“Chantal,” Mrs. Bobbie said. “Daphne’s come to stay with us because her mother’s not feeling well.”
It was true, to a point. On a regular basis, my mother—jonesing for whatever it was that made her feel better—would disappear for days from our apartment complex, leaving me to fend for myself. This had been going on since I was five or six, and the neighbors had always been kind. Every time I knocked on their doors, they let me in. I didn’t blame Mr. Tully. After a while, you were bound to get tired of a hungry, smelly kid eating all your cereal and chips and using up your toilet paper.
Chantal seemed inordinately interested in me, watching me with her strange eyes.
“Hi,” she said. Her voice was deep and raspy. It made her sound worldly, older than her years.
“Hi,” I replied.
“Why do you squint your eyes like that?” she asked, which I thought was a strange thing for her to notice, considering she had the freakiest-looking eyes I’d ever seen on a person.
“Maybe Daphne needs glasses, Chantal,” Mrs. Bobbie said in a singsong voice like I was a kindergarten baby. “Your mama ever take you to an eye doctor, Daphne?”
I shook my head no. Just then, a hulking man in an embroidered button-up shirt passed by the room. He stopped, lifted a hand, and beamed at me.
“Greetings, princess.” Two dimples slashed his pudgy, whiskery cheeks. I smiled back. I couldn’t help it.
“Mr. Al, come say hey to Daphne,” Mrs. Bobbie said.
The man bounded up to me and shook my hand with one of those long complicated secret handshakes. I tried to keep up. “Daphne-Doodle-Do, how do you do?”
“Fine.” I giggled softly.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Eleven.”
“Well, I’m thirty-two, so I guess I got you beat.” He winked at me.
“Bedtime,” Mrs. Bobbie announced, before Mr. Al could say anything more.
I was to share a room with Chantal, down the hall from the Super Tramps. It was a tiny room with a bunk bed and one dresser. Chantal told me I got the top drawers and the top bunk. I used the bathroom, changed into a ratty, pilled-up Strawberry Shortcake nightgown that Mrs. Bobbie had given me, and climbed the ladder. I hung my backpack over one of the posts, then felt a jolt underneath me.
I peeked down. Chantal was lying on her back, mermaid hair fanned out on her pillow, her hands folded over her chest, her feet jammed against the bottom of my bunk. She grinned up at me, and I could tell her front tooth was chipped.
“Earthquake,” she said.
I hadn’t meant to tell Glenys so much. In fact, when I was finished, my stomach was in knots. Storyteller’s remorse.
I looked down—over the sheer cliff that dropped out from under my feet—and backed a couple of steps away. It seemed I couldn’t stand that close to the edge without being bombarded by images of a small body tumbling over the cliff.
I forced my eyes down to my watch. “Oh, wow. Lunch in half an hour. I’m sorry, talking your ear off like that.”
“Nonsense.” Glenys folded her arms and lifted her face to the breeze. “I enjoyed it.” She cracked one eye. “Did you find it really horrible to tell me those things?”
I laughed. “A little, I guess.”
“Feel any lighter?”
“I do.” In fact, I was feeling kind of buzzed now, high from the atmosphere of secrecy and the thin mountain air.
“Would you like to walk back down?” I asked. “We can split up halfway, so nobody knows we were fraternizing.”
She smiled. “I think I’ll stay a little longer, if you don’t mind. I’d like to spend a little more time alone.”
“Of course.”
“I’m so glad to have met you, Daphne,” she said.
I smiled. “Me too.”
“And I’m always happy to listen, if you find the need to talk.”
I didn’t reply, but I had the feeling that didn’t bother her. She was a strange woman—who didn’t seem to mind stretches of silence or expect to be told anything but the unvarnished truth. I allowed myself a brief moment to consider what it would be like to tell her everything. To open the door I’d shut all those years ago and let the rest of the story pour out at last. I felt a stab of something in my throat and realized it was a sob. I backed a few steps farther away and started back down the path.
I wondered if she watched me go. If she noticed I was dashing tears off my face with the sleeve of my sweater as I clomped over the rocks and roots. I hoped not. I’d cried more in the past hour than in the past ten years, but I’d be damned if I let anyone see it.
My face was red and raw by the time I returned to our deserted room. I guzzled a bottle of water from the minifridge in the corner, then I twisted up my hair and splashed my face with cold water. At twelve thirty, I heard a sharp knock and opened the door to find Heath holding our elegantly appointed lunch tray, complete with a bud vase containing a single branch of red maple leaves.
“Oh, wow.” I grinned. “The waitstaff is really hot around here.”
I set our table near the fireplace. There was a tiny white worm crawling on the pale underside of one of the maple leaves. I eased it onto the edge of my spoon and gingerly dropped it in the crackling fire. I watched it writhe, then sizzle, and I turned away, feeling sick. Heath sat across from me, unfolded his napkin, and started in on the meat-and-black-bean stew. He looked utterly normal—so normal, it was hard to believe he’d just been in a session with the doctor.
“How’d it go?” I asked lightly.
“It was revelatory.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yes. I’m absolutely insane. One hundred percent. There’s no saving me.” My jaw unhinged and he broke into a grin. “Daphne, take a breath already. We just talked. It was no big deal.”
I jabbed my fork into the concoction of rice and beans and tender pork. Lifted it to my mouth and told myself to chew. It was only day one—Heath wouldn’t have made any major progress with Dr. Cerny. There was still time to learn something from Heath’s ex-girlfriend, Annalise. Maybe not enough to wrap up every last thing with a bow and convince Heath we should go home, but maybe a start.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Mm-hm.”
“You seem . . .” He studied me. “Nervous.”
“Really?” I shoveled a forkful. “I feel fine. It’s probably the house. I’m just not comfortable here yet. And I’m not comfortable with all this free time.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t go journal in the bird garden.” He snorted.
“I hiked to the top of the mountain.”
He put down his fork. “You did?”
I nodded.
“How was it?”
“Nice. Beautiful, actually.”
“And better than spying on our neighbors.”
I laughed, and we ate the rest of our lunch in silence, then Heath washed up and brushed his lips against my temple. “Gotta go.”
“But you already had your session,” I said. “It’s our free block. Remember, the free block you were so excited about?”
“Oh, God. Yes. I’m sorry. I’ve got to fill out some paperwork. Personality assessments. Aptitude and diagnostic tests and stuff like that. And the releases—I’ll pick yours up too, while I’m at it. You going to be okay up here by yourself?”
“Sure. Of course. I may head down to the library. Find a book to read.”
He caught my fingers. “Thank you. For doing this. I know what you’re sacrificing.”
I squeezed his hand. “Well. I’d rather be here for you than assembling shared workspace pods. That much I can promise you.”
He grinned. “That’s not really much of a compliment.”
“Always us.” I kissed him.
After he left, I slipped on my shoes and headed downstairs. I circumnavigated the foyer, listening for anyone, opening cabinets and pulling out the drawers of every big sideboard. No one happened along, and the furniture yielded nothing—not a set
of keys, not even the smallest scrap of paper. There were no keys in the library either. Reggie must’ve stashed them in a more secure place: the doctor’s sunroom office or maybe even up in his suite. I’d have to wait for a more expedient time to find out, when his office was empty. For now I’d have to find something else to occupy my mind.
I drifted to the carved bookcase. Most of the dust-coated books looked like they hadn’t been read in ages. Which stood to reason. I was probably the only person who came to Baskens who actually had time to read. I perused the shelf. All the oldies but goodies. Dickens, Shakespeare, Hawthorne. Every last one of the Brontë sisters’ titles: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, The Professor, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Wuthering Heights.
I thought back to Cerny’s strange toast last night in the kitchen: I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.
I took Wuthering Heights to the sofa and flipped the pages, the story coming back to me in bits and pieces. Mr. Earnshaw, appearing back at his home, Wuthering Heights, presents a surprise to his children, Catherine and Hindley. Heathcliff, a dark-skinned, dark-eyed Gypsy child who speaks gibberish. The interloper immediately sparks in Hindley an intense jealousy, as Hindley is a bully, racist, and overall dickbag. Catherine, on the other hand, is instantly smitten and sticks to Heathcliff like an imprinted duckling.
I read for a while, then let the book drop to the floor and stretched out on the sofa, my legs and lower back aching from the hike. I knew how the story ended, how Heathcliff and Catherine devoted their lives to loving, then destroying, each other. Emily Brontë may have been melodramatic, but she’d hit on something real. It was true—similar souls sought each other out. Damaged gravitated to damaged, the same way Heath and I had recognized ourselves in each other, then locked into our unshakable orbit. It was too bad the story ended so tragically. Too bad Heathcliff and Cathy couldn’t have just admitted that they belonged together.
Because surely they did belong together.
Sleep stole over me quickly. I woke sometime later, and the book was gone, returned to the Brontë section of the shelves. Whoever had done that had also left a bottle of water and a plate of small coconut-dusted cookies on a nearby table. I swung my feet down and chugged the water. In a daze, I headed for the front stairs. My legs felt like tree trunks, my head three sizes too big. Even after the nap, I still felt wrung out. Maybe it was the hike—or the fact that I’d told Glenys about the ranch. I checked the clock on the mantel in the front hall. Five after three. Great. In our room, the camera would be up and running again.
I climbed the stairs, thinking about Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s lovely doomed lives. About how good it had felt to tell Glenys about the Super Tramps and Chantal and Mr. Al while standing at the precipice of a mountain. Maybe there was a pattern to it all. Maybe the universe had brought me here because it knew what I needed—to be hardy and free, to finally let go of my burden and soar.
Friday, October 19
Evening
I’m standing in the middle of the road before it occurs to me that I’ve finally made it out of the woods. The sun is obscured by clouds, but I can feel the knife edge of twilight in the air. I know I still have a long way to go before I get to town.
There are no sounds—no car engines in the distance, no crunch of feet through the leaves. But it feels like there’s a hurricane whipping up in my head, so it’s possible I’m not hearing so well. I’m also panting like someone who’s never done a jumping jack. I failed to factor in the concentration it requires not to trip on a path studded with boulders and roots and hidden holes.
Part of me knows it’s not the exertion that’s getting to me, it’s the fear. Which is ironic. All those times I was charging around the track like a lunatic, I never considered the way fear could fill a person, weigh them down. I never knew fear had actual mass.
Suddenly I realize why the silence is bothering me so much. I thought the police were coming. I’ve been expecting them the whole time, but there are no sounds of cars or sirens. The police aren’t coming. They never were.
I take a minute to get my bearings—make sure I’m headed down, not sideways across the mountain or, God forbid, back up. I adjust the iPad in the back of my jeans and set off at a trot down the gravel road.
I’ll find the police myself.
Chapter Nine
Tuesday, October 16
Three Days Before
I decided all that stuff about the universe knowing what I needed was bullshit. The universe could go suck an egg; what I really needed was some Internet and a Domino’s pizza.
And an email from Annalise Beard telling me what she knew, if anything, about Heath’s past.
Not that it was going to be easy to hear, whatever it was she might have to say, but it was for the best. Getting Heath away from this weirdo doctor, this creepy mountain and ancient house, was in Heath’s best interest as well as mine. What I was doing was for us.
But it was Tuesday already. Three days since I’d gotten the Instagram message from her. And I was losing faith that I was going to be able to get into the car to retrieve the iPad. And if I did get to it, there was still the possibility that Annalise knew nothing. So what would I do then?
My brain raced. Like me, Heath was a loner. Not extremely so, just a little on the introverted side, and mostly focused on getting his career off the ground. He had friends, just not many older ones from his years at University of Georgia. That guy at Divine, the one in the bad suit, was one, but they hadn’t been roommates. I’d only met a roommate once—Evan Something-or-Other. Graham? Gilbert? If Annalise was a dead end, maybe I could track him down on Facebook or Instagram. Ask him if Heath had ever talked in his sleep.
I paced the length of the room. Baskens was getting to me, fraying my nerves and making me jumpy. When I first arrived, I was so run down from the nightmares, part of me had hoped Baskens would be the break I needed. But I didn’t know how to amble and piddle and lounge like a delicate Victorian lady. My body was used to the exhilarating busyness of dealing with clients, the daily analgesic of sprinting around a track until the copper taste filled my mouth and every bone in my body ached. The relentless quiet of this place was driving me insane.
I needed to find our car keys before I ended up strangling somebody.
After breakfast, I followed Heath down the stairs, then down the hallway that led to the kitchen. I heard the doctor usher him into his office and close the French doors behind them. I waited a few seconds, then, backtracking, inched closer to the glass doors to see if I could get a better view.
All that was visible was the anteroom of the office—a small, unfurnished nook that blocked any view of the doctor’s office beyond it. On the wall adjacent to the door, a row of metal hooks held multiple sets of keys, including the Nissan’s, which I recognized from the red-and-black Georgia Bulldogs fob. I pushed at the door, and it creaked open a couple of inches.
“How are you feeling this morning?” I heard Dr. Cerny say from the other side of the wall.
“Better,” Heath answered. “It’s not like I hadn’t anticipated the—”
His voice dipped in volume, and I couldn’t hear the rest of what he said. But it didn’t matter. I was here for the keys, not to eavesdrop on my fiancé’s therapy. I slipped through the open door and crept toward the hooks.
“Do you think having her here was really a good idea?” I heard the doctor say.
I froze. Who was he talking about? Me?
“It’s so funny to me”—Heath again—“the assumptions you people make, you doctors, that you know what’s best for the rest of us. You leave . . .” His voice lowered.
My God, he sounded so brusque. It seemed a little premature to have already developed such a combative relationship with the doctor. But maybe that’s how Cerny operated—maybe he encouraged bluntness in his patients. I lifted the keys gently, easily, off the hook and slid them into my pocket, then backed toward the door, tugging my sweater down to
hide the bulge.
I slipped out the front door and headed around the side of the house. At the row of cars, I stopped beside the Nissan and unlocked the passenger’s-side door. Ducking in and shutting the door behind me, I reached under the floor mat. The iPad powered to life, and as the bars filled in, a thrill ran through me.
“Hi, you,” I crooned.
Thanks to the gods of 4G, little red dots sprang out on my apps like a rash of measles. Twenty-one new emails, a handful of texts pushed from my iPhone, and a smattering of notifications on my social-media apps. I opened the texts from Lenny first.
This seems really last minute, D. Not to be an asshole, but we’ve got a lot going on this week. Could H not have given a couple weeks’ notice?
Then:
I’m all for counseling, but H knows how headshrinkers make you feel. He should respect that.
Followed by:
I don’t get why you’re so willing to drop everything for him like this. And, okay, maybe my feelings are just hurt because you never open up to me. Well, fuck it. I am being an asshole, after all. Look, I know it’s not about me. I love you, D. I’m here for you. Can you just check in when you get a chance? Let me know you’re okay? This is really nerve racking, not being able to talk to you. And just FYI, my mom is worried, so she’s calling me nonstop.
And finally:
Okay, ignore all previous texts. I’m a jealous diva. I love you. We’ll talk when you come home. BTW, did you hear? They’ve shut down Divine’s. xx L
I smiled, in spite of my nerves. That was my Lenny, running the entire gamut of emotions in a handful of texts. I felt bad, worrying her, worrying Barbara, but I really didn’t know what else I could’ve done. I’d had no other choice but to come with Heath. I would text her back later, and when I got home, I’d take Barbara out to lunch.
Right now, though, I had other things to do. I needed to see what Annalise Beard had for me. Fingers shaking, I opened her email.
Every Single Secret Page 8