Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

  Somewhere along the mirror above the dresser.

  In the fan above the bed.

  Behind me, Heath cleared his throat. “Did I really say that ‘I have no pity’ thing?” He was speaking carefully, like he was picking his way over broken glass.

  Should I tell him about the other cameras in our room? Would it convince him that we had to leave? I didn’t know anything anymore. This place was turning me upside down.

  “No, you didn’t say that.” I scrubbed at my eyes. “It was just something I saw on some old furniture in the barn, a phrase scratched on a desk.”

  He leapt up. “Daphne! God!”

  I straightened in surprise. “What?”

  “You can’t do that!” he yelled. “You’re messing with my treatment. Don’t you understand?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “You don’t like Cerny, it’s obvious. But that doesn’t give you the right to lie to him about me.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? It’s just . . . I feel really weird. Not myself. I’m pretty sure he put something in that juice he gave me.”

  He made an exasperated sound. “Oh, come on. You wanted to fuck with him, and you saw your chance. Don’t pass the blame.”

  “I’m not!” I shouted. Then, aware again of the cameras, I lowered my voice. “Okay, you don’t have to believe me. But you have to admit nothing here makes sense. Why aren’t we allowed to talk to anyone? Why does Dr. Cerny act so goddamn weird all the time . . .” Why does he have a state investigator’s card in his desk and a closetful of women’s clothing? Why is the yard full of dead birds?

  And the cook seems to be trying to send me a message every time I run into him . . .

  Heath shook his head. “You can’t just make stuff up. This is a serious process.”

  “So get him to prescribe you some sleeping pills and let’s go home. There’s nothing that says you have to offer him your soul.”

  “I know how you feel about therapists. I know this is hard for you . . .”

  “This is not hard for me,” I said evenly. “I’m not afraid of Dr. Cerny. I know what the Internet says, that he’s a qualified doctor and everybody thinks he’s a miracle worker. It’s just . . .” I trailed off. “I’m not comfortable talking to him about your nightmares. You can talk to him, but I can’t. I don’t trust him.”

  “You’re saying you don’t trust me.”

  “No. Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “You’re pissed that you told me about your past. You regret it.”

  “Stop it, Heath. Don’t turn this around on me.”

  “You’re so full of bullshit,” he spat. “You only told me about the ranch, about Omega and Chantal, because you were scared to hear more about my past. To really go there with me, all the way to the darkest part. And now you’re acting weird and distant and cold. You can’t stand it, the reality of actually being close to me.”

  My face flushed. “No.”

  But he’d hit on something. Being here at Baskens had changed us, set us on what felt like an irreversible course. I couldn’t pretend like our pasts didn’t exist, but I didn’t want to go forward and deal with all of it, either. I was stuck, here in this twisted house.

  He fixed me with a hard look. “So you just happened to see that phrase, I have no pity, carved on a piece of furniture?”

  “It was on this old school desk I found in the barn. I don’t understand why it bothers you so much. Am I missing something here?”

  A knock sounded on the door, and I jumped like someone had set off a bomb. I went for the door, but Heath caught my arm.

  “Hold on.” He kept a tight grip on me. “It’s just dinner. He can wait.” He folded me into a hug. “You scared me, Daph. I didn’t understand what you told Cerny or why you hadn’t ever said anything about it before. It made me feel . . . it made me worry I might never get to the bottom of whatever is going on with me.”

  I pressed my face against his shoulder, guilt flooding me. “It was shitty of me. I’m sorry.”

  “I just need to feel you for a second.”

  He tightened his arms around me, but all I could think was that I was missing my chance to see Glenys answer Luca’s knock on her door. If she answered it at all. When Heath finally let go, I opened the door. Our dinner tray was the only one in the hall.

  “Goddammit,” I said under my breath.

  “What?” Heath said behind me. I picked up the tray and scooted around him.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  In the room, I lifted the cover on my plate to find fragrant shrimp and quinoa and slender asparagus. Heath moved to fill my glass with wine, but I put my hand over it to stop him. I couldn’t afford to mix alcohol with whatever I’d ingested, especially if I intended to keep looking for Glenys tonight. Heath poured himself a healthy serving, then forked violently into a slice of coconut cake. I watched him with raised eyebrows.

  “Dessert for dinner?”

  “Long day,” he grumbled through a mouthful.

  I went at my shrimp, feeling belligerent. “So you really think Glenys is okay?”

  “I don’t see any reason to think otherwise.”

  “If I could just call her or text her or something . . .” I shut my mouth abruptly. A kernel of an idea had just broken open in my mind. A way to get word to somebody that didn’t necessitate Wi-Fi or cell networks. I tucked the idea away for the time being. I’d need to wait until I was alone. “I just hope she’s okay, that’s all.”

  “Do you have any reason to think she wouldn’t be?”

  “No. Not specifically. She’s been having a hard time about some things in her life.”

  “Like what?”

  “She lost her son.”

  “Lost him?”

  “He died.”

  Heath absorbed this. Dropped his napkin. He hadn’t eaten any more than a few bites of the cake. “How did it happen?” His voice was calm but he was watching me intently.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  “Weren’t you curious?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Not necessarily.”

  He met my gaze. “Everybody’s curious about death—how it happens, what it feels like.”

  “I guess.”

  “Doesn’t a small part of you wish you could’ve been there at the bottom of the cliff at the moment Chantal died? At the exact moment her spirit left her body?”

  “Are you serious?” I stared at him.

  “I’m just being honest, Daphne. It doesn’t make you a bad person to admit you have a touch of darkness inside you. We’re all just hanging out together, here in the morally ambiguous quagmire. You don’t need to be afraid of the darkness in yourself. Or in me. We’re in this together, right?”

  “Right,” I said. Because that was what I always said. But this time I didn’t feel it. In fact, I felt more alone than ever right now. Our favorite phrase, always us—what did it actually mean? Would we really always be us? Always the same? Always together?

  We finished our meal in silence. I left the tray outside our door. The hallway was deserted. No people, no trays, even, but the pocket door leading to Dr. Cerny’s suite was half-opened. I leaned out, peering into the darkness beyond. I couldn’t see a thing. It would only take a few seconds to run up the small stairs to the attic and check on Glenys on the monitors.

  “Come to bed.” In the open doorway, Heath’s hand settled on my shoulder. The other one snaked under my sweatshirt and around my bare waist. I tensed. When I turned, his face was tilted toward me, so close that I could smell the wine on his breath.

  “What about if something happened to her on the mountain?” I said. “What if she’s lost? Or hurt?”

  “Cerny’s a doctor. He’s not gunning for a lawsuit, I promise you that.”

  I thought of Jessica Kyung’s card. Her clipped voice on the phone. I would encourage you to go to our site.

  “I’m sure your friend is fine.” His fingers traced the outline of my ribs. “Come to be
d. We don’t have to do anything. I’ll give you a back rub.”

  I let him lead me back into the room. He lifted my sweatshirt over my head, then I stretched out on the comforter. He lay down beside me, molding his body to mine. He planted one kiss on my temple, but nothing more, then started kneading my knotted shoulders. I closed my eyes.

  I could feel my tension lifting, feel myself drifting. When I looked through the windows, the light outside had gone dusky purple, and Heath’s hand had slowed to a tickle that traveled the curve of my neck. I was so blissed out by the pill, the food, and his expert touch, I knew I wasn’t going to get up. I closed my eyes again, telling my body to wake up at ten.

  My internal clock must’ve been in good working order, because I woke at 9:58. I scrubbed away the grit in my eyes, letting them get adjusted to the dark. Only two minutes until the cameras went down. Perfect. I slipped out from under Heath’s arm and snagged a small pad and pen from my purse.

  Faint light from downstairs illuminated the hallway. Hopefully, Mr. Cellphone was still up, texting merrily away while his clueless wife slept. I moved closer to the stairs, flipped open the pad of paper, and jotted the message I’d formulated hours earlier.

  Mr. McAdam,

  I think one of the other patients, Glenys Sieffert, may have gone missing. I realize this may sound strange, but last night, I believe she was on the verge of hurting herself—maybe even jumping out her bedroom window. Now I can’t find her anywhere. I think she may be in trouble. I know you have a phone, I’ve seen it on the monitors (I apologize for the invasion of your privacy). Will you please call 911—ask the police to please come up here and make sure she’s okay? I swear I won’t mention who made the call.

  Thank you,

  Daphne Amos

  I ripped the note out of the pad, carefully folded it, and headed to the McAdams’ door. I slid the note under the door, then tiptoed to Glenys’s door. I paused, straining my ears, but there was nothing—no sounds, no light—so I returned to our room. Back in bed, I burrowed against Heath but couldn’t settle my scattershot pulse.

  I kept seeing Glenys, the way she looked the other night on the monitor. Poised on her window ledge, her nightgown rippling in the breeze, her face an etching of grief and despair.

  Heath was right, as it turned out. I did wonder if Chantal’s face looked the same the moment before she had died.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mr. Cleve let me skip school for Chantal’s funeral, even though it was only supposed to be for the eighth graders and up.

  “It’ll give you closure. Since you girls shared a room and all,” Mr. Cleve explained when he came to see how I was settling in at the new house. The word closure seemed like it didn’t fit in his mouth. It looked like somebody else had told him to say it. Probably the psychologist.

  I didn’t have a proper dress to wear to the service, so Mrs. Waylene, my new housemother, said I could go back to the brown brick house and look in the castoff closet there. I found a dark-green sweaterdress one of the Super Tramps had ditched and some maroon tights from Chantal’s drawer, and I changed in our old room. Her black clogs, still arranged under the bed, were too big for me, but I slid my feet in them anyway.

  When I got back, Mrs. Waylene made a clucking sound.

  “Should I not wear the clogs?” I asked.

  “No, honey. You look just great,” she said and went to call the rest of the girls.

  The group of us drove to Hollyhock Community Church in silence. They’d set up the white casket on some kind of stand that had been covered with a white cloth. Vases of plastic flowers and pots of greenery ringed the casket. I was pretty sure they’d gathered them from the houses at the ranch. I recognized a big potted palm Mrs. Bobbie kept in our old dining room.

  Mrs. Bobbie and the other house moms were bustling back in the fellowship hall, setting out deviled eggs and ham rolls and sugar cookies for after the service. Somebody said Chantal’s aunt and uncle were there, and there were a few grown-ups sitting in the pews who I didn’t recognize, but I couldn’t say for sure. As far as I knew, Omega’s story was the gospel truth: Chantal’s parents were dead, and she had been alone in the world. Part of me did hope her whole family was gone, so there would be no one to see me there, walking around in her clogs.

  The top half of the white casket was propped open, and the preacher quietly announced to all the kids that we were to view the body. Everybody was extra quiet and reverent and got in line without the usual rowdiness. Then we all filed down the aisle. The choir director was playing the piano, something really sad and pretty, and there was only a low murmur of the kids’ voices under that. When it was my turn to walk past the casket, I looked down at Chantal.

  She lay nestled in swaths of white satin, her eyes closed, hands folded over her chest. She had on a lot of foundation and even pencil on her eyebrows, which I’d never seen on her when she was alive. Her greenish hair had been curled and fanned out around her. She didn’t look alive, not at all. She looked more like a Chantal mannequin. A Chantal doll.

  The white satin made me think of Mrs. Bobbie and all the fabric she kept in bolts stacked around her room. I pictured her cutting a length of white satin and gently arranging it around Chantal, making sure she was safely tucked in for the long sleep ahead. The girl looked warm in there. Safe. Like she’d actually fallen straight from the top of the mountain down into the pillowy satin casket, her hair fanning out like an angel’s.

  She’d had a seizure—an epileptic seizure because she’d forgotten her medicine—and then she’d stumbled and fallen from a high rock ledge. It was nighttime and she’d wandered away from the campsite. Later, after I’d seen the psychologist, the police would blame Mr. Al, but Shellie told me it hadn’t been his fault. After everyone had gone back to their tents for bed, she and Tré had snuck out with him. They’d hiked up the gorge to smoke some weed, and that’s when Chantal had woken up and come looking for them.

  When she showed up, Mr. Al told Chantal to go back to her tent and go to bed. But she never made it. A parks search party had found her the next afternoon in a crevasse near the base of the falls. She was dead, but hadn’t been that way for long. That was the worst part. She’d lived a good long while after she hit the bottom.

  It took twenty-seven crew members from the Fire and Rescue to get her up. The doctors who examined her said she’d had a grand-mal seizure, then probably lost her footing. She’d tumbled over eighty feet to the bottom of the falls. Broken her neck and her back. Smashed the back of her skull to smithereens.

  Since I’d heard the news, I hadn’t been able to eat. My stomach had been in knots every day, and each night, as I drifted to sleep, I pictured Chantal lying at the bottom of the cliff, mangled and dying. I knew something no one else knew, that she’d had the seizure because she hadn’t taken her meds. And she hadn’t taken them because I’d stolen them.

  But at Mrs. Waylene’s house, in my new twin bed, there wasn’t anyone kicking my mattress, so I slept surprisingly well. Eventually, the stomachaches stopped too, and I got my appetite back. I liked Mrs. Waylene and her husband, Mr. Bob, and the other girls in the new house.

  All of it worried me, though. What kind of person could sleep so soundly, could be happy and even laugh, knowing what they had done? A monster, I guessed, which was what I had become.

  Inside the church, the pianist hunkered over the keys, playing with an extra measure of gusto. The tune was so melancholy and beautiful, tears pooled in my eyes. I realized I was gripping the edge of the casket.

  “It’s from Anastasia,” a girl next to me whispered. I’d never seen her before. It was possible she went to our school and she and Chantal had been friends, although I couldn’t remember seeing Chantal hanging out with anyone.

  “It was her favorite movie. She knew all the words,” the girl said.

  All the words in the whole movie or just the songs? I wanted to ask but didn’t. I’d had no idea Chantal liked Anastasia. We never watched movies
. Mrs. Bobbie thought they were a bad influence on us.

  “Did you live with her?” the girl asked.

  I nodded.

  “Did she ever talk about Cynthia? That’s me. Her cousin. My mama was trying to get her to come live with us, before she . . .” She nodded at the casket.

  I didn’t know what to say. My ears were ringing now, so loud I couldn’t hear the Anastasia song.

  “Hey, stop,” the girl said then.

  I looked down. My hand had stretched out into the white sea of satin and taken ahold of one of Chantal’s green-tinted curls. Alarmed, I snatched my hand back, then broke out of the line and ran, across the church, weaving my way through the throng of kids and adults, until I found a door. I pushed against it and burst out into the sunshine.

  I stood in a parking lot full of pickups and beat-up Cadillacs, dusted red from dirt roads. I blinked in the bright sun, trying to decide which direction to run. The church was a long way from the ranch and not all that close to town either, so my choices were limited. If I didn’t want to go back inside there, I would have to hide.

  I spun, looking around for a spot to duck under until the coast was clear. That’s when I saw them: Omega and Mr. Al, on the far end of the parking lot, standing in the shade of a mimosa tree that had lost all its fern-shaped leaves, so that only the brown seed pods remained, clinging to its spindly branches.

  Under the tree, Omega’s head was tilted up to Mr. Al’s. She wore a black off-the-shoulder dress. Where she’d gotten it, I couldn’t imagine; I’d never seen such an exotic thing in the closet. Mr. Al was dressed in a dark suit and tie, and his floppy hair was, for once, slicked back. He kept starting to reach out to touch her, then putting his hand back in his pocket. I thought of Mrs. Bobbie, busy in the church kitchen. She would be pissed if she could see the two of them, standing so close. Even I could feel the strange tension in the air.

  The wind blew, and the mimosa pods rattled like bones over their heads. Omega was talking loudly—the consonants rat-a-tatting like gunshots across the parking lot. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could tell she was upset. She shook her head violently, and then she started beating against Mr. Al’s chest with her fists. I couldn’t move. I was mesmerized. I’d forgotten all about touching dead Chantal’s hair and the sad, lovely piano music and her friendly cousin.