2
Lily Parr stared into her
laptop. The taxi’s swerving on the bends in the highway was making
her queasy, but she powered on. Nausea was nasty, but if she shut
the laptop and closed her eyes, she’d have to think about what she
was about to do. And the way it made her feel.
She’d rather cram psych texts into her
brain until there was no room for so much as a fleeting thought.
After all, she had six years worth of studying to do in four short
days for the grad thesis she was writing. A steep learning curve,
but the guy who’d hired her to write it for him had forked over the
50 percent in cash she asked for up front this very morning, thank
God, soed was committed. With that, plus the other fees she’d
scraped together, letting utility bills slide and paying the
minimum on her maxed-out credit cards, she’d covered the monthly
fee for Aingle Cliff House, Howard’s private clinic. Assuming she
didn’t need to buy anything frivolous, like subway fare or
groceries, until some fresh fees trickled in. But once they did,
she’d already be budgeting for next month’s check. She wasn’t sure
what was left in the dark corners of the pantry, but she was going
to get friendly with it this week. And who needed subway fare? She
lived in Manhattan. She could walk. Her thighs could use the
workout.
She muscled her mind back to the
screen. The trick was to keep her mind constantly applied, like a
pen that did not dare leave the paper. If only she could forget she
had a body. Just be a vaporous cloud. Things would be simpler. Talk
about saving on the grocery bill. Her inconvenient body was the
medium through which feelings made themselves known. She hadn’t
been able to afford feelings since she was ten, but they never
figured out that they weren’t welcome. Clueless.
Ironic, to be writing a thesis in
psychology. A crash course in the inner workings of the human
brain, yay. That stuff belonged to the category of things that she
could not afford to personally worry about. Like, for instance, the
fact that a guy who’d paid another person to study for him, take
his exams for him, and write his papers and his graduate thesis for
him was about to graduate with a PhD, probably cum laude, thanks to
Lily, and then go out to find work in the field of psychology,
perhaps diagnosing or even treating people.
Yep. She, Lily Parr, had made that
scenario possible.
Too bad. She pushed it away. She
hadn’t chosen to do this. It just happened, and then it snowballed,
and now she had no way out, not with Howard to take care of. The
world was a shitty place, and she was sorry, but an ethical dilemma
was another luxury she could not afford.
It was better than robbing banks, or
dealing drugs. It really was.
The last paper she’d been paid to
write had been on ethics. Hah. But at least a false ethicist wasn’t
likely to hurt anybody once he was unleashed upon the world. There
had been some small comfort in that.
Every month, she pulled together the
eleven thousand bucks, plus her own cruelly pared-down living
expenses on top of it, and forked the dough over to the
professionals who’d promised to watch her father like a hawk
twenty-four hours a day to make sure he didn’t kill
himself.
She’d put Howard in less expensive
facilities before Aingle Cliff, and every time he’d managed to get
his hands on some pills and swallow them. God knew how. But he’d
been at Aingle Cliff for four years now. They’d kept him under
control. So far, so good.
Not that one could really describe the
situation as “good.” Good in the sense of “not dead.” Everything
was relative.
So here she was for the monthly
torture. Checkbook at the ready. Stomach in knots. Locking Howard
up was all she could do. She couldn’t help him any other way. She’d
almost killed herself trying when she was young and dumb. She knew
about addiction, codependency, blah, blah, blah. She’d written
papers about it, taken online exams. On behalf of others, of
course. She knew the material. She got it already.
Her presence was not a comfort to
Howard. He never asked her to come. In fact, he begged her to stay
away. Real egopumper, that one. Her own father, pleading for her
not to visit him.
So why did she feel compelled to visit
every month?
Her best friend, Nina, aocial worker
who worked in a battered women’s shelter and knew self-destructive
behaviors up and down, told her it was guilt that spurred her, but
Lily didn’t buy it. Who had time for guilt? She was a floating
cloud, a disembodied entity. Detached and cold, except when it came
to Nina and a select handful of other friends, but Nina was the
main one. Nina kept her marginally human. Not that she had time for
a social life. No more than she had time for feelings.
Bullshit, Nina said. Your feelings would roll over you like a tank if you let
yourself feel them. You’ve driven them
underground.
Lily contemplated that grimly. And so?
Denial was the way to go. Climb on the hamster wheel to pay off
Aingle Cliff. Not a thought for irony or ethics. Swallow the bitter
taste in her mouth. Do the jobs, pay the bills, write the checks.
Get the tiger by the tail.
Scramble to keep it from tearing her
to pieces.
Almost there. Lily snapped the laptop
shut and stared at the imposing façade of Aingle Cliff House as
they wended up the drive.
Dumb name for the place. No cliffs to
be seen. In fact, the place seemed to be situated in a bowl. Hardly
a reassuring name for a facility where one stashed people with
suicidal tendencies. The first thing Lily thought of when she heard
the word “cliff” was a running jump, a long fall, and a
splat at the bottom. But
then, she was twisted.
The cab stopped. She sat there, like a
lump.
“Uh . . . miss?” the cabbie prodded.
“Are you, uh . . .”
Lily dug out her wallet. “Can you come
pick me up in an hour?”
The cabbie agreed. Lily paid him,
uncomfortably aware of how little money was left. She’d put it all
into the check she was about to write and had barely enough to get
back to the train station. Nothing left over for a tip on the
outward-bound cab ride. Ouch.
The cabbie pulled away. Lily’s
sneakers crunched on the gravel of the path as she walked up to the
imposing building. Patients were out on the grounds, taking in the
afternoon sunshine. Not Howard. Patients considered a danger to
themselves were kept in a special ward. Howard was special, in that
sense. He’d tried to kill himself eight times, maybe more. The
episodes had started to blend together after a while.
She’d been fifteen the first time
she’d gotten home from school and found him blue-faced, barely
breathing. If she’d gone to her after-school tutoring job that day
as she’d planned, she’d have found him thoroughly dead. Which had,
of course, been his intent.
That day, she stopped calling him Dad.
She was the adult, not him. Had been for years. Her mother had died
the day she was born, so there had been no one to miss in the mom
slot. It had always been her and Howard. Or Dad, as she’d called
him in the old days. Before.
But before . . . what? It still
tormented her. It hadn’t always been like this. Dad had been a
research physician, a sought-after expert in emerging IVF
technologies, back in the good old days. He’d been a crappy cook
and a worse housekeeper, but so much fun. Smart,
funny.
They’d been close. They’d had their
own special schtick. Lily and Dad, comedy duo. The two of them
against the world. Watching classic horror movies on Saturday
afternoons, playing cards, choffing Chinese food. Sunday picnics in
the park, with deli sandwiches, Mint Milano cookies, and
Snapple.
And then it all went to hell, when she
was about ten. Abruptly, Dad had stopped working and started
sitting around the house in his barobe in a bourbon-soaked stupor.
It got worse. Progressed to harder drugs. Sometimes she’d wake at
night and find him on his knees by her bed, tears streaming down
his face. Freaked her out, big-time.
Lily signed the guest book and headed
to the administrative office, where she wrote out her monthly
blackmail payment to her deepest fears. She exchanged bland
chitchat with the staff, and when she could think of no other
earthly reasons to procrastinate, she headed into the elevator and
went up to the fourth floor. Howard’s ward.
The fourth-floor ward was guarded. She
exchanged smiles with the security guy. He unlocked the door and
waved her in.
She jerked back as Howard’s door
opened. Miriam came out, one of Howard’s nurses. Not Lily’s
favorite, though the thought was unworthy. Miriam Vargas was a
light-skinned black woman, supermodel gorgeous, with bee-stung lips
and a body that was sexy even in baggy scrubs. Though that wasn’t
what bugged Lily. Miriam was just too bouncy for Lily’s mood. It
grated on her. Made her feel like a stone-cold bitch, being annoyed
by mere friendliness, but there it was.
Miriam flashed spectacular teeth.
“Lily! How are you?”
“OK.” Lily tried to return the smile,
but it was a purely muscular effort. “How is he
doing?”
Miriam’s smile faded. “He’s been a
little agitated for the last couple days. I planned to talk to Dr.
Stark about it when he comes in today. He may need to have his meds
reevaluated. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you, though! You’ll perk
him right up!”
Hah. Lily was not about to argue with
that supposition today. She let out a sharp sigh and went on in.
The room was pleasant, with a nice view of the wooded grounds, but
Howard wasn’t looking at the view. He was hunched up on the bed,
hugging his knees. Rocking.
Alarm bells jangled inside her. That
obsessive rocking had often preceded his suicide attempts.
“Howard?” she asked gently.
He looked up. His pale, wasted face
was wet, eyes streaming.
“How can you forgive me, Lil?” he
asked.
Lily suppressed an urge to roll her
eyes. Howard didn’t need any snotty attitude from her to compound
his misery. She sank down near his bed. “I already have forgiven
you,” she said, wondering if it was true. How could she know, if
her real emotions were in hiding?
Aw, hell with it. It was true enough,
she decided. Howard was forgiven. By executive decision from on
high, and feelings had no part in the decision. This was not a
democracy. This was fricking martial law.
But in any case, Howard was shaking
his head. “No,” he said hoarsely. “You couldn’t. Ever. If you
knew.”
She let out a silent sigh. “Knew what?
Try me.”
Howard’s lank gray hair had gotten
long, and it flapped against his sunken face as he waved his head
back and forth. “Please,” he begged. “Please, don’t ask me that,
Lil.”
Around and around, like always. She
knew this song by heart. There was the plea for forgiveness, the
heebie-jeebie-inducing hints, then the coy retreat. “OK,” she
soothed. “Whatever. It’s all good.”
“No. That’s just it. It’s not good.
It’ll never be OK.” His bloodshot eyes were wide and desperate. “I
can’t stand it anymore. It’s like my chest’s caving in. It’s
breaking my bones. I can’t breathe anymore.”
Lily gazed at him, helpless. She’d
written papers on abnormal psych, on Jungian symbolism, on Freud.
She’d studihe esoteric knowledge of all the world’s great
religions. One might think she’d know how to unravel Howard’s
ravings, or have a clue as to how to comfort him with a little
lofty wisdom. But her brain wasn’t really wired for that slippery,
subjective stuff, though she invariably got good grades in it. Or
rather, her clients did. She took a tiny bit of secret pride in all
those A’s.
In her heart of hearts, she was
practical, nut-and-bolts Lil. No funny stuff, no woo-woo, no rabbit
tricks, no fluff. No excuses, either.
But oh, Christ, how she hated to see
him suffer.
She reached out to touch his hand. It
was ice cold. “So lay it down, Howard,” she suggested. “Tell me
what’s bugging you.”
Howard’s clammy hand twitched in hers.
“It’ll put you in danger.” His voice was a thread of a whisper. She
had to lean down to catch it. “They’re listening, Lil. They’re
always listening. If I tell you, they’ll know. They’ll come for
you.” His scratchy voice broke off into a hacking cough, eyes
rolling to the right, the left. “They’ll kill me. They’ll kill both
of us.”
She patted his hand. “No, they won’t.
Not here,” she assured him. “You’re safe here.” God knows, she paid
enough for him to be.
Howard’s hair flopped again. “No.
Nowhere is safe,” he insisted. “You’re my little girl, Lil. I can’t
do that to you. My first responsibility was to you. Always to you.
That was the reason for . . . for all of it.”
Lily winced. Responsibility, her ass.
His drug binges had made her feel orphaned ever since she was ten.
Let it go, Lil. “I’m not
little anymore, Howard,” she said. “I can look out for
myself.”
“Don’t think that. Ever. We’re all
still in danger. Magda warned me. She said they’re listening. Even
now, after all these years.”
“Magda?” That was a name she’d never
heard. In fact, she’d had no idea Howard had visitors at all, other
than herself. He’d isolated himself from the rest of the world
decades ago. “Who’s Magda?”
“Magda Ranieri. They killed her,”
Howie whispered.
A chill started around the small of
her back, fluttering nastily upward. Visits from dead people. Not a
good sign.
“Howard?” she said. “What the hell are
you talking about?”
His hand tightened, grinding her
fingers together. “Magda tried to stop them,” he burst out. “She
wanted me to help, but I was so scared, Lil. For you. We were
trying to get proof. But they found out.”
“Proof of what, Howie?”
“Of what I’d done, for him. I swear,
Lil, I didn’t know what he was planning. I didn’t know he was a . .
. a demon. And by the time I understood, it was too late. I had you
to think about, and he—”
“He? Who is he?” she demanded, her voice getting
sharper. “And who the hell is this Magda Ranieri?”
“Don’t say the name so loudly!” he
hissed, with unexpected force. Then his mouth started shaking
again. “They killed her, Lil. In front of me. They beat her to
death. They told me you’d be next if I . . . if I . . .” His voice
choked off. “I still see it. Whether my eyes are open or closed.
All that blood. I can’t stand it anymore. I tried to kill myself so
you’d be safe. No reason to punish me if I’m dead, right? But I was
never man enough to finish the job.” His voice choked off. His hand
shook.
Lily squeezed his fingers, trying not
to shiver.he torment in Howard’s eyes was very real. Whether the
events that caused it were also real was unlikely, but that did not
make his pain any the less.
And this did not feel like rambling.
This felt . . . genuine.
She stared down at him. She’d written
papers for future health professionals about PTSD in combat stress,
or victims of rape or other attacks. And Howard was so terrified of
blood. He had been ever since she could remember. Could this be . .
. ?
No. It couldn’t be. This was mental
illness. Years of systematic drug abuse that had worn holes in his
brain. She would not fall for this. She was a grown-up. She knew
better.
But even so. Howard was detailing the
contents of his delusions, which he’d never done before. Dr. Stark,
Howard’s psychiatrist, always complained about the fact that Howard
refused to do talk therapy. Maybe Dr. Stark could use this
information to treat him. Lily couldn’t waste this opportunity, no
matter how much it was creeping her out.
“Who is this Magda to you?” she
repeated. “Tell me more.”
Howard shook his head, but he kept
talking, as if some desperate part of him was breaking loose of the
cage of his fear. “Magda keeps coming to me,” he moaned. “She says,
find her son, and tell him. But I can’t. You could find him,
Lil.”
“Who? Me? Who’s Magda’s son? Tell him
what?”
“Shhh!” he hissed, dragging her hand
closer so that her butt slid from the hard chair. She perched on
his bed instead, bending to hear his croaking whisper. “You could
tell him. He has to lock it. With the key. It’s the key to
everything. Her son will know when he sees it.”
His eyes rolled. He was losing steam,
getting spooked. She hurried to keep him talking. “When he sees
what, Howard?” she prompted.
“He’ll know,” Howard muttered. “Magda
told me he’d understand as soon as he saw it, and he
can—”
“What on earth is going on in
here?”
Lily and Howard practically levitated,
they were so startled.
Miriam stood in the open door, her
large eyes flashing in outrage. “What is the meaning of this?” she
demanded, her voice razor sharp.
Lily’s mouth worked, struggling for
something, anything to say in the face of the woman’s inexplicable
anger. “Ah, we were just talking—”
“Talking?” Miriam’s voice slashed over
hers. “Just look at him! You’re deliberately upsetting
him!”
Lily looked. Howard had jerked his
hand away and wrapped his arms around his knees, eyes squeezed
shut, streaming with tears.
Shit. That brief, rare moment of
opening up was closing down again, all because of that stupid
nurse’s wretched crap timing. Shit!
“No,” Lily said, through clenched
teeth. “He was perfectly fine! You were the one who agitated him
when you burst in on us like that! Howard, just finish what you
were telling me about Magda and her—”
“No!” He jerked away as if she’d
struck him. “I never said anything! It’s just stupid, bullshit
raving! I’m a crazy old man, a paranoid junkie! Get away from me,
before I bring you down, too! You shouldn’t come to see me at all!
I’ve told you that! Please, go!”
True. But he never told her to stop
writing the checks. Though, to be fair, it may never have occurred
to him that she poured out her heart’s blood to pay for this place.
She’d never rubbed his nose in it.
“Just go. Don’t come back. Forget all
this. Forget about me. Please.” Howard began to rock again,
shoulders shaking with sobs.
“Well?” Miriam prodded. “You heard the
man! Go! Right now!”
Lily shot to her feet, shocked and
affronted. “No, I will not! I am here to talk to my father, and I
demand privacy.”
“Demand all you want,” Miriam
retorted. “This is my shift, and he is my responsibility, and I’m
standing by it! You need to go! Right now!”
Lily turned to Howard, put her hand on
his shoulder. “Howard—”
“No! Don’t!” He shook her hand off,
moaning and twitching.
Miriam marched over, her steps full of
grim purpose. Before Lily quite knew what was happening, the needle
was in Howard’s arm, the plunger going in. Howard went rigid . . .
and sagged, suddenly limp.
“There,” Miriam said, in obvious
triumph. “Now he can rest.”
Lily was appalled. “How dare you?” Her
voice shook. “I open my veins every month to pay for this
place!”
“That is not my concern,” Miriam said.
“You can complain to my boss if you want, but I’m going to be
filing a statement today, too, about how I witnessed you abusing
him! Deliberately agitating him!”
Lily’s jaw dropped. “Abusing him? I
was just talking to—”
“Leave! Now!” Miriam’s voice rang with
command. “Or I’ll have you forcibly escorted out! And don’t think
for one second that I’m bluffing!”
Lily stared at the woman, her cheeks
hot. She looked at Howard, slumped on his side. Air wheezed into
his half-open mouth. Eyes half closed, blurred with drugs, like
they’d been most of her life. He’d run off to his safe place and
left her out in the cold, alone. Just like old times.
She could have strangled that bitch
for killing what amounted to the only real moment she’d had with
Howard in years. But it would serve no purpose. Howard had
retreated. He wouldn’t be back today. What was the point? She might
as well go through official channels to make her complaint. It
would be more dignified. She’d move Howard to some other facility
if she didn’t get an appropriate outcome.
Miriam frog-marched her to the door of
the ward and shut the door in Lily’s face, hard, once she was
outside it.
Lily just stood there, at a loss. The
guard was giving her a strange look. To the elevator. One foot in
front of the other. She wanted to lodge her complaint immediately,
but she was so angry and rattled, she’d flub it and come across as
a hysterical idiot. Better to wait. Keep it together.
So she powered through the lobby and
out onto the grounds without speaking to anyone. The late summer
sunshine felt incongruous. All those bugs and birds tweeting and
chirring, wind rustling, boughs waving. The cheerfulness was
unseemly. Her body felt as tight as piano wire.
As if having her father be a suicidal
drug addict weren’t enough for her nerves to handle. Now ghosts,
eerie warnings, cryptic requests. Buckets of blood. Murderous bad
guys out to get him, and Lily, too. Brrr.
She hadn’t thought things could get
any worse for Howard, but he’d never scared her like this. She
needed distance, or she’d go crazy herself. She, unlike Howard, had
no family members left who would sling themselves up into a
strangling financial noose in order to lock her up someplace
attractive and safe to be crazy. Nope, she’d be
muttering-to-herself, eating-out-of-Dumpsters crazy. The mage did
not appeal.
She was shivering. She wanted to crawl
under a bush, huddle like a hurt animal. The sky seemed so empty.
Weirdly threatening.
She hadn’t gotten the number of the
cabbie. She should have gotten his card. She could go back inside,
ask for a car service, but that would require mental organization,
social skills, and a certain measure of calm that she simply did
not possess. The other option was to sit down on an ornamental rock
and wait for forty minutes.
She glanced up at the fourth floor.
Miriam stood in the window of one of the rooms, staring down.
Talking into a cell phone.
About Lily, no doubt. Probably telling
her supervisor about the incident, painting Lily as the hysterical
hag of the situation. Lily quashed the thought. It sounded
grandiose, paranoid. The whole world is
looking at me, plotting against me, out to destroy
me.
She was not giving in to that. Not
even if it were true.
Miriam stared down, still talking. The
reflection on the doublepaned glass window obscured her expression,
but Lily fancied she could feel the hostility radiating out of the
woman, even at this distance. She got up, strolled along the
grounds. She felt so exposed, under that blank sky. Like a raptor
might swoop down, claws out to grab and rend.
They killed
her, Lil. In front of me. They beat her to death. They told me
you’d be next . . .
A wave of faintness came over her. She
had to grab a tree branch to keep steady at the remote possibility
that Howard actually . . . no.
She couldn’t go down that road, even
in the privacy of her own head. That way lay madness. There weren’t
enough funds for both of them to be bonkers. But damn it, she’d
wondered for years what the hell had broken Howard. Why would a
normal, successful, relatively happy person suddenly fall to
pieces? From one day to the next?
One wouldn’t, she thought. Not without
a precipitating cause. And witnessing this Magda’s brutal murder .
. . that would do it.
But her longing for a logical
explanation was a trap, too. She was wise to all traps now.
Suspicious of everything. Even her own mental
processes.
The grounds merged into forest at the
end of the neatly mowed lawn. Shivery prickles on the back of her
neck urged her to run, hide. Go to ground. Stupid impulse. She
didn’t do nature, and besides, nobody was after her. The world
didn’t pay much attention to her, and she liked it that way. She
flew under the radar. Almost no one knew what she did for a living,
and by necessity, her referrals were extremely discreet. She worked
too many hours to know many people, other than Nina. And a few
disgruntled men from her occasional forays into
dating.
She glanced up. Miriam was still
there, still talking on the phone.
It embarrassed her to stand out here,
like a dog put out for piddling on the rug, while that awful woman
glared down. She was out of this place. Right now. On foot. How far
off base could she go? She had on sneakers. She couldn’t get lost
if she stayed parallel to the road and kept the sound of traffic in
her ears. A walk in the woods to clear her mind, just the thing.
Unless some fanged predator ate her, of course, but she didn’t
think bears or cougars or wild boars lurked in the woods of New
York. Plus, she’d save ten bucks of cab fare and avoid the
embarrassment of not being able to tip the cab driver. And the
money could then be put toward tonight’s dinner. A happy
bonus.
Lily pushed through the hedge and
plunged into the forest.