While I was spritzing my face with an atomizer Stan came out of the house. He was wearing his golfing outfit—a Ralph Lauren shirt and khaki shorts—and I remembered that he and Peter had had a golfing date. Seeing his skinny legs and knee-high socks I realized how ridiculous Laurel’s fears were. I felt kind of sorry for Stan.
I dried my face and put on my sunglasses and got out of the car. Stan came up right away to help me with Chloe’s car seat and carried it to the door. What a nice guy, I thought. He really didn’t deserve a crazy, suspicious wife. I wanted to do something to help, so when we got to the door I told him I was worried about Laurel. I told him all about the jumper story and how she’d been talking about something being wrong with Chloë and that I was afraid she might have “internalized” the story.
Stan listened to it all very seriously, his head bowed, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, poor guy. When I was done he looked me right in the eyes (although since I still had my sunglasses on it was more like he was looking a little to the right of my eyes) and he touched my arm. “Thank you for telling me this, Daphne,” he said. “I’ve been worried about her too. She—she has a history.”
“She told me,” I said, so he’d know he wasn’t betraying Laurel’s trust. “She said she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.”
He smiled, but it was a really sad smile. “That’s what she tells people. But her diagnosis is more serious that that. She has BPD—borderline personality disorder.”
“Oh!” I said, wondering if that was really worse. I don’t know anything about borderline personality disorder, but the word borderline sounds kind of scary, like being balanced on the ledge of a tall building. “I didn’t know.”
“She’s really good at hiding it,” he said, looking away. “You wouldn’t guess, for instance, that she’s tried to kill herself twice.”
“She told me taking those pills was an accident,” I said.
“And cutting her wrists, did she say that was an accident too?”
That really shocked me. “Why would someone like Laurel try to kill herself? She’s so beautiful and smart and . . .” I was going to say rich but stopped myself and said, “and so confident.”
Stan smiled, but sadly. “That’s what I thought when I first met her, but then I realized that it was all a show. It’s part of her sickness. She can seem like a totally different person because when she’s sick she is a totally different person. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure who the real Laurel is. Sometimes I think there is no real Laurel.”
Which really scared me, because if there’s no real Laurel, who the hell have I been friends with all these weeks?
Chapter Eight
I had planned to drive to Crantham, but when Billie comes to pick up Chloe she tells me she’s already arranged to have a guard meet me at the back gate.
“I thought you’d want to walk,” she says, bouncing Chloe up and down in her arms. “To get a feel for Dr. Bennett’s routine.”
“Yes, I guess that’s a good idea,” I say slowly, “only I thought I’d drive into town afterward to pick up some things.”
“What do you need?” Billie asked. “I’ll put it on my list.”
The truth is I wanted to refill my—or rather, Laurel’s—prescription for antidepressants but I wasn’t sure how that was going to go. And I wasn’t going to entrust that errand to Billie. So I list a few innocuous items like tampons, deodorant, and toothpaste. There’s not much that isn’t provided here. My kitchen is restocked regularly with tea and milk and cereal and I eat lunch and dinner with Sky and Billie. I haven’t had any reason to leave the house since I came, which is probably for the best. Even though I’ve given Peter a good reason not to follow me, he could have reported the car as stolen. It’s safer that I stay off the roads.
I change my shoes and follow Billie’s directions to the back path. I miss it twice, so overgrown are the hedges that flank it. The stone steps are nearly covered by moss. Two steps in and I’m in the deep shade of a pine forest. It’s like entering a tunnel. How often does anyone take this path? Billie arrives every morning in a rusty old Honda Civic. Sky certainly can’t manage it. The gardener obviously never sets foot on it. I should turn back and take the car, only I’d feel a little foolish if Billie saw me. And there is something . . . alluring about these woods—a haunted quiet that reminds me of fairy tales. Here is another clue to the stories that Sky wrote. She’d grown up surrounded by a forest, like a fairy-tale princess.
So I take a deep breath of pine-scented air and set off. The mossy stone steps give way to a path covered with dried pine needles that glow golden in the green filtered light. The only sounds are birdcalls and the wind sifting through the treetops. It’s peaceful. I can imagine Dr. Bennett girding himself for the day ahead in the restorative calm. It must have been hard to see patients like E. who had so much potential but were hopelessly entangled in the workings of their misfiring brains.
As soon as I think of E. it’s her I imagine on the path. Climbing up here to reach the tower where she thought her baby was being held, hearing her baby’s cries in the sigh of the wind—
A sharp cry suddenly cleaves the slanted sunlight. I turn around so fast the trees spin, a kaleidoscope of branches and leaves, shards of light and dark. Something flits across the tilting sunbeams. I listen, but all I hear is my own ragged breath and stuttering heart. Even the birds have gone
