The Perfect Daughter

by D. J. Palmer

  A medical examiner working for the prosecution testified about the wounds to Rachel’s body, and Maria Descenza shared murder fantasies that she claimed to have written with Eve, which is why Penny has no memory of them. A doctor who never treated her testified that DID wasn’t a real diagnosis, and a terrible man named Vincent Rapino glared at her angrily from the witness stand. He looked like he wanted to kill her.

  Rapino told the jury that he and Rachel were going to get married and live happily ever after, until someone took her life. He said “someone” while glaring across the courtroom right at her, and there was nowhere for her to hide.

  Then the prosecution rested its case, and now it was Attorney Navarro’s turn to present the defense.

  He called eleven witnesses over five days in court. Mom, Jack, Ryan, and Annie all testified about her mental illness. They told stories of her life, including things about a cat, a rock, a girl named Ruby, and a boy named Troy. She remembers the day Troy came to the house, but only because she was so scared. He pointed at her and called her Chloe. He was so sure of it, too. Back then she didn’t know what was happening, but now she knows—she and Chloe are different but the same.

  Dr. Mitch testified that she has DID, and that DID is a real condition. He said it was possible she was in a dissociative state when she killed Rachel, and played videos of her saying things she has no memory of saying. He used the words “brief, transient psychosis,” and talked of her medications. He showed the jury a drawing she made as Chloe—a drawing she doesn’t remember making.

  She wishes the jury could climb into her mind, experience lost time the way she does. Then they’d believe, and they’d never want to go inside her head again. It’s so lonely and confusing in there. She wants to cry just thinking about it, but she knows the rule: don’t show any feelings.

  She does have a vague awareness of being in the apartment on the night of Rachel’s murder, that knowing feeling at work, and looking out the window at a figure standing across the street. She checked again, and the figure was gone. Somehow she knows that figure was familiar to her. But who was it?

  Now it’s her turn to talk. It is sweltering in the courtroom, no air-conditioning, a hard to breathe kind of hot. Sweat beads up her neck and drips down her back. The jury will think she’s nervous and they’ll be wrong. She’s not nervous. She’s utterly terrified. She wants Eve, the knowing tells her that she’d handle this better, or Ruby, but they won’t come. For reasons she doesn’t understand, they’ve abandoned her when she needs them the most. She looks back at her family. Jack sends her a thumbs-up sign. She looks at her attorney. He does the same.

  The time has come to finally tell her story.

  What little she knows of it.

  Attorney Navarro, dressed in a sharp-looking blue suit, rises to his feet and says, “Your Honor, the defense calls Penny Isabella Francone to the stand.”

  A murmur rises from the gallery that stops as suddenly as it starts with one strike of the judge’s gavel.

  Attorney Navarro, too, has sweat on his forehead, and the collar of his shirt is stained with sweat as well.

  This is a moment she thinks she’ll never forget—the tap of her shoes against the carpeted floor; the heat on the back of her head not only from the still air but from all the eyes watching her as she gets settled in the witness box.

  “Please stand,” says a clerk.

  She stands.

  “Raise your right hand. Do you promise that the testimony you shall give in the case before this court shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do,” she says softly.

  Attorney Navarro starts asking her questions. “Please state your full name for the record.”

  Her heart is beating like a bass drum, so hard and fast she can’t believe the microphone isn’t picking up the sound. She says, “Penny Isabella Francone.” She answers each of Attorney Navarro’s questions one by one, mindful to keep her emotions under control just as she’d been told.

  “I live at Edgewater State Hospital.”

  “The court ordered me there.”

  “I’ve been accused of murder.”

  “I’ve been accused of killing Rachel Boyd.”

  “Rachel Boyd is my birth mother.”

  “Yes, I remember exchanging messages on Facebook with my birth mother.”

  Those messages are put on a screen, and she confirms the ones she wrote and what Rachel wrote back.

  “Yes, she invited me to come to her apartment and asked that I come alone.”

  “I remember driving to Rachel’s on the night of the murder.”

  “I took the car without asking. I had my driver’s license.”

  “No, I don’t remember getting into any arguments with Rachel. I don’t remember seeing or talking to Rachel that night.”

  “I don’t know if someone else was in the apartment with me or not.”

  “I don’t remember standing in the middle of Rachel’s living room, covered in blood.”

  “I don’t know if I checked my body for cuts.”

  “I can’t say what my state of mind was, or if I was confused.”

  “I don’t remember hearing sirens or going to the window to look outside.”

  “I sort of have a feeling that I saw someone familiar-looking standing across the street under a streetlamp, but I don’t remember telling that to anybody. Maybe an alter has that memory.”

  “The next memory I have after going into Rachel’s apartment is my mother showing me a pepperoni pizza she bought for me even though I don’t like pepperoni pizza.”

  “Yes, I realize that was a year and a half later.”

  “I think that’s because an alter of mine named Eve took over to protect me, and she had all the memories of the arrest and Edgewater, not me.”

  “I don’t remember telling Dr. McHugh I wasn’t alone.”

  “I don’t remember telling him I was scared about having my head put into a bucket full of ammonia.”

  “I think I was talking about the night of the murder when I said those things, but I don’t really know.”

  “I don’t recall ever having my head forced into a bucket full of ammonia.”

  Attorney Navarro asks more questions and she answers them. He looks pleased.

  The judge suggests a recess before the prosecution starts their cross-examination. Everyone agrees. Attorney Navarro talks to her at the counsel table, drinking water because it’s so hot. He takes his jacket off to cool off, and unbuttons his shirt sleeves. She watches him wipe the sweat off his brow and forearms using a cloth towel. He doesn’t have an extra towel, but he offers to get her some paper ones from the bathroom. Her gaze is locked on him, and she can’t look away. She stares blankly, nods her head, answering his question, but she feels funny now. Not faint from the heat, just … funny. Off.

  “Do you need something to eat? Want a Coke? Anything?”

  The last word repeats, then fades out until she can’t hear what’s being asked of her at all. Attorney Navarro’s lips are moving, but she hears only a loud ringing in her ears, a high-pitched piercing sound, and soon her head begins to throb, powerful and pounding, like a sledgehammer thumping inside her skull.

  The strangest sensation washes over her. She feels her body become weightless, but her eyes are heavy, and she fights off a strong urge to close them. She feels dizzy, as if she’s stood up too quickly. Then a sensation like she’s heading into a tunnel, with a point of light up ahead that beckons to her. The feeling is quite strange, but vaguely familiar. The knowing voice returns to tell her that the vanishing has begun.

  Oh no, she thinks.

  And that’s the last conscious thought she has.

  CHAPTER 51

  JACK, SWEATING FROM THE HEAT, his long hair looking damp as if he’d showered not long ago, leaned over to his mother and whispered, “Something is wrong.”

  Grace agreed. Every day of the trial had been a blessing as well as
a curse, because every day Grace got to spend time with Penny. She didn’t understand why Eve had let Penny take the stand; Mitch couldn’t explain it either.

  “Edgewater is Eve, and outside its walls is Penny” was the best he could offer.

  But now it wasn’t Eve, or Penny, or Chloe, or any alter Grace knew of who’d taken the witness stand for her cross. When the judge resumed the trial, Penny didn’t immediately move when she was called back to the stand. Navarro had to guide her to her seat, and she seemed utterly out of sorts getting settled in the box.

  Grace glanced back at Mitch, who sat two rows behind her. He looked puzzled. Her eyes scanned the back of the courtroom, and they settled on Vincent Rapino on one side of the gallery, and Maria Descenza, with her mother Barbara accompanying, on the other. Their presence here was all it took to make Grace’s skin crawl, but there was nothing she could do about it. Both Vince and Maria were as free as anyone to attend these sweltering-hot proceedings. No doubt they had come to court to hear Penny’s testimony. But was it Penny who was about to testify? Grace wasn’t so sure, and judging by Mitch’s baffled expression, neither was he.

  A vacant look invaded Penny’s sweet eyes, as if she were under a hypnotist’s spell, and her whole demeanor changed. In what Grace could only describe as an Alice In Wonderland moment, either the witness stand had grown larger, or her daughter had shrunk four sizes smaller.

  Attorney Johnson began her cross.

  “Ms. Francone, you say you had no memory of going to Rachel Boyd’s house on the night of the murder. Tell me, what do you remember from that night?”

  To Grace, it remained unclear if Penny could hear or understand what was being asked of her, and those were concerns the prosecutor appeared to share.

  “Are you okay, Ms. Francone?” Attorney Johnson asked. Her tone was harsh, unaccommodating.

  “I want to go home,” came Penny’s strangled response. From a distance, Grace could see tears well in her daughter’s eyes.

  “You’re in a court of law. You can leave when court is adjourned for the day.”

  “I want to be with Mommy.” Penny’s voice sounded tiny and sad.

  “Please don’t offer commentary. Answer my questions directly.”

  Attorney Johnson showed Penny no compassion. She was there for one purpose only—to put the witness away for life. To win.

  “What is the last thing you remember?”

  “I was in my bedroom looking at the book my daddy gave me. The book I loved. The water made me want to take a bath so I asked Mommy if I could take a bath. So Mommy put me in the bathtub and she left to go talk to Daddy. They were fighting.”

  “Your mother put you in the bathtub?”

  Navarro was on his feet in a flash. “Objection, Your Honor! This is badgering my witness!”

  “Your Honor, I’m just following up on the witness’s own statements with a logical next question. I find it curious that a then sixteen-year-old girl has her mother put her in the bathtub. I suspect she’s not telling the truth and hasn’t been telling the truth since the start of her testimony. This is helping to prove my case.”

  Grace thought otherwise. This girl on the witness stand was being perfectly honest, and Lord help her, she thought she knew why.

  “Overruled,” said the judge. “You may proceed.”

  “What is your mother’s name?”

  “Objection!” Attorney Navarro rose to his feet again in a huff. “Relevancy. We know this defendant’s origin story.”

  “Overruled,” said Judge Lockhart. “I’d like to hear the answer, but Counselor, this is your cross, so please, keep it under control.”

  “I’m not sure I can, Your Honor,” Attorney Johnson warned, looking frazzled and uncertain. “Can you please tell us your mother’s name?”

  Silence.

  Grace’s heart thundered in her chest. Jack, Ryan, and Annie also had looks of deep concern.

  “Can you please tell us your name?” Attorney Johnson said in a much kinder voice.

  “Isabella,” she said softly. “My name is Isabella Boyd, and I want to go be with Mommy now.”

  CHAPTER 52

  GRACE GASPED, ALONG WITH everyone around her. Once again, Judge Lockhart banged her gavel hard.

  “Order, order in my courtroom,” she demanded.

  “I want to go home,” Isabella lamented sorrowfully in a shaky voice that portended tears.

  “If you’re Isabella Boyd, where do you reside?”

  Her daughter did not answer. With a look of annoyance, Attorney Johnson placed her hands on her hips and repeated her question in a terse tone like she was scolding her.

  “I said where do you reside? Please answer.”

  Grace understood the purpose now. Johnson was using language a child wouldn’t understand, but Penny—no, not Penny, Isabella—looked bewildered and scared. She had no idea what was being asked of her.

  “Where do you live?” Attorney Johnson said, sounding flustered that the trap she’d set hadn’t sprung.

  “I live with Mommy,” said Isabella.

  “In what town?”

  “In Lynn.”

  Grace’s fingers dug into her thighs. She could see Navarro shifting uneasily in his seat. He knew his client was in trouble, deep trouble, but he had no control now, this wasn’t his witness, and his words of warning to Grace about putting Penny on the stand came barreling back at her. Grace was stunned, unsure how to feel. She worried for her daughter, but she also desperately wanted to know what book she’d been reading that she seemed to love so much.

  * * *

  Mitch had his phone out, hidden in his lap so the court officer wouldn’t see it. He wanted to record everything being said, because now it was Isabella addressing the court. Something had triggered a switch, but what? And why to Isabella? The demeanor was similar to the dissociative states he’d observed. Quiet. Dreamy. Childlike.

  He was right: she had switched to a new dissociative state in Edgewater several times, and they were slow and careful transitions to the little girl, Isabella Boyd. In those sessions, it had been the primary self, emerging like a butterfly from a chrysalis, bit by bit, and now, here in the courtroom of all places, the whole of the creature had at last appeared.

  Mitch pondered the implications, and the possibilities got his blood tingling. He thought of Chloe. If she’d used advanced materials, acrylics or oil paints, to create her work, she might have presented at a more advanced age. The crayons, however, reminded her of the earliest days of her artistic pursuits and for that reason she presented much younger, with memories limited to that specific time period of her life. What did Isabella have for memories to choose from? A very limited supply, Mitch realized.

  Then it came to him, a stunning conclusion that tilted his world.

  Penny was the girl who’d gone to school, gotten an education, learned to read and write, gained all variety of skills, attained a host of expected developmental milestones and passed those along to her alters. Isabella, poor sweet child, had remained locked away like a prisoner in Penny’s mind, trapped in something akin to a state of suspended animation. Isabella had gone into hiding as a four-year-old girl who’d been abandoned in a park, and a four-year-old girl she had remained.

  She hid to escape some sort of abuse. But what exactly had Isabella endured? And, perhaps more importantly, who was the perpetrator?

  Sweating profusely, Attorney Navarro shot back to his feet. “Your Honor, we need a recess! My client clearly isn’t well.”

  “Your Honor, I admit this is a bit … unplanned,” said Attorney Johnson uneasily, “but I do have the right to cross-examine the witness and see where it goes. To my mind, this appears to be very relevant to my case.”

  “Proceed, but I’m shortening your rope, Attorney Johnson.”

  “I know about rope,” Isabella spoke up. “Daddy used rope to tie my hands when he was mad at Mommy.”

  “What do you mean, when he was mad at Mommy?” Johnson asked.


  “I demand a recess,” Navarro barked loudly.

  Lockhart’s expression hardened. “You may have enjoyed a military career before you became an attorney, Mr. Navarro, but here in my courtroom, you do not outrank me. You may ask for a recess, but I alone will make that determination.”

  Navarro slumped back into his seat, so apoplectic about the turn of events that he slammed his fist gavel-like on the counsel table. Judge Lockhart did not take kindly to his behavior.

  “That will do, Counselor,” she snapped at him. “One more outburst like that and I’ll consider a contempt charge.”

  “Do you need to take a break?” Judge Lockhart asked the witness.

  “I don’t have to stop if you don’t want me to,” Isabella answered politely.

  “Good. I’m curious now,” Attorney Johnson said.

  “I think we all are,” Judge Lockhart concurred. “Proceed.”

  “You say your daddy tied up your hands?” Johnson continued.

  “Yes,” Isabella answered.

  “Who is your daddy?”

  “Objection!” Navarro shouted. “Your Honor, we are making a mockery of these proceedings. This is a murder trial!”

  “I know what this trial is about, Attorney Navarro,” Judge Lockhart shot back. “You needn’t remind me—though it appears I need to remind you that it’s not your turn anymore. The prosecution has a right as set forth in our rules of law to question her witness now in a manner she sees fit. And if she wants this young woman to name her father, then by all means, I’d like to hear the answer.”

  Navarro slumped back into his seat. He looked around the courtroom, as if in search of a fire alarm to pull. Sweat rained down his face. He took off his suit jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and dabbed his brow dry with the towel.