I felt such a wave of relief I thought I might faint! I had to sit with my head down for a little while and I even fell asleep for a bit, which just shows how exhausted I was. When I woke up I didn’t know where I was at first, which was scary, but then I remembered. I drove home as if in a dream. Now I’m in front of my own house. It’s all clear to me now. I see that it’s what I’ve been planning all these weeks. Maybe Peter and the shrink are right—I’ve been pretending the plans I was making were for Laurel when all along they’ve been for me. I’m the one in danger. I’m the one who needs to escape. I know what it will look like to everyone else, but what does that matter? After all these months of feeling like there was something wrong with me, that I didn’t love Chloe enough, that I wasn’t a good mother, I finally know for sure that I love her more than anyone in the world. And that I’d do anything to keep her with me. Anything at all.
Chapter Eleven
The guard at the gate is the same one who met me the first time. Ben Marcus, I recall. He’s acquired a black eye since I last saw him. “Did Edith Sharp give you that?” I ask as he unlocks the gate.
“How do you know her name?”
“Sky Bennett told me,” I say, omitting the fact that I’d looked in her file. “I’ve been reading about her in Dr. Bennett’s journals. I thought you told me the wards were secure.”
“I never said no one ever did a runner. Edith’s been here so long she’s learned all the tricks. She’s crafty. When she decides she’s had enough of the place she stops taking her meds, hides them in her cheek, and spits them out. Then she watches the nurses use the combination locks until she’s memorized the combination. We change those once a week so she knows she doesn’t have much time. She has to steal two keys—one to get out of C Ward, one to work the back gate.” He cocks his thumb at the gate we’ve just come through.
“And then how do you find her?”
“We don’t,” he says. “If she makes it out, she usually comes back in a week or so. She always tells the same story—that she’s been to check on her baby.”
“Oh, then she really is . . . sick.”
He glances at me, one eyebrow—the scarred one—raised. “Did you think she was here on vacation?”
“No . . . it’s just that she sounded very intelligent in Dr. Bennett’s journal.”
“Do you think smart people don’t go crazy? We’ve had Nobel Prize winners in here.”
“I’ve seen A Beautiful Mind,” I snap, tired of his condescending tone. “But it’s different, hearing her voice . . . and besides . . .” I hesitate, unsure I should reveal what Billie said to me.
“Besides what?”
“Oh, it was just a rumor I heard—that she jumped from the tower and then was cured.”
He barks a harsh laugh. “If jumping from a high window was a cure for madness the doctors would have tried it. The story the nurses tell about Edith is that she killed her own baby and she’s always looking for it. That’s why she tries to get out; so she can find her baby.”
“That’s awful,” I say. “The poor woman.”
He gives me an assessing look. “Most people aren’t so sympathetic when they hear that she abandoned her baby in a dumpster. Some of the nurses call her Baby Killer.”
I shudder. “But you don’t. I saw how careful you were with her.”
He shrugs and rubs the bruised skin around his eye. “A woman who abandoned her own child—I figure she’s in hell every day of her life. That seems punishment enough to me.”
THIS TIME AS we go up the elevator I pay more attention to the keys that he uses. He has five or six on a heavy ring clipped to his belt. How does Edith steal one off the guards? I imagine the careful watching and planning she must do—all to find a baby that is long gone.
Ben Marcus leaves me again in the reception office and tells the secretary to buzz him when it’s time for “Mrs. Hobbes” to leave. When he turns to go I find the painting of the disembodied eye staring at me reproachfully. I find I dislike hearing my false name on Ben Marcus’s tongue. He’s been forthcoming with me; I don’t like that I’ve lied to him. When I go home—when I stop being Laurel Hobbes—maybe I’ll tell him who I really am.
Dr. Hancock seems a little distracted as he greets me, and a trifle cool. Perhaps he’s not happy that Sky has instructed him to show me Edith’s file. Instead of perching on the edge of the desk as he did last time he sits back down in his desk chair and folds his hands over the pale green folder, asserting his control over my access to it. “Before I show you Edith’s file I’d like to know why you’re so interested in her case.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, taken aback by his blunt approach. “I’ve already explained that I’m researching the connections between Sky’s writing and her biography.”
“But that’s not all there is to it, is there?” He smiles and I have the strange conviction that he is smiling at my discomfort. I see what this is about. Dr. Hancock likes to be in control and I have challenged his rule by going around him to get access to his patient’s file. He doesn’t like it. So to punish me he is going to make me uncomfortable about the request by imputing an ulterior motive. I remember that this is something I’ve always disliked about psychiatrists, always reading an ulterior motive into your behavior. I could, I suppose, demand that he just hand over the file as per Schuyler Bennett’s order.
