When she left, it was all I could do not to fall apart; but I didn’t have time. She was immediately replaced by a penlight-wielding doctor who asked me questions about my appetite and other wildly mundane details, which I answered calmly with a careful tongue. And then he left, and I was offered some food, and one of the staff—a counselor? A nurse?—showed me the unit. It was quieter than I imagined a psych ward would be, and with fewer obvious psychos. A couple of kids were quietly reading. One watched TV. Another talked with a friend. They looked up at me when I passed by, but otherwise, I went unacknowledged.
When I was eventually led back to the bedroom, I was shocked to find my mother in it.
Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed what a mess she was. Her clothes were unwrinkled. Her skin was still flawless. Not a single hair was out of place. But hopelessness trampled her posture and fear dulled her eyes. She was holding it together, but just barely.
She was holding it together for me.
I wanted to hug her and shake her at the same time. But I just stood there, cemented to the floor.
She rushed up to hug me. I let her, but my arms were chained to my sides and I couldn’t hug her back.
She pulled back and smoothed the hair from my face. Studied my eyes. “I am so sorry, Mara.”
“Really.” My voice was flat.
I couldn’t have hurt her more if I had smacked her. “How could you say that?” she asked.
“Because I woke up in a psychiatric unit today.” The words were bitter in my mouth.
She backed up and sat on the bed, which had been freshly made since I was last in it. She shook her head, and her lacquer-black hair swung with the movement. “When you left the hospital yesterday, I thought you were tired and going home. So when the police called?” Her voice cracked, and she held her hand up to her throat. “Your father was shot, and then to pick up the phone and hear the police say, ‘Mrs. Dyer, we’re calling about your daughter?’” A tear fell from one of her eyes and she quickly wiped it away. “I thought you’d been in a car accident. I thought you were dead.”
My mother wrapped her arms around her waist and hunched forward. “I was so terrified I dropped the phone. Daniel picked it up. He explained what was happening—that you were at the police station, hysterical. He stayed with your father and I rushed there to get you but you were wild, Mara,” she said, and looked at me. “Wild. I never thought . . .” Her voice trailed off and she seemed to be staring right through me. “You were screaming that Jude is alive.”
I did something brave, then. Or stupid. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
I decided to trust her. I looked my mother in the eye and said, without any trace of doubt in my expression or voice, “He is.”
“How would that be possible, Mara?” My mother’s voice was toneless.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, because I didn’t have a clue. “But I saw him.” I sat down next to her on the bed, but not close.
My mom pushed her hair away from her face. “Could it have been a hallucination?” She avoided my eyes. “Like the other times? Like the earrings?”
I had asked myself that same question. I’d seen things before—my grandmother’s earrings at the bottom of my bathtub, even though they were still in my ears. Classroom walls collapsing around me, maggots squirming in my food.
And I had seen Claire. I saw her in mirrors. I heard her voice.
“You two kids have fun.”
I saw Jude in mirrors. I heard his voice, too.
“You need to take your mind off this place.”
But now I knew that I had heard them say those same words twice. Not just in mirrors at home. In the asylum.
I didn’t imagine those words. I remembered them. From the night of the collapse.
But at the precinct it was different. Jude spoke to an officer. I strained to remember what he said.
“Can you tell me where I can report a missing person? I think I’m lost.”
I never heard him say those words before. They were new. And he said them before he touched me.
He touched me. I felt him.
That was not a hallucination. He was real. He was alive, and he was here.
3
MY MOTHER WAS STILL WAITING FOR AN answer to her question, so I gave her one. I shook my head fiercely. “No.” Jude was alive. He wasn’t a hallucination. I was sure.
She sat there immobile for just a beat too long. Then, finally, she smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Daniel’s here to see you,” she said and stood. She bent to kiss the crown of my head just as the door opened, revealing my older brother. The two of them shared a glance, but as Daniel entered the room he expertly masked his concern.
His thick black hair was uncharacteristically messy and dark circles ringed his dark eyes. He smiled at me—it was too easy, too quick—and leaned down to wrap me in a hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said as he squeezed. I couldn’t quite hug him back either.
Then he let go and added too lightly, “And I can’t believe you took my keys. Where’s my house key, by the way?”
My forehead creased. “What?”
“My house key. It’s missing from my key ring. Which you took before driving my car to the police station.”
“Oh.” I had no memory of taking it, and no memory of what I did with it. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Not like you were getting into any trouble or anything,” he said, squinting at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you the side-eye.”
“Well, it looks like you’re having a stroke,” I said, unable to help my smile. Daniel flashed one of his own—a real one, this time.
“I almost had a heart attack when Mom almost had a heart attack,” he said, his voice quiet. Serious. “I’m— I’m happy you’re okay.”
I looked around the room. “Okay is a relative term, I think.”
“Touche.”
“I’m surprised they’re letting you see me,” I said. “The way the psychiatrist was acting, I was starting to think I was on lockdown or something.”
Daniel shrugged his shoulders and shifted his weight, obviously uncomfortable.
Which made me cautious. “What?”
He sucked in his lips.
“Out with it, Daniel.”
“I’m supposed to try to convince you to stay.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “For how long?”
He didn’t say.
“How long?”
“Indefinitely.”
My face grew hot. “Mom didn’t have the guts to tell me herself?”
“That’s not it,” he said, sitting down in the chair beside the bed. “She thinks you don’t trust her.”
“She’s the one who doesn’t trust me. She hasn’t since . . .” Since the collapse, I almost said. I didn’t finish my sentence, but judging by Daniel’s expression, I didn’t need to. “She doesn’t believe anything I say,” I finished. I hadn’t meant to sound like such a child, but I couldn’t help it. I half-expected Daniel to call me out but he just gave me the same look he always gave me. He was my brother. My best friend. I hadn’t changed to him.
And that made me want to tell him everything. About the asylum, Rachel, Mabel, my teacher. All of it.
If I told him calmly—not panicked, in a police station, but rationally, after a full night’s sleep—if I explained
