by Tonya Kappes
Harper picked up the binder and rubbed her hand over the cold plastic. She hadn’t paid much attention to the notebook because she was sure her people would work their magic and she’d be out in a few hours. Three days later, she found herself picking up the notebook.
Reluctantly, Harper walked out of her room and into the open community room, which had a big fireplace with glowing fake logs. The television that was hung over the mantel was playing an episode of Friends.
The three leather couches in front of the fireplace boxed in a square coffee table. A stack of quilts were neatly folded on the hearth, along with a stack of boxed games and puzzles.
On the other side of the fireplace was the dining area, where everyone ate breakfast, dinner, and supper as a group. The nurses’ station was also there, along with a small kitchenette, with a microwave that was there for the residents to use for snacks and drinks between meals.
One of the walls had a large dry-erase board with the activities and times listed. Harper noticed that after the group session, there was an adult coloring book class. Harper rolled her eyes, grateful her time was going to be filled with Benji.
She snugged her binder close to her chest and walked past the dry-erase board.
The group of patients were all siting in the chairs arranged in a circle in the next room. The only chair left was the one next to the counselor: Harper’s punishment for being late.
“Hi.” Harper had never been so embarrassed in her life. She looked around the group of men and women. “I’m Harper Elling . . . Poppy Bailey.” She looked down at her plastic arm bracelet with her legal name on it. A name she’d abandoned ten years ago.
It was strange hearing Poppy come out of her mouth.
“I’m in here because my psychic felt the need to use my husband’s balls to read his future when I’d paid her to read his palm. Or she came to screw him after he got hard from her reading his balls.” Harper wanted revenge, plain and simple. “And I came here to seek treatment,” she used air quotes around treatment, “so the arson charges will be dropped against me.” Harper laughed. “Stress they claim. Stress.”
“Harper, um, Poppy,” the counselor corrected herself, “we weren’t expecting you to tell us why you’re here. We just want to know how you’re feeling.”
Harper didn’t have to look up from her fingernails to hear the collective groans from the other people in the group. She only cared that there were only three acrylic nails left on each hand and the facility had not let her get a manicure or acetone fingernail polish remover to take off the remaining nails. She’d gone from chic to freak within a couple of days. Really, a couple of seconds when she went crazy and burned down the house.
“I’m feeling like I’m in need of a manicure.” Harper held her hands in the air. “Can I get some fingernail polish remover?” she looked up and asked. Everyone’s mouth was gaped open looking at her. “What?”
“We don’t allow fingernail polish remover as some of our guests have addictions to drugs or huffing.” The counselor wrote something on her notepad. “I can see after a couple of days of cooling off you are still very angry and bitter about what happened to you.”
“Are you writing about me?” Harper fidgeted in her seat, trying to make herself a little taller so she could see the notepad. “What are you writing about me?” She stood up.
“Are you feeling paranoid right now?” the counselor asked.
“No.” Harper shook her head, but inside she was dying to know what the counselor was writing. “I hope you are writing a letter saying I’m not a quack; then my dear, sweet, lying, cheating, no-good son of a bitch husband, Rob Ellington, will drop the charges.”
The counselor wrote faster.
“Ellington.” Harper was sure the counselor understood her plea. “E-l-l-i-n-g-t-o-n. As in the horse people.”
After Rob dropped the charge against her, she was sure she’d get the defamation of character Melanie Day had filed against her dropped, too. The world would be on her side after she told how they had cheated on her. Rob on their marriage and Melanie on their friendship. Harper would let Sid deal with the charges and fines she was facing from the FCC, but she was keeping those to herself while she was here.
Rob had frozen all her assets, so her lawyer was one her agent had hired, and he said the evidence spoke for itself. He told her to claim lapse of mental health: in other words, crazy as a pissant.
Even out from under Rob’s roof, he still had control over her and her future. This proved it, and she was going to take control back.
“Did you get the spelling correct?” Harper sat back down, satisfied the counselor was on her side because she nodded and smiled. Her fluffy hair bounced up and down as Harper talked.
Harper couldn’t help but laugh out loud when the counselor’s hair suddenly reminded her of a weeping willow tree she had spent a summer night’s under at the Coach’s farm.
“Are you okay, Harper?” The counselor’s blond hair fell around her face like the weeping willow branches. Her spray tan and orange streaks resembled the trunk.
“Oh, I’m just fine.” Harper waved her hand at the counselor and then covered her wide grin with her fingers.
The counselor let Harper be, and she escaped into her thoughts of the quiet moments she’d found under the tree. The Coach, the beloved Hudson Hollow High School baseball coach for thirty years, knew she was under there when her parents came to collect her on Sunday morning for Sunday school. The Coach never ratted her out, or so she thought.
Her mother had to drag Harper from underneath; kicking and screaming, leaving Mary Louise Bailey’s Sunday go-to-meeting clothes a muddy mess and young Harper sitting in the front pew of Corner Baptist listening to the preacher preach the good word to the citizens.
“Hey!” Harper had a great idea. She interrupted the other patients telling everyone about their days. “Sorry.” Her brows lifted, along with her shoulders. “But I know what’s wrong with me! It was my childhood that made me do it. I mean, being the daughter of two uptight people who wanted me to be what they wanted me to be has to account for some coo-coo.” She twirled her finger around her ear.
“Harper, why don’t you and I go into my office?” Weeping willow hair’s lips thinned into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She excused her and Harper from the group.
Harper got up and quietly followed the counselor back to her office, but not without hearing more collective sighs from the group.
“Am I getting out?” Harper’s heart beat fast from excitement. “I knew it was my parents. My past.” She stomped.
“Please shut the door and have a seat.” The counselor walked around the desk.
For a facility that was supposed to help patients, Harper felt like this was just an institution with the white walls and black-framed degrees that proved weeping willow was capable of helping get the crazies out. Harper did as she was told. At twenty-eight-years-old, she’d never thought she’d be sitting where she was.
“I understand that you are not happy being here. I know who you are and that you are used to finer living. But this is where the lawyers mutually agreed upon until further evaluation.” The counselor leaned back in her chair and intertwined her fingers, bringing them near her face. “I’m not saying you aren’t validated for being mad at your husband, nor do I think you intentionally set the fire.”
“Yes, I did.” Harper nodded. She fully remembered how she felt and what she thought and she didn’t regret it one bit. “I totally wanted that place to burn to the ground. The sweetest revenge, because he loved that damn house. I liked it. I even agreed to live there.” Harper put her face in her hands. “I really hated that place.” She groaned, realizing just how much control Rob had, even though she’d never seen it.
He was so excited when she had reluctantly agreed to move into the home. The way his face light up when he told her had made her heart warm. It was nice, but too big, and not to her taste. It wasn’t theirs. It was his and his family’s
, but she’d vowed to grow to love it.
“Then that is not good.” The counselor’s voice was a monotone. “And if that is the case, then you might need to be involved in intensive one-on-one therapy rather than group.” She scribbled something on a piece of paper and ripped it off the pad. “You need to take this to the nurses’ desk and they will get you set up in the appropriate counseling. After you give them the paper, go to the sliding window and get your meds.”
The night Harper had “voluntarily” checked in, the lawyer had told her to be a good girl and go along with whatever the counselors told her to do so she could get out and get on with her life. The lawyer also told her that she’d be in the facility no more than a few hours. . . . Three days later, Harper was still here with no news from her lawyer. Or her family. Just the call from Sid, and that had not even been worth her time.
Harper wondered if her parents knew she was in here. She’d go months without talking to them. She was the one who always called them. They never called her. Plus, it’d been years since she’d visited them or Hudson Hollow. It wasn’t because she didn’t love her parents, but she hated hearing the bellyaching of her mama.
“It ain’t fittin’ for a young lady to go around talkin’ about sex.” Her mama’s voice held a southern flair, but mainly more country hick than southern chic. “How do you think it looks on us? Why can’t you just live in Hudson Hollow and work for our radio station?”
Hudson Hollow, HH FM, wasn’t much of a radio station for a young, aspiring radio host like Harper had dreamed of being. HH FM played the same old country crooners and a weather update every once in a while. Sometimes they had local interviews, but that was the extent of it.
“It’s my life.” Harper’s go-to statement was getting old, but she was determined to beat it into her parents’ thick heads that when she left for college it was her life. “You and Daddy didn’t pay for my college, nor do you pay my bills. I love you, Mama, I do, but you are going to have to let go and let me live my life. And I don’t want to give the weather report or cattle update or even the Farmer’s Almanac readings over the Hudson Hollow radio, Mama.” Harper had tried to explain, but her parents just couldn’t understand that there was just only here for her in Hudson Hollow.
Her dreams were too big for Hudson Hollow. She wanted to shop at department stores, not Goodlett’s Furniture, where they sold knee socks for school, or Martin’s, where the fashion was at least two years behind the rest of the world and the church directory was painted on the side of the building. No way were they going to sell anything above the knee or above the elbows.
Hudson Hollow didn’t even have a movie theater, though they did have a McDonald’s, which was the turnabout for the teenagers to cruise back down Main Street.
Even after Harper had made a national name for herself, her mama still couldn’t get it through her thick skull because the second after Mary Louise watched her daughter walk down the aisle she went around the reception apologizing for her daughter’s on-air personality to anyone who would listen.
Rob was furious and warned Harper to stop her mama because she was embarrassing the Ellington family.
The wedding of a lifetime was the headline in the Louisville Courier-Journal. It was an Ellington tradition to have their weddings featured in all the prominent horse magazines and newspapers. The Ellingtons were horse royalty, and Harper was lucky enough to catch the eye of Rob Ellington, single bachelor and soon-to-be president of Ellington Enterprise, the leading breeder of Kentucky Derby–winning Thoroughbreds.
As soon as she started dating Rob, she had become one of them, the accepted elite. Sort of like a sorority for women.
In the middle of the dance floor during her wedding reception, Harper had twirled and twirled around and around, surrounded by the high society group of woman. Her white wedding dress swooshed around, her arms floating out to the sides and her head cocked back as her smile grew. With each passing turn, Harper avoided eye contact with her high school friends.
The group of friends weren’t as ambitious as Harper. They were content marrying a farmer or taking a day-care position at the local Tots Time, but not Harper. She wanted out of that small hick town and to make something of herself.
She knew inviting the friends she had long left behind was a gamble because they wouldn’t understand or be happy for her. But her mama had insisted it was the right thing to do, even though Harper knew she’d be the topic of gossip down at the Hair Depot, where they twisted more than just hair. And the snarls, glares, and jealous looks on their faces told her she was right.
“Did you hear me?” the counselor asked, snapping Harper back to reality.
“Yes,” Harper whispered and grabbed the paper from the grip of the counselor’s hand.
Harper hadn’t heard her. The only thing Harper heard was that voice inside of her, telling her there was no place to go. The Ellingtons were done with her, and any people who had pretended to be her friends only because she had the Ellington name were also gone.
She assumed her own family wouldn’t want her even if they did know she was there. But Benji would know what to do. They could start over, just like they had a hundred times before. She was going to convince him of that during visiting hours.
Harper curled the note from the counselor in her fist. She wanted to get ready for Benji’s visit so she could let him see that she was just fine. No crazy here.
She sucked in a deep breath and walked out of the counselor’s office.
The line at the medication window was ten patients’ deep. She didn’t want to wait. Every patient stepped up and thrust their wrist out so the nurse could scan the barcode on their plastic bracelet. The nurse did some sort of check off on her clipboard and tapped on the keyboard of her laptop before handing the small paper cup out of the sliding window for the patient to take.
The paper cups reminded Harper of the little cups her childhood dentist would give her to rinse and spit after a cleaning, only these paper cups held little pills.
The patient would bring the small cup up to their lips, tip their head back, set the cup back on the ledge of the sliding window, and open their mouth wide for the nurse to look into.
Harper wanted to wash her hair and get on some real clothes before Benji showed up and there wasn’t much time. She really hoped he was going to be there at six p.m. on the dot. She walked past the fireplace and toward her room. The nurse could find her for her meds.
The note the counselor gave her was the name of another therapist in the facility for Harper to talk to. She was done with talking. She wanted to get out of there and get on with her life, whatever that life was.
“Say,” said a patient lying down on the coach, her head buried in her phone, “aren’t you that sex lady that went nuts? Man, you are crazy.”
The word nuts stopped Harper in her tracks. She turned around. A young girl with brown hair that was pulled up in a high ponytail popped up on her elbows and rested on them. There was a grin on her face.
Harper swallowed. A creeping uneasiness at the bottom of her heart told her to keep walking, ignore the girl. But she couldn’t. Harper faced the girl with a cold, hard-pinched expression on her face. The spitfire attitude she’d spent years to dampen down crept up in a thick swallow.
The girl took out her cell phone and aimed it at Harper. “You know, I could call the Enquirer or one of those smut magazines to tell them you’re here.” The phone clicked.
“What the hell are you doing?” Harper lunged toward the girl, wrestling her back down on the couch. “Are you taking photos of me?”
The girl held her phone above her head, giggling as Harper lay on her, trying to get the phone.
“Help! I’m being attacked,” the girl screamed. “Help!”
The sound of shuffling feet and thunderous steps hurried toward them.
The only thing Harper knew was that she was being picked up by her waist, her limbs clawing the air between her and the girl with the smug look on he
r face.
“I was on my phone, minding my own business, when she lunged for me.” The girl shrugged. “No wonder they don’t let you have electronics. You need to be in the involuntary side of Pine Crest.”
“You are a liar!” Harper seethed through gritted teeth. Her blond hair was half in a ponytail, half out, her black roots showing even more. “You were taking pictures of me!”
“I was not.” The young girl’s eyes narrowed. “I was on Facebook. See.” She held her phone out for the counselors to see.
“Is everything okay here?” The woman counselor ran over. Benji was standing behind her with a frightened look on his face.
“It’s fine.” Harper let out a sigh of relief when she saw him. “I’m sorry. I lost my temper.”
The other counselor let her out of his grip and she ran into Benji’s arms.
Chapter Five
“Girl, you look atrocious.” Benji’s head jerked from side to side to get a good look at Harper. His hands gripped the strap of his messenger bag. “I mean bad, real bad.”
Harper gave him a side look that told him to watch it. He was no stranger to her sideways insults.
“I didn’t have time to get a shower.” Harper pulled the remaining hair out of her ponytail and ran a brush through it before pulling it back up in a loose chignon.
“What the hell have you been doing with your time?” His nose curled. “There couldn’t be much going on around here.” He walked around the room as if he was assessing it. “Not bad.”
Harper’s fine silky eyebrows rose a little.
“You do look rough, but I mean, you went crazy.” He laughed. “You went from southern girl charm to crazy country girl in like three seconds.”
“Shh!” Harper warned. “I’m trying to get out of here, not stay in.”
“From what I just saw between you and ninja patient out there, you aren’t going anywhere fast.” His eyes were hooded, his mouth pursed.
She grabbed him by the hand and dragged him down next to her on the bed.