by Lisa Gardner
Stop being such a martyr, Michael kept saying. This isn’t about you. It’s about what’s best for him. Dammit, we have resources, he’d add, as if Evan were some sort of remodeling project that if we just threw enough money at would be done to our satisfaction.
For the record, it’s not easy to institutionalize a child. There are very few long-term-care facilities. The good ones have waiting lists. The bad ones are a rung below the maximum security prison where many of the kids like Evan will eventually wind up. Evan’s third doctor, after the crowbar episode, said he could work some magic on our behalf. That’s pretty much what it takes for immediate placement. It’s like a letter of recommendation from a wealthy alumnus to get your kid into the right prep school. Except it’s a request from a prominent child psychiatrist to institutionalize your child.
The place he recommended had once served as a monastery. It was known for its stripped-down simplicity and structured approach to life. Unbeknownst to Michael, I toured it one afternoon. The rooms were small and guaranteed not to overstimulate. The walls were carved out of stone so thick, no amount of lighting would ever diminish the gloom.
The facility promoted self-discipline, hard work, and independence. I thought it smelled like an old folks’ home, someplace you went to die. I couldn’t picture a seven-year-old boy here. I couldn’t imagine Evan, with his brilliant smile and infectious giggle, ever wandering these dreary halls.
So I kept him home with me. And my husband and daughter left instead.
I don’t know if I am a good mom. Evan isn’t the child I planned on having. This isn’t the life I dreamed of living. I get up each morning and do the best I can. Some days, I give too much. Some days, I don’t give nearly enough.
But I’m not a martyr.
I know, because at 2 p.m. I’m going to do something that’s absolutely, positively not in Evan’s best interest.
And I don’t give a damn.
I start my preparations at noon. First, I make Evan a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a crushed Valium tablet sprinkled in the middle. Don’t ask me how I learned to do this. Don’t ask me what kind of pressure drives a mother to spend her afternoons crushing up various medications and mixing them into various lunch options. For the record, you need something sweet, like jelly or honey, to hide the bitterness. Grilled cheese … it took hours to effectively clean the grease spot off my glass sliders.
I serve the sandwich with apple slices and a cup of milk on the coffee table. Evan perks up. Lunch in the family room means he gets to eat while watching TV. This is a rare treat, and he’s already shaking off the residues of our morning playground drama.
Next, I turn on Evan’s favorite channel—the History Channel. Evan can watch tales of historical events for hours, from stories of Pompeii, to the life-sized clay soldiers recovered from the Chinese emperor’s tomb, to images of the Titanic. His favorite books are the Magic Tree House series, where Jack and Annie travel to various places in time. He loves nonfiction, as well. Biographies, coffee-table books, old lithographs—all of it fascinates him.
He gets this from his father, yet one more thing Michael will never know.
Currently, the History Channel is airing a show on digging the tunnel between Britain and France. There are images of heavy machinery and men in hard hats covered in mud. Evan picks up the first half of his sandwich and is transfixed.
I walk to the entryway, where I check the front door. Evan learned to work the bolt lock by age three, escaping at whim. He also mastered chain locks and the heavy glass sliders. As a result, my front door now features a key-in, key-out bolt lock. I also converted the glass sliders, meaning that every entry/exit in the house can only be accessed using the key I wear on a chain around my neck. If there’s ever a fire, and I lose said key, Evan and I will burn alive.
But at least he can’t escape while I’m showering.
Upstairs I strip in the master bath. I take a moment to look at my reflection in the mirror, though I know I shouldn’t. I was a beautiful girl once. The kind of lithe, silvery-blonde beauty that turns heads. I understood my power early on, and used it wisely. I lived in a mobile home with newspaper stuffed in the cracks for insulation. I wanted out, and my looks were just the ticket.
I started on the pageant circle, winning modest amounts of money, which my jealous mother stole from my bank account. I kept going, eventually securing a scholarship to college. That’s where I met Michael. I recognized him immediately as someone just like me. Attractive, driven, desperate. We’d been stomped on enough in life and we weren’t going to take it anymore.
I lost my virginity to him when I was twenty years old, though my mother had been calling me a slut for at least the past six years.
I cried that night. Michael held me, and I felt genuinely special. The pageants were just titles. It was Michael who made me feel like a princess.
I don’t look like a beauty queen anymore. My face is gaunt, my skin nearly translucent, stretched too thin across my bony ribs and jutting pelvis. There’s a giant green-and-yellow stain on my left side—I think Evan had pushed me down the stairs. Fresher purple bruises run up my right leg. Red welts mark my forearm. I look old and beaten, and for a moment, I want to cry.
For the beauty that faded too fast. For the youth that disappeared too quickly. For the dreams I thought I would fulfill.
There are pieces of yourself that once you give away …
But I want them back. Dear God, there are moments when I just want them back.
Two o’clock. Everything will be better at two o’clock. I turn on the shower, step in the spray, and begin to shave my legs.
I return downstairs nearly an hour later, an eternity in my world. I’ve taken the time to smooth my favorite rose-scented lotion into my skin. I’ve buffed my nails, loofahed my feet, used a special conditioner on my hair. If not prettier, at least I’m shinier than I used to be. It’s the best I can do.
Evan’s slouched into the sofa. The History Channel is blaring, the station having segued from the English tunnel to Boston’s Big Dig. The sandwich’s gone. Evan appears glassy-eyed. First the morning’s dose of Ativan, now this.
I sit next to Evan, feather back his blonde hair. He stirs enough to look at me.
“Pretty,” he says thickly, and it amazes me how I can smile and feel my heart break at the same time.
“I love you.”
“Tired,” he says.
“Would you like to rest?”
“TV!” he yells, not totally under the influence yet.
“After TV, then.”
He shifts away, his gaze riveted once more to the magic box. We sit side by side, my son sinking deeper into drugged oblivion, me fidgeting with my push-up bra.
The show breaks for a commercial. I glance at my watch. Ten minutes to go. Now or never. I pick up the remote, turn off the TV. I wait for Evan’s squawk, but it never comes. He’s slack-jawed, already two beats from unconsciousness.
He doesn’t protest as I slip an arm around his shoulders, guide him off the sofa and up the stairs. For an eight-year-old boy, he feels nearly weightless against me. The ADHD, we’re told, his constant agitation. He could follow Michael Phelps’s diet, and still lose weight.
In his room, I tuck him in bed fully clothed. It’s his second nap of the day and I will pay for it later. A long, sleepless night where my son will work off the edgy aftereffects by trashing the house.
But it will be worth it, I think. As long as I can have two o’clock.
I glance at my watch. Three minutes and counting.
“Mommy,” my son mumbles.
“Yes, Evan?”
“Love you.”
“I love you, too, honey.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“This morning. Didn’t hurt him. Wouldn’t hurt him. Just wanted … a friend. Nobody likes me. Not even Daddy.”
I don’t say anything, just brush his cheek and watch his thick lashes flutter clos
e. I want to tell him it’ll be okay. I want to tell him we’ll go to the park another day. I want to tell him he’ll make new friends and that his father still loves him.
Instead, I slip into the hallway, and lock my son in his room.
Doorbell rings.
A last nervous sweep of my hand through my hair, then I head downstairs.
My lover waits on the doorstep. He’s dressed casually, white T-shirt stretched over his toned chest. His hair curls damply against the back of his neck. He smells of soap and sunshine, and I want to take a moment to breathe him in. Youth, freedom, carefree days.
He smells of what I’ve lost, and some days I want him for that as much as anything.
“I have only an hour,” he announces. I’m not surprised. In the beginning, he lingered. We shared foreplay, pillow talk, post-coital glow. Then something shifted. He became less charming, more demanding, while our interludes became less romantic, more transactional.
I can feel the edginess in him now. He’ll be rough again, even abusive. The woman I used to be would’ve sent him home.
Now I open my door wider and let him into my home.
“Evan?” he checks. Have to give him credit for that. We met because of Evan. One good thing to come from this mess, I used to think. I’m not as sure anymore.
“Asleep,” I say.
“Locked in?”
“We won’t be interrupted.”
He gets a smile that I already feel between my legs. He leads me to the family room, his callused fingers wrapped tightly around my wrist.
At the last second, I balk. Looking for, wanting …
“What about my surprise?” I hear myself ask.
“It’s not Monday,” he says, leading me toward the sofa.
“Two days. Close enough.”
“Impatient?” He slants me a look. It is both flirtatious and dangerous. There are shadows in his eyes. Why have I never noticed that before? His blue eyes, once so clear, are now as dark as midnight. The phantom, I think. The phantom just won’t leave me the fuck alone.
Then I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to know.
He pulls me to the sofa, where minutes before my son slumped in a semi-catatonic state. Except now I’m the one bending over the arm of the sofa, while male hands raise my skirt, palm my ass, and lower a zipper behind me.
I smell the August sun radiating from his skin. It takes me to another place, where I’m still young and my husband still loves me and we’re walking hand in hand in Mexico, watching the sun set and thinking this is only the beginning of the best days of our lives.
Another man’s fingers working against me, stretching me, preparing me. My own back arching instinctively against him.
Then he’s inside me. The first hard thrust. His grunt of satisfaction.
“You will do exactly as I say,” he orders.
I close my eyes and give myself away.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
DANIELLE
“What are you doing here?”
“Working. What does it look like?” I shoved my bag in the locker.
“You’re not on the schedule,” Karen, my boss, persisted.
“Last-second change,” I said neutrally. “Genn wanted to attend some cookout with her kids, so I agreed to take her shift.”
Karen adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses. She crossed her arms over her chest, letting me know I was in for a fight.
“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” she demanded. “Because if you have, I think we can both agree why you won’t be working tonight.”
I returned her stare, chin up, shoulders square. I could be stubborn, too. Especially tonight.
I fell asleep on the sofa after my visit with Dr. Frank. I dreamed of my father again, except this time he wasn’t standing in the doorway. This time, he was in my room. Dr. Frank was right: There were things I’d never dealt with, events I’d never disclosed. I held them at bay, stuffed into a small closet in the back of my mind, where I kept the door locked tight. Except once a year, they managed to escape. They crept under the door, wiggled through the lock, then stalked through the dark corridors of my memory.
“Danny girl. It’s happy time.…”
As a professional, I understood that the unconscious mind had a will of its own. As a person, however, I wondered if this is how it felt to go insane. My heart raced even when I was sitting still. My hands fought a tremor even in the August heat.
I couldn’t go home tonight. I just couldn’t, and this place was as close to family as I had left.
“I’ll be okay,” I tried now, but Karen wasn’t buying it.
“First off,” she stated crisply, “you were involved in not one but two major incidents with the same patient.”
I looked at her blankly. Maybe I had gone crazy, because I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Lucy,” she supplied, reading my face. “She escaped yesterday. In fifteen years I’ve never had a child disappear. The hospital is demanding a formal investigation, as well they should. It’s unconscionable that a child can slip through two sets of locked doors and have not a single nurse or milieu counselor notice. For heaven’s sake, we’re lucky nothing worse happened.”
“But I found her!” I protested. “I’m the one who figured out where she went and got her back.”
“You were the one who should’ve been watching her in the first place.”
I hung my head, suitably shamed.
“Then, last night, I understand you and Lucy went a few rounds in the ring. To look at your face, you didn’t win.”
“I dealt with the situation—”
“You weren’t even on the clock, Danielle. You were supposed to be on your way home, not rushing down the hall to tend a child!”
“Lucy started screaming hysterically. What was I supposed to do, sit around and watch? We needed to calm her and I had the best chance of getting it done.”
“Danielle, a child physically attacked you! Your face is covered with scratches; you have bruises on your neck. I’m not worried about Lucy—you did calm her. But it was at a huge price to yourself. We need to debrief as a unit. You need physical and emotional support as an individual. Instead, you’re pretending it’s business as usual. That’s not healthy.”
“I’m fine—”
“You look like hell.”
“It’s been twenty-five fucking years. Of course I look like hell!” Too late I caught the slip, tried to rein myself in. But I was breathing hard and my heart was racing. I wanted to run.
“Have you been drinking?” Karen asked me.
“No.” Not yet.
“Good. For your sake, I’m happy to hear it. But you still can’t work tonight.”
“I have to work tonight. I can contain it. I can be professional. We both know I’m good at my job.”
“Danielle,” she said kindly, “you’re great at your job—when you’re a hundred percent. You aren’t a hundred percent right now, and these kids deserve nothing less.”
She was going to send me home. I couldn’t believe it. Karen was going to let the unit operate short-staffed rather than accept me.
“I want you to go downstairs,” she said now, voice brisk. “You need a medical evaluation, if not for your own sake, then for our insurance company. I’m giving you a five-day leave of absence. Rest. Talk to one of our counselors. Deal with yourself. Then you can return to dealing with these kids.”
I can’t go home, I can’t go home, I can’t go home.
“I’ll go downstairs,” I heard myself say. “I’ll get a physical exam. Then can I come back? If the doctor says so …”
“Danielle …”
“I’ll help her.”
I looked up. Karen turned around. Greg was standing behind her. We hadn’t heard him enter, but it was obvious from his expression that he’d been listening for a bit.
He looked good. Dark hair still slightly damp from a recent shower. Broad shoulders filling the narrow space, a
black gym bag slung over his shoulder.
“She can work with me,” he said, looking at Karen. “It’ll be the buddy system. That way, we’ll have someone on the floor to supervise meds, but you won’t have to worry about Danielle going solo.”
I felt pathetically grateful. How many times had I rejected this man? And he was still the best friend I had.
Karen looked like she wanted to protest, but at the last second, she hesitated. A soft heart beat beneath her stern exterior. God knows, once a year she cut me more slack than I deserved.
“Downstairs first,” Karen stated abruptly, staring at me. “If an intern will clear you physically, and Greg still feels like babysitting …”
I winced at the dig. She was testing me, seeing how in control of my emotions I was. “Exam first,” I agreed meekly. “Then I’d love to work with Greg. We’re a good team.”
I had shamelessly tossed him the bone. He smiled, briefly, but it didn’t reflect in his eyes. Maybe he knew me better than I thought.
The matter resolved, Karen squeezed past Greg back to the main office. It was nearly midnight, and she still had her own paperwork to close out before heading home; a head nurse didn’t get much sleep.
Alone with Greg, I felt awkward again. He opened a locker, stuffed in his bag. I stood there, watching him. He looked tired, I thought. A little worn around the edges. Or maybe that was me.
“Thank you,” I said at last.
He didn’t look at me. “Night’s young,” he said finally. “Don’t thank me yet.”
The police arrived at the PECB shortly after 1:30 a.m. They buzzed at the front doors—one, two, three times. They could see us. We could see them. And they got to wait.
The unit was in bedlam. Jorge, who normally shared a room with Benny, had woken up agitated shortly after twelve-thirty. Ed pulled Jorge aside to read a book. Jorge made it halfway through the story, then yanked the book out of Ed’s hand and hurtled it across the hall, where it hit Aimee in the head. She woke up screaming, and the rest of the kids were off and running from there.