you? Tim’s face, horror-struck.
“He took Emmy and ran out of the room, out of the house. If he’d only let me fix it, fix her. I was saving her! I wouldn’t let her drift away from me like that, I wouldn’t...”
My body shook so hard that my voice faltered.
“It’s okay, Caroline. You tried to save both your dad and Emmy. You tried your hardest.”
I felt the sob building from deep inside of me, like a tsunami, overwhelming everything in its path. “But I failed, I failed! How can I even... how can I... how will I go on, knowing that I can never make it right?”