Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

  In the kitchen, Luca was bustling around, chopping, mixing, sliding pans into ovens. He turned when I came in, and at the sight of him, my stomach executed a flip-flop. He reciprocated my smile—the spontaneous, easy grin filled his eyes with light and the space around us with electricity. He handed me an apple from a bowl on the counter.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I guess you saw I slept through lunch.”

  He shook his head. His face had turned somber and he was watching me intently, like he expected me to say something.

  “I know, I know, no hablas, although I can’t help wondering if it’s just a put-on.”

  His gaze didn’t waver, his eyes that shade of hazel that looked green in one light, gray in another. It was strange. It was as if he was trying to send me a message, but I was too boneheaded to decipher it.

  “Or you really can’t speak English,” I forged on. “And I’m just being an utter asshole. In which case, my sincerest apologies, and thank you again for the apple. I’ll try not to miss dinner.”

  He nodded once, then moved to the sink and started to clear the dishes. I beat a hasty exit.

  The backyard matched my mood—serene and golden in the afternoon sun. From my vantage point, it looked like the birdhouses down in the garden were deserted and the lawn clear. The air around me was sharp with a smell of smoke, though, and I wondered if there was a fire on the mountain.

  Or one started in the woods behind the house, maybe, to dispose of the birds’ bodies.

  Feeling unsettled, I turned and headed for the mountain trail. The cold air burned my lungs, but I welcomed the pain. The faster I went, the more alive I felt. I was bursting with the endorphins and the anticipation of seeing Glenys. If I hurried, I wouldn’t be late.

  I wiped my fogged lenses and checked my watch. Two thirty on the dot. I walked to the edge of the limestone slab where the cliff dropped away and breathed in the clean, cold air. No trace of Glenys up here, nor of any smoke. Maybe the smell had come from a campfire or someone’s chimney.

  I stretched, did a couple of yoga poses, which would’ve cracked Lenny up if she could’ve witnessed it—me, the dedicated runner who couldn’t even be bothered with more than a cursory stretch before I started off. I checked my watch again. Twelve minutes had passed and still no Glenys. She could’ve forgotten, but it seemed unlikely. It wasn’t as if there was a schedule of activities to get swept up in.

  After another twenty minutes or so, I headed back down the mountain, trying not to worry. I ticked through the possible reasons she hadn’t shown up. Maybe I’d inadvertently offended her. Maybe she’d had a particularly rough therapy session, and it had wiped her out. I remembered how distraught she’d looked outside the barn yesterday. I wondered what she’d seen in there that had set her off. Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything. Maybe it had just been a private spot where she could grieve, away from the camera in her room.

  But suddenly it occurred to me—she’d obviously unlocked the chain on the barn doors. There’d been a huge padlock on it, for God’s sake.

  I caught a sapling, stopping myself midstride.

  How did she manage to open it?

  The question was a valid one, even if I didn’t want to ask it. Even if it made me uncomfortable. As much as I wanted to deny it, none of what I’d experienced this week was normal. Not the locked Nissan, the Sinatra song, the arguing voices, the dead birds. The list of strange, unexplained things was getting longer by the minute. And now this: the barn-door chain, roped and padlocked for me, but not for Glenys.

  I’d read enough self-help books to know what I was doing was called catastrophizing. But what if this was an actual, real-life catastrophe? Sometimes they did happen. Sometimes the signs were all there, right before something went terribly wrong. And the people who didn’t heed the warnings—who didn’t evacuate or board up their windows or brace themselves for the storm—were usually the ones who got swept away.

  “This is not normal,” I said aloud. And broke into a run.

  At the bottom of the trail, I charged toward the barn. On the doors, the chain hung limp. Unlocked. I ducked inside, waited for my eyes to adjust to the shadows. There were a couple of grimy, cobwebby windows up high in a loft area that let in what light was left of the day. It made the space look extra spooky—the set of a play, before the actors walked onstage and brought it to life. I wrapped my arms around my torso and surveyed the space.

  The collection of sheet-draped furniture I’d seen, the day I’d first peeked through the cracked doors, filled the far-left corner of the barn. I approached it and gingerly lifted the corner of one sheet. A small bed, twin size. I pulled at the sheet and let it settle to the dirt floor. The bed was a simple light-wood four-poster with a chipped headboard. A set of old-fashioned springs rested on the slats.

  I drew the sheet back over the bed, then moved to the next piece of furniture. A school desk, one of those old-fashioned all-in-ones, with a green metal seat and wood desktop that lifted up. It had a narrow groove at the top, for a pencil. I ran my fingers over the surface. It was scratched up pretty good. Maybe it had been Cerny’s. He had mentioned growing up here. How the fiery fiends had frightened him. How much mischief they’d kept him from.

  The light through the high windows was fading fast. It was getting late. I dragged the desk over to the nearest one, angling it so the beam of light hit it at just the right angle. The surface of the wood was scarred over its entire surface. Someone had been busy . . . and not with their lessons. I squinted. I picked out the letter H. Then an A and a V. An E and N.

  Haven?

  I felt my way along the surface, identifying each subsequent letter. “O, P, I, T, Y, S, O . . .” I shook my head. Went back to where I started. Felt the scratches there. “I,” I said and furrowed my brow. “IHAVENOPITYSO . . . What in God’s name?” I shook my head again, hard, clearing the cobwebs. “I have no pity,” I murmured. Ran my fingers over the letters again. “I have no pity so . . .”

  I imagined Matthew Cerny, a small boy with floppy blond hair, carving this phrase into his desk during his lessons. What a strange thing for a child to carve. How desolate.

  “Daphne?” I heard behind me, and I whirled. Even in the gloom, I recognized the voice. Heath. And then I saw the knife, lying on the floor of the shed, just beside his feet.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Daphne, I’m sorry to take you away from your activities.”

  Dr. Cerny took my hand between his. The overhead lights of his office were dimmed to a soft amber, turning the glass-paned walls opaque in the dark. We couldn’t see out, but anyone looking in could see us. Like actors on a spotlit stage.

  Heath wandered across the room to peruse the bookshelves. In the barn, he’d simply asked if I’d be willing to go back to the office to speak with Dr. Cerny. On our way out, I trailed behind and gave the knife a gentle kick into the shadows.

  Now Heath ran his fingers down the spines of Cerny’s books, leaning in periodically to get a closer look at a few of the volumes.

  The doctor tapped his iPad. “I wanted to speak to you, Daphne. Get your input on some subjects Heath and I are accessing. Would you be comfortable with that?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I’d like to help if I can.”

  Heath turned and sent me a look—a signal I didn’t quite understand. Looking at him usually made my heart feel tender, swollen with love to the point of being painful, but ever since I told him about Chantal, I sensed something was different between us. An unnaturalness that hadn’t been there before. Something cold and stilted.

  The doctor leaned back, folded his hands across his sweater. “The nightmares Heath was having before you came to Baskens—he says he is unable to remember them. You said he referenced a mirror.”

  I felt the low rumble of panic in my gut. The nerves all over my body sang to life. I dropped my hands behind my back and snapped the band on my wrist.

  “Are you all right?” Cerny asked. “Can I get you something?”r />
  I swallowed. “No.”

  “You don’t look well.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re having a panic attack,” he said calmly.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” And yet I could feel myself dying to count the books on the shelves or the blacked-out panes of glass around me. Anything to ease the discomfort. I snapped the band again and again, not caring anymore if they noticed.

  “Sit. I’m going to get you some water and a paper bag to breathe into. Do you take medication for anxiety? Or do you just employ the . . . other coping mechanism?” Cerny was up now, bustling in a circuit around the room, but it made me too dizzy to watch him, so I sat, dropped my elbows to my knees, and closed my eyes.

  “Daphne?” Heath’s voice seemed thin with concern.

  “I don’t do meds,” I said, to no one in particular.

  Dr. Cerny returned with a glass of juice and a paper bag.

  Maybe I was having some kind of attack. At the very least, Baskens was unraveling me. I felt untethered here, without an Internet connection, without any of my familiar tasks and boundaries and outlets. Paranoid because of the cameras. Dull and hazy. With Heath’s nightmares no longer waking me, I was sleeping substantially more than usual, but instead of rested I felt groggy. My dynamic with Heath had shifted ever so subtly too, after the thing in the shower. Or maybe it was that I’d told him about Chantal. It was hard to tell.

  It was like my mind had become an unruly child, running wild through the dark, dusty corridors of the mansion, up and down the wind-whipped mountain, body-free and heedless. And somehow, in the process of investigating the dark nooks, watching the glowing monitors and seeing the secret lives of the other patients here, I had fallen into the strange offbeat rhythm of the place. I had become unclenched and vulnerable.

  A child again.

  And like an obedient child, I finished off the juice the doctor gave me.

  Heath spoke. “I’ll take you back upstairs, Daphne.” He glanced at the doctor, and some form of communication that I couldn’t decipher passed between the two of them. “We’ll finish this later,” he said firmly, then touched my arm.

  I lifted myself out of the chair. I felt as heavy as an elephant, which had to be from the panic. Or was it . . . I stopped and turned to Cerny. Heath plucked at my elbow, but I pushed away his hand.

  “Dr. Cerny . . .” I said.

  The doctor, just settling into his chair behind the desk, raised his eyebrows.

  “I was supposed to meet Glenys Sieffert this afternoon, at the top of the mountain.”

  He froze.

  “We were just going to do some yoga. On the mountain.”

  Cerny’s eyes flicked over at Heath. “We have a policy.”

  It was only the millionth time I’d heard someone at Baskens say that, and frankly I was over it. “I know,” I said. “And I’m sorry I broke your rule, but I couldn’t not say something. I mean, it’s more than her not showing up. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  He pushed aside a stack of papers, retrieved his iPad, and unlocked it. He tapped at the screen a few times. I watched, bleary eyed and zoned out, until something occurred to me. Something wonderful—I’d just watched him tap in his passcode.

  I closed my eyes. Pictured the screen. Saw the pattern his fingers had traced.

  5 3 5 3

  Easy. No way it was his age. Cerny had to be in his mid to late sixties, at least. Maybe it was someone’s birthdate—May 3, 1953. That seemed more likely. Possibly his. Possibly the woman’s whose silk blouses were hanging in the wardrobe upstairs.

  “I’ve talked with her recently,” the doctor said, interrupting my thoughts. He pushed the iPad away, but the screen still glowed. A page of notes. Glenys’s last session, possibly. “Everyone here at Baskens is accounted for. No need for concern.”

  The image of Glenys leaning out her bedroom window flashed in my head. “I’d just like to know where she is. For my own peace of mind.”

  “Well, that’s solicitous of you.” The doctor picked up a pen, inspected it, then put it back down. “But she’s probably in her room, reading or perhaps napping. Maybe talking with her husband.”

  “I thought I heard the two of you arguing. Earlier.”

  “Daphne . . .” Heath said.

  Cerny fixed me with an inscrutable look. “She’s my patient, Daphne, not yours.”

  “I’d like to know if she’s okay,” I said. “That’s all.”

  Cerny’s gaze stayed on me. “We have a policy, and we were very clear regarding it. I understand, though, growing up the way you did, you probably associate the idea of policy with the legal system . . .”

  I flinched. Nice shot, Doc.

  “But I can assure you,” he went on, “it’s in everyone’s best interest.” He sat back, lacing his fingers. “Daphne, I need you to understand. My patients are all here for counseling, primarily because they’re encountering obstacles in their lives they cannot manage on their own. In other words, everyone here is struggling.”

  He enunciated the word precisely. Like that had anything to do with what I asked. Like I didn’t know what the hell the word meant.

  I put a hand on the chair and pivoted myself toward the door. I felt the rush of the room readjusting itself around me, just a split second later than it should have.

  “Did you put something in the juice?” I asked.

  Cerny pursed his lips. “Do you feel all right?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled. “Just a little . . .” My mind drifted, then swung back to Glenys. “I was just concerned she might’ve left, that’s all. Have you had time to watch any of the tapes? The surveillance tapes of her and her husband, from the time in their room? Maybe something happened when she was up there?”

  Heath sighed. He was losing patience with me, I could tell.

  “Daphne, I can assure you, everyone here is safe,” Cerny said. “You are safe.”

  He was missing the point. It wasn’t my safety I was concerned with. It was his lie about the additional cameras in our room. The Sinatra music. The goddamn dead birds strewn across the grass.

  I was concerned about a woman who might be missing, but he wasn’t listening. No one was. I pressed my fingertips to my temples. Confronting him in my impaired state was useless. I’d wait until I had my wits about me. When I felt myself again, I’d figure out what the hell was going on.

  I propelled myself toward the door, spotting the row of car keys hanging on the hooks. I’d done some minor shoplifting in my day, at the Flash Foods, after school. All the girls at the ranch did it. I was pretty good, too. Just a quick reach and a sprint to the door . . .

  I could make a run for it. Pick any car and drive down this mountain. They couldn’t stop me, not if I was smart about it. I could drive down to Dunfree, even, hunt down Luca or Dr. Teague. Bring the police into it, if I had to. A sense of well-being washed over me—or maybe it was power. I was only here because I chose to be. I could leave anytime. I was in charge of my life, not this grinning, Mr.-Al-looking bullhorn of lies.

  I turned to face Cerny. “You said you wanted to know what else Heath said? During the nightmares?”

  He stilled. “Ah, yes. But we can discuss it later, when you’re feeling better.”

  I eyed the doctor, then Heath. I had their full attention now. I lifted my eyebrow just a fraction, hoping Heath would get my message—Two can play this game, Doc—then closed my eyes, as if conjuring up the memory. The reality was, I didn’t have to. I remembered every time Heath had cried out in his sleep. Every scream and roar and whimper that had woken me.

  Break the mirror . . .

  Cerny stared at me, and a delicious frisson of superiority went through me. Whatever game he was playing with Heath and me—and with Glenys—he wasn’t going to win. I sure as hell wasn’t going to give him any more information until I figured out what he was up to.

  He may have looked like Mr. Al, but he wasn’t my fucking father.

&n
bsp; I cleared my throat. “One time—and I remember it very clearly—one time he said . . .”

  I could’ve sworn Cerny’s pupils dilated in anticipation.

  “He said, ‘I have no pity.’” I looped my hand through Heath’s arm, gripping his bicep. I could feel him staring down at me.

  “I did?” Heath asked.

  “Hm.” I glanced back at Cerny. His face had gone slack.

  “Does that mean anything to you, Dr. Cerny?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t really say.” His eyes were hard and narrowed and laser focused on me. I wondered if he knew I had broken into his barn and seen the old desk. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t imagine he’d be anything but annoyed at my little game. But he didn’t look annoyed. He looked furious.

  I was so relaxed now; there was no question he had dosed me with something, but only a distant part of me was afraid. Mostly, now, I was feeling about ten feet tall.

  “I’m sure,” I said breezily, “that, as his psychologist, you’ll enjoy solving the mystery. Good night.”

  I walked to the door and was about to reach for the keys, when I felt Heath beside me, his breath in my ear. I froze as his hand clamped around my wrist. I had the keys in my sights, right there, within a literal arm’s reach.

  “No.” His voice was only a whisper, but he was shaking. Before I could protest, he pulled me away from the keys and out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Why did you say that to Dr. Cerny?” Heath asked.

  It was almost dinnertime, and if I was serious about finding Glenys, I probably should’ve been keeping an eye out for Luca. But the episode in Cerny’s office had thrown me off. I was more than a little high and way past done with this place. All I wanted to do was go home.

  Dully, I scanned the room:

  In the frame of the oil painting above the fireplace.

  In that floor lamp in the corner of the sitting area.