by D. J. Palmer
Aside from your defense, the biggest worry we had was money. Navarro was good, but he wasn’t cheap. Not to make you feel worse, but Mom had to take out an equity loan on the restaurant to afford the forty-thousand-dollar retainer. And that was not nearly going to cover the rest of the charges she’d accrued. I’d offered to drop out of school, but Mom put her foot down.
Ryan, though, he didn’t give her a choice.
That August, a few weeks after your arrest, Ryan was supposed to go back to Northeastern for his senior year and start taking those law school classes he’d been dreaming about since his high school days as a star on the debate team. Getting accepted into the PlusJD program—Northeastern’s prestigious fast track to law school—was no easy feat, and I thought he couldn’t wait to begin. Instead he dropped out, quit, no word of warning, just announced that he wasn’t going back for his last year of school. He wouldn’t say why.
Mom had a meltdown, of course. It was hard enough having you living in Edgewater, but add to that a son working the pizza ovens at Big Frank’s, following Dad’s footsteps instead of his own dreams—it broke her heart. But Ryan’s an adult, he can make his own decisions, and Mom wasn’t about to deny him employment. The restaurant is a family business, after all. Since he’s been working there, Ryan’s become the general manager, and he’s done a good job of it, too, though business is down because of the notoriety around your case.
The whole family has suffered, Penny, and we’re not any closer to understanding you or what you did not for lack of trying, though. Since I’m something of a film buff, I’ve watched all the movies I could about multiple personality disorder. The Three Faces of Eve, which put Joanne Woodward on the starlet map. Funny enough, your Eve alter came out even though you’ve never seen the film. Sybil, a story we all know, but maybe more have seen the movie than read the book. You were even dubbed “The Sybil of Swampscott.” Cruel, I thought, but people don’t understand DID, and sadly Hollywood doesn’t do a great job explaining it.
More recently I watched that movie Split, from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan. James McAvoy gave a good sense of what having a chaotic and disorganized mind might feel like, but that’s not the mind of a cold and calculating psychopath.
That’s what Palumbo thinks you are. Remorseless. Ruthless. Totally lacking empathy. Faking your alters to do as you please. And maybe he’s right. Maybe you’re more like a heartless killer than you are Kevin from Split with his twenty-three personalities.
One thing I know for sure—Edgewater is the sort of place where you can’t get better, but you sure can get a whole lot worse.
CHAPTER 6
FROM THE OUTSIDE, EDGEWATER State Hospital—approached via a series of wide, tree-lined streets—looked exactly like a prison. A tall chain-link fence topped with rows of razor wire enclosed a series of three-story square brick structures Houses, they were called, with thick iron rods fronting dingy rectangular windows. Inside one of those second-floor windows was the room where Grace’s now-seventeen-year-old daughter slept.
Good as it would be to set eyes on Penny, it would be Eve whom she’d visit today. It was always Eve in here.
Since her daughter’s arrest, Grace’s harried days were filled with running the restaurant as well as meeting with Navarro whenever developments required her attention, or her pocketbook. Soon, maybe today, she’d have a sit-down with Dr. Mitchell McHugh, Penny’s new doctor here, to discuss strategy—not only for her daughter’s treatment, but for the upcoming trial as well.
She was glad Dr. Palumbo had finally resigned. Good riddance to him. Her primary hope was that Dr. McHugh would not only believe DID warranted its own classification in the DSM, but that her daughter had the condition. While Palumbo was out of her life for good, Grace would see the ghost of him soon enough. The assistant district attorney, Jessica Johnson, had an expert witness prepared to testify that DID wasn’t a valid diagnosis, and that Penny suffered from a severe antisocial personality disorder.
Would McHugh be an ally or an adversary? She’d find out soon enough.
Trudging across a parking lot turned scorching hot under an unrelenting July sun, Grace made her way along a curved walkway leading to the secured entrance of Abbot House. Weeds sprouted up through the many cracks in the paving stones. In her mind, everything about this godforsaken place, from its decrepit exterior with its chipped brick and nonexistent landscaping to its bile-yellow interior walls, was cracked. Jack would say if you weren’t crazy when you came in, that’s what you’d be when you got out.
My daughter is here … my girl … my heart.
Off in the distance, Grace spied the tops of two other units poking up from behind Abbot House. When taken together, these three buildings and the series of tunnels that connected them comprised the entirety of the Edgewater complex. One building housed the men, another the women, and a third, the oldest building of the bunch, provided residency for the most violent, volatile, and difficult-to-manage patients. The names of these structures—Crane, Hartwell, Abbot—seemed fitting for a college campus, but these weren’t dorms. The rooms were cells.
At the visitors’ entrance, Grace pressed a round door buzzer so that someone peering through a camera mounted above her head could grant her entry. There were five people in the spare and uninviting waiting room, none of whom she recognized. Good. Nobody, including the paid employees, wanted to be here, so eye contact and small talk were avoided at all costs.
Accustomed to the routine, Grace handed her ID to a stone-faced woman working the screening desk in a cubby-sized space secured behind Plexiglas. After completing the check-in procedure, Grace stored her purse in an empty locker, closing it with a lock she’d brought from home. An armed guard emerged from behind a heavy steel door secured with a biometric apparatus and keypad. Grace found it ironic that the “hospital”—and she used that term lightly—had elected to upgrade their security systems before they addressed the insufferable “patient” accommodations—“patient” being another word she used lightly.
Grace endured yet another pat-down before clearing the metal detector and finally gaining entry to a long, windowless corridor that had the stale smell of a bus station. Two armed guards escorted her to a private visiting room that was no more than twelve feet from door to wall.
Normally lawyers used these sparsely furnished rooms to confer in private with their clients, but the overcrowding necessitated a creative use of space. Grace preferred these private quarters whenever she could reserve one. Her daughter didn’t behave as well in a crowd.
A powerful ammonia aroma hit Grace with force the moment she set foot inside. The miasma of harsh chemical clung to the air, stinging her eyes and making them water. What the heck happened in here? she wondered. A number of disgusting possibilities necessitating fumigation flittered in and out of her mind.
Resting on top of a table in the middle of the room was a pizza, steaming inside a corrugated box (the sort Grace could have assembled blindfolded). Opening the box, Grace observed tiny ovals of pepperoni spread out evenly across a molten landscape of bubbling cheese. Her daughter had grown up hating pepperoni, even disliked the word, but it wasn’t Penny who’d be eating this lunch. It was Eve, and that girl happened to love, simply love, meat on her cheese.
Even though Grace owned a pizzeria, she’d preordered this meal from a local establishment. The rules about food were clear and reinforced with ample signage:
All takeout food must come from an approved restaurant.
You cannot use a patient’s name on a food order.
You cannot order food with bones, beverages, chopsticks, glass, plastic or paper bags, or metal of any kind (including aluminum foil).
Beverages may be purchased in the shared visitation room.
You must clean up the room after a visit.
Grace had her own set of rules for these visits:
Don’t talk about her father. It always upsets her.
Try to smile.
Don’t talk a
bout the case.
Don’t give her any reason to become more hostile.
But how could her daughter not be angry in a place like this? Everywhere she went, every corridor she traveled, mournful wails and constant chatter ricocheted off the concrete walls, blending into one great squawking like an aviary out of a nightmare. This was no place for a young woman to be, but here she was.
The door soon opened. Grace took in a breath and held it. This was the moment when hope dies: first contact, those initial few seconds that always gave way to disappointment. Once a week Grace would make the hour-long drive to Edgewater, each time praying to see Penny’s guileless eyes beaming back at her, only to encounter the angry, cold stare of Eve.
Her daughter stomped into the room, took a whiff or two of the ammonia-heavy air, and paused. She wrapped her arms around her chest, suddenly looking unsure, and tottered on her feet. The change in her bearing happened in an instant, leaving Grace utterly perplexed. She considered the girl standing before her, so unsteady that she seemed drugged.
They’ve overmedicated her, Grace fumed.
From memory, Grace recalled the drugs her daughter was taking: 225 milligrams of venlafaxine for anxiety and depression along with some dosage of lurasidone, often given as a stabilizer or antipsychotic for teens with bipolar depression. In her daughter’s case, these were mood boosters, not treatments for psychosis. The grim fact remained that no medication on the market specifically treated dissociative identity disorder.
Physically, nothing appeared amiss. Her daughter was dressed in her usual attire, something akin to dark green hospital scrubs. She’d lost weight in here, and the uniform had become so loose it was as though she’d slipped on a garbage bag.
Her daughter shuffled forward in a daze. Up close, she looked even more hollowed out.
Damn medications. Damn doctors. Maybe this McHugh fellow will actually have a clue.
She hadn’t scheduled a meeting with McHugh for today, but seeing her daughter so off-kilter made her think she couldn’t delay.
Grace waved away the correctional officer, or CO for short, a man named Blackwood, according to the nameplate pinned to his shirt. Blackwood’s close-set eyes narrowed, and he smiled tightly, but made no protest. Except for Crane House, the rest of Edgewater was a medium-security facility, affording Grace some privacy during these visits. She closed the door.
“Are you okay, Eve? You don’t seem yourself.”
Thinking back to that night so long ago in the police station, aware how triggering it could be, Grace did not hesitate to call Penny by another’s name. Except this wasn’t Eve whom she’d helped guide into a seat at the table, and it wasn’t Penny either. This child was an empty slate, with dead eyes and the expressionless face of a mannequin, giving no clues as to who might occupy the consciousness within.
Grace saw her daughter blink several times in rapid succession before touching her head, as if suffering from a headache.
What the heck did they give her?
It occurred to her that Dr. McHugh may have in fact caused the problem, prescribing new meds or doses on a whim, trying to make his mark without first knowing the patient or the case. This place was so backward it made Grace fume with anger.
Lifting the lid on the pizza box, Grace freed a cheesy scent that battled back the lingering aroma of ammonia.
“What’s this?”
Out of nowhere, it was Penny’s gentle voice asking the question, not Eve’s harsher cadence.
A knot of concern formed at the base of Grace’s neck before the shock and panic set in.
Oh no … what if…?
“It’s pizza, darling. Your favorite.”
“I hate pepperoni,” she said, sounding perplexed that her mother of all people could have forgotten.
Oh no … no … no …
The rest of the switch took place before Grace’s eyes. There was a slight rounding of her daughter’s shoulders as her body sagged forward, and as it did, Penny’s familiar tight-lipped worried expression came into being.
“Where am I?” Penny asked.
Alarms rang out in Grace’s head. She couldn’t speak, didn’t know how to begin.
“What is this place, Mom?” Penny’s head moved as if on a swivel, darting this way and that, taking in her surroundings: the drab concrete walls, the scuffed-up table, the dirty floor, baffled by it all. She tugged on her uniform, her hands now trembling.
“What’s going on here?” Her gentle voice shook with rising panic.
Her daughter wasn’t drugged. She was in the middle of a switch from Eve back to Penny, a switch that had been triggered for reasons unknown.
She doesn’t know. God help her, Grace thought. Penny doesn’t know what happened.
From Penny’s perspective, she’d come back from being Eve into a strange place, with no idea where she was, no memory of how she’d come to be here. A fugue state—that was how Grace had explained it to Navarro, who had asked about the memory gaps that occurred when one alter took over from another. The personalities were so distinct that some specialists speculated there wasn’t any room for shared memory.
“Where … am I?” Penny asked again.
“Let me get Dr. McHugh,” Grace said, her anxiety pulsing like a throbbing wound.
If she knew the truth …
“Who is Dr. McHugh?”
Grace had to think fast how to respond. “He’s the person looking after you,” she said.
And he’s going to have a hell of a first week on the job.
“Looking after me? Where?” Again, Penny tugged on her uniform, which must have seemed so foreign to her.
“You’re in a hospital,” Grace said, still reeling.
“For what? Am I hurt?” Penny surveyed her arms, her hands, looking for signs of injury, finding none.
“No, darling. Nothing like that. It’s not that kind of hospital.”
“Then what? Mom, what am I doing here?” Desperation leaked into her daughter’s voice. She clutched her sides tightly, as if holding herself together. “Please … please…” Tears seeped into her eyes. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Eve had never been a welcome member of the family, but Grace found herself desperately missing that girl’s brash bravado and cool confidence.
You can’t tell her, not now, not without guidance.
As much as Grace had prayed for this moment, for Penny’s return, she wasn’t at all prepared for her sudden appearance.
CHAPTER 7
“WHY AM I HERE, Mom?”
Mom … that’s what Penny always called her, not Mother.
Sinking to her knees, in that pious position, Penny tugged urgently on her hair, one clump clutched in each hand, as if doing so could somehow pull the answer from her head. Bright color flooded her cheeks, red as a warning. Her mouth quivered before thick tears rained down.
“Relax, sweetheart,” Grace said, stepping forward with the tentativeness of a rancher approaching a wild colt. She knew any effort to calm her would be in vain.
In response, Penny rose to her feet to face the wall behind her and began pawing frantically at the concrete as if to dig her way out.
Her futile attempt at escape was blessedly short-lived. Turning to face the only exit, Penny squared off with two guards who had appeared, summoned from the ether. One was CO Blackwood, who moments ago had escorted Penny to his room. Grace remembered his dimpled chin and those narrowly spaced eyes. She didn’t know the name of his heavier-set companion, but both he and Blackwood lurked in the doorway, impassively watching the situation escalate. They had their guns holstered, while other implements used for command and control: handcuffs, sprays, Tasers, maybe chemical restraints—were secured inside the leather pockets and holders of their utility belts.
To Grace’s utter astonishment, Penny held her ground, eyeing her adversaries with an uncharacteristic fiery stare. When it became evident that these professional guards weren’t going to be intimidated by a young girl, Penny’s arm
s fell limply to her sides as if accepting defeat. A flash of hope passed through Grace—perhaps this was an act of surrender. Then, without warning, Penny darted forward, generating a surprising burst of speed for such a short distance. She slammed into Blackwood, bouncing backward as though the man were made of rubber.
The larger of the pair came barreling into the room, a determined stare on his stern face. Blackwood followed him in, and the ensuing takedown was effortless, not a movement wasted, the outcome never really in doubt. CO Blackwood took hold of one of Penny’s wrists, and with his palm pressed firmly against her shoulder, brought her arm back until she fell forward and facedown onto the floor. She hit the ground hard, striking her head on the unforgiving cement surface with a thud.
“You’re hurting her!” Grace shrieked.
Penny groaned but couldn’t clutch her injured head because the other guard had violently wrenched her hands behind her back and was attempting to click the handcuffs in place. Resisting as best she could, Penny grunted while straining to pull her arm away. It wasn’t until Blackwood unclipped his baton that Grace intervened, latching on to the man’s beefy shoulders with two hands and turning her fingers into talons as she tried to pry him off her daughter. She was no match for the man’s muscle, though, and to Grace’s horror, the baton came up to shoulder height, ready for a strike.
As she opened her mouth to scream, a stern male voice crackled from the direction of the open door.
“Drop it this instant!”
Grace turned her attention to the doorway, where she saw a gentleman with a shock of silver hair atop his head, his handsome face partially obscured by a trim beard speckled with brushstrokes of gray. He strode into the room carrying the authority of an Old West sheriff, eyes burning like two embers.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked of CO Blackwood. “Are you seriously considering striking her with that baton?”