“No,” I say, although of course she’s right. “That’s not what I—”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I understand.” A smile passes briefly across her face. She looks down at her hands. “I was paired with Fred when I was eighteen,” she says. “I didn’t go to university. He was older. They’d had trouble finding a match for him. He was picky—he was allowed to be picky, because of who his father was. Everyone said I was lucky.” She shrugs. “We were married for five years.”
That makes her younger than I thought. “What went wrong?” I ask.
“He got tired of me.” She states this firmly. Her eyes flick to mine momentarily. “And I was a liability. I knew too much.”
“What do you mean?” I want to sit down on the cot; my head feels strangely light, and my legs feel impossibly far away. But I’m afraid to move. I’m afraid even to breathe. At any second, she can order me out. She owes me nothing.
She doesn’t answer me directly. “Do you know what he liked to do when he was a little kid? He used to lure the neighborhood cats into his yard—feed them milk, give them tuna fish, earn their trust. And then he would poison them. He liked to watch them die.”
The room feels smaller than ever: stifling and airless.
She turns her gaze to me again. Her calm, steady stare disconcerts me. I will myself not to look away.
“He poisoned me, too,” she says. “I was sick for months and months. He told me, finally. Ricin in my coffee. Just enough to keep me sick, in bed, dependent. He told me so I would know what he was capable of.” She pauses. “He killed his own father, you know.”
For the first time I wonder if maybe, after all, she is crazy. Maybe the nurse was right—maybe she does belong here. The idea is a deliverance. “Fred’s father died during the Incidents,” I say. “He was killed by Invalids.”
She looks at me pityingly. “I know that.” As though she is reading my mind, she adds, “I have eyes and ears. The nurses talk. And of course I was in the old wing, when the bombs exploded.” She looks down at her hands. “Three hundred prisoners escaped. Another dozen were killed. I wasn’t lucky enough to be in either group.”
“But what has that got to do with Fred?” I ask. A whine has crept into my voice.
“Everything,” she says. Her tone turns sharp. “Fred wanted the Incidents to happen. He wanted the bombs to go off. He worked with the Invalids—he helped plan it.”
It can’t be true; I can’t believe her. I won’t. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. Fred must have planned it for years. He worked with the DFA; they had the same idea. Fred wanted his father proven wrong about the Invalids—and he wanted his father dead. That way, Fred would be right, and Fred would be mayor.”
A shock runs up my spine when she mentions the DFA. In March, at an enormous rally of Deliria-Free America in New York City, Invalids attacked, killing thirty citizens and injuring countless more. Everyone compared it to the Incidents, and for weeks, security everywhere was tightened: IDs scanned, vehicles searched, homes raided, and patrols on the streets doubled.
But there were other whispers too—some people said that Thomas Fineman, the DFA’s president, had known in advance what would happen, and had even allowed it. Then, two weeks later, Thomas Fineman was assasinated.
I don’t know what to believe. My chest is aching with a feeling I can’t remember how to name.
“I liked Mr. Hargrove,” Cassandra says. “He felt sorry for me. He knew what his son was. He used to visit every so often, after Fred had me locked up. Fred got people to testify that I was a lunatic. Friends. Doctors. They committed me to life in this place.” She gestures toward the small white room, her burial place. “But Mr. Hargrove knew I wasn’t crazy. He told me stories about the world outside. He found my mother and father a place to live in Deering Highlands. Fred wanted them silenced too. He must have thought I’d told them . . . he must have thought they knew what I knew.” She shakes her head. “But I hadn’t. They didn’t.”
So Cassie’s parents were forced into the Highlands, like Lena’s family.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It’s the only thing I can think of, even though I know how flimsy it sounds.
Cassie doesn’t seem to hear me. “That day—when the bombs went off—Mr. Hargrove was visiting. He brought me chocolate.” She turns to the window. I wonder what she is thinking; she is perfectly still again, her profile just traced with dull sunlight. “I heard he died trying to restore order. Then I felt sorry for him. Funny, isn’t it? But I guess Fred got us both in the end.”
“Here I am! Better late than never!”