“Say your goodbyes, and get out of here.”
“Lauren, you can send me away, but it’s not going to change facts. This is going to come out.”
Lauren speaks in a furious whisper. “It won’t if you keep your mouth shut. Now leave, and I don’t want to hear you speak of this again. And if you let this slip, if you tell anyone your outlandish theory, I will make sure your bosses know you were interfering with the files here at the hospital. How do you think that will go over? I don’t think the CBI would take kindly to the news one of their employees was breaking into secure medical documents. Are we clear? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
They face off for a moment, then Juliet exhales a heavy breath out of her nose and sticks her head back into the room. She blows Mindy a kiss. “I’ll be back this weekend, peanut. Try not to beat your parents too badly. Especially go easy on your mother. You know what a sore loser she can be.”
“Bye, Aunt J,” Mindy calls, still under a puppy pile of pillows and blankets and dad. “Thanks for the candy, and the talk.”
Lauren’s eyes narrow, but Juliet tosses her a crisp salute and saunters off down the hall.
Lauren sags a little inside but doesn’t move an inch until she sees the elevator doors close behind her sister.
This is a problem. A very big problem.
Juliet is always a problem.
Later. She’ll deal with it later.
Pasting a smile on her face, she goes back into her daughter’s room to join her family.
13
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
1993
VIVIAN
The new roommate doesn’t talk to me for the first week. She doesn’t talk to anyone, really, though she’s relatively polite to Ratchet, as if recognizing a kindred spirit straight from hell.
I’m in the art room, painting a seascape copied from a book, when I realize I’m not alone and look up to see my phantom roommate standing to the left of my easel, a thoughtful look on her face.
“You’re good. But you might want to mix in some vermilion. Your greens are all off. They lack depth.”
“Red won’t work.”
“It will tone your blue. Add it to the blue, then redo that line, right there.”
I bite back the response I prefer to give—fuck off, psycho—and try it. All part of my new life plan to be cooperative so I can get the hell out of here.
Damn if it doesn’t work.
The crests of the waves are suddenly alive, and the froth they churn now looks like proper seafoam instead of dead gray ice.
“How did you know to do that?”
“I paint, too.”
“Are you ever going to tell me your name?”
“What’s in a name? Names are stupid.”
“Or is it you don’t want me to ask for a newspaper so I find out what you did to land in here?”
She stares, and I mentally give myself a point. She’s afraid of what I might think.
The painting is done. There’s nothing more I can do with it. I step back and admire the new depth.
“I killed someone,” she says, softly, her voice barely a whisper.
I don’t look away from the painting, but a chill crawls down my spine. “How?”
“With a knife.”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t clean her brushes right.” She grins and rushes out of the room.
I do a good job on my brushes, just in case. The last name on our door now reads Thompson, L.
Inside, I lean against the wall. Thompson, L is fussily making her bed.
“What’s the L stand for?”
“Liesel.”
“What kind of a name is Liesel?”
“German.”
“You’re American. Thompson isn’t a German name.”
“So?”
“Who did you kill?”
“No one of consequence.”
“Then why are you here?”
She stares at me for a brief moment, then she leaves the room.
I don’t doubt she’s telling me the truth about what she’s done.
Who is my new roommate?
*
Now that I know I’m sleeping next to a murderer, I am desperate to find out what’s happening. I ask at the desk for the newspaper and am rewarded, but can’t find anything about someone named Liesel Thompson. I ask for the past week and am denied. Perhaps there is something in them they don’t want me to see.
I wait until shift change, when Ratchet heads home. Roger is on tonight, and he likes me. He gives me Marlboros and lets me smoke in their lounge instead of out in the hutch.
Once the first bed check is done, and Liesel is snoring, I head down the dark hallway to the nurses’ station. I jerk my head toward the lounge. Roger, thin, blond, wispy mustache and ropy arms, unlocks the staff lounge and hands me a smoke. Once we’re lit, I say, “Can I have last week’s newspapers?”
“Why?”
“So I can see why my roommate is in here. She scares me. She said she...”
“Yes?” He leans forward, interested now. I take a drag, breathe in the smoke, down deep in my lungs, hold it there until I start to cough and Roger whispers, “Be quiet. You’re going to get me in trouble.”
I swallow the cough, choking, my eyes watering. I suddenly don’t want to share my strange roommate’s words.
“So? What did she say?”
“She said she would never tell. I just want to be sure I’m safe. I don’t like not knowing.”
Roger says, “You know what it will cost you.”
I tap my fingers on the table, ash tipping off the end of my Marlboro onto the scarred wood.
“Quid pro quo, kid.” He doesn’t leer. This is a business transaction. I have no money to pay him, nor favors to bestow, nor property of any kind that’s worth anything to him. Except me. And that I’m not willing to give. Not for this.
“I can’t,” I say, looking away.
“Suit yourself. One of these days, you’re going to change your mind. Now finish that smoke and get to bed.”
In our room, Liesel is having a nightmare. I lie on my bed, on top of the scratchy covers, and listen to her moan and pant. She murmurs “No, no, no, no” and punches in the air, and I can’t help but wonder what—who—she’s fighting.
14
DENVER, COLORADO
CURRENT DAY
Juliet drives back to Denver, her mind in overdrive. Lauren is hiding something. She is sure of it. Her reaction, so vehement, so visceral... Juliet hasn’t seen this side of her sister since they were children. Before Lauren became a mother and her life turned into a fairy tale.
Because make no mistake about it, Lauren is living a fairy tale. Great husband, utterly devoted. Beautiful, talented daughter who is also a hardworking athlete who makes them all proud. Lauren herself, an artist who makes her own hours, does whatever she wants. Travel, money, looks. She is totally and completely free.
Juliet isn’t. She has none of these things, only a career she loves.
She isn’t jealous. Of course she isn’t. She has plenty of time for her own happily ever after. And how could she be jealous, now, especially? Now that she knows what she knows?
As she speeds down from the mountains, the evergreens and rocky slopes covered in snow as familiar as the back of her hand, she begins to see things with new eyes. She’s never noticed that sheer drop-off. She’s never seen that frozen waterfall. When did they put up that netting so the rockslides wouldn’t make it across the entire highway?
She is so used to the drive, so used to—so desensitized to—the reality in which she is living, she’s been in a fugue state. If all of these things along her path are new and different, what does this mean? Is it possible that Mindy too is simply new and different? Or has she been a wolf in sheep’s clothing her whole life, seventeen years a stranger in their midst, and none of them knew it?
It makes her uncomfortable, at best. The idea that their family is an outlier, suddenly different, being unmade, rocks her to the core. Juliet likes the known. The quantifiable. Theories that can be proven, not imagined.
And with that, she knows exactly what she needs to do. She isn’t going to report this, not yet. She will find Kyle Noonan. Get a sample of his blood, let Cameron run it. If he isn’t Mindy’s father, then she can go to Lauren with empirical evidence and make her see sense, make her see reason. It is the only way.