“I hear that there was an incident at the hospital today,” she says. “It must have been frightening for you.”
“Not nearly as frightening for me as for that poor woman,” I say, adding, “I saw her from the window. She looked . . . terrified.”
Sky clucks her tongue. “Poor lamb, she thinks it’s 1971 and she’s being punished for having had premarital sex.”
“You know her?” I ask.
“I know of her,” Sky says. “She was one of my father’s last patients. Edith Sharp.”
“But I thought . . .” I look over at Billie, who’s placidly cutting her steak into tiny pieces. Edith Sharp must be the woman Billie told me about who jumped from the tower and got better, but for some reason Billie must not want me to let Sky know that we’ve talked about her. Maybe she doesn’t want Sky to know she was talking about a patient.
“What did you think?” Sky asks.
Should I mention the story Billie told me? But if Billie doesn’t want Sky to know she told me that story, I don’t want to embarrass her. After all, she is taking care of Chloe. “I guess I just never imagined that she might still be here. She was suffering from postpartum psychosis and that’s usually temporary.”
“Usually, but not always,” Sky says. “Sometimes postpartum psychosis occurs in women with previous histories of mental illness—bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.”
“That’s what Dr. Hancock said Edith had—borderline personality disorder. He said she gave birth in her dorm bathroom but convinced herself that it was her roommate who had the baby.”
“Well,” Sky says. “I suppose such a terrifying occurrence could unhinge a person.” There’s a tremor in her voice that makes Billie look up from her carefully shredded steak.
“This is not very pleasant dinnertime conversation,” she says with a reproving look at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, thinking that I wasn’t the one who brought it up. It reminds me of when Esta chided me for telling the jumper story. “I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”
“It’s all right,” Sky says. “Living in such close proximity to a mental hospital I’ve seen and heard worse than poor Edith’s story. And besides, you see it proves your thesis.”
“It does?”
“Yes. I had heard of Edith’s case. It must have influenced my writing of the changeling story and I simply forgot about it. I imagine that once I’d made it into my own fictional story I forgot all about the source. I think you should continue exploring Edith’s case. I’ll tell Dr. Hancock to make a copy of the file for you.”
Billie looks up at this, caution on her face. I don’t blame her; I’m sure that releasing a patient’s file to non-hospital personnel must violate any number of legal and ethical codes. But I don’t really care. I’m still smarting from Billie’s remark about “inappropriate dinner conversation” and I’m childishly glad to have Sky siding with me. Most of all, though, I want to find out more about Edith Sharp.
I DREAM ABOUT her that night. Edith is running in front of me, her white hair glowing like one of the lanterns in the gardens, and I’m following her through the hedge maze. Then we’re climbing the spiral stairs in the tower, going up and up for so long I feel like we’re climbing to the moon.
“We need to get the right view,” Edith says without turning around. When we get to the top floor, there’s a huge claw-foot tub where the desk used to be. I can hear water dripping into the tub, but I can’t see the surface because it’s too high. “We need to get the right perspective,” Edith says, walking toward the tub.
I freeze on the top step, unable or unwilling to follow her. I don’t want to see what’s in that tub.
I look down and notice that the floor is wet. The hem of Edith’s pajama bottoms is darkening in the water as she walks toward the tub. Water is dripping down the stairs, pinging on each metal step, making a sorrowful music.
“A water dirge,” Edith says.
I look up despite my urge not to. She is standing beside the tub, facing me, but she’s no longer the old Edith; she’s the girl in the photograph, neat hair, headband, sweater set, graduated pearls. She’s motioning to the tub like a campus tour guide. Like it’s a stop on the tour I can’t miss.
I wade through the water, which is surprisingly warm—like bathwater, which I suppose it is—until I am standing beside the tub.
“We need to get the right view,” Edith says, stepping aside so that I can see what’s in the tub. It’s a woman lying just below the surface of the red-tinged water, her face oddly peaceful, turned to the baby cradled in her arms.
I jerk awake, my arms flying out to grasp something—
The baby. I’m trying to grab the baby in the dream and pull her out of the tub but there’s nothing to hold on to. My arms collapse on empty air.
The baby is gone.
I come fully awake, tangled in sweaty sheets, alone in the bed.
Alone.
Chloe is gone.
I sit up, pulling the sheets apart, looking for her. The cushion is still propped up on the other side of the bed. Did she somehow slide under it and fall off the bed? I push the cushion aside and crawl to the other side of the bed, then slither to the floor. I paw the dusty floorboards, peering through the dark for Chloe. I need light. But when I stand up the room spins and when I try to turn on the lamp my fingers are too slick with sweat—as if I’d really just plunged my arms into a bathtub—
The bathtub.
It was just a dream, I tell myself, but I’m already running, flinging open the bedroom door. Across the
