AFTER MY VISITORS LEFT, I WAS SO EXHAUSTED I COULD BARELY stay upright. I was going to go straight to bed, then remembered the Dudek sisters. I staggered back down the stairs to Mr. Contreras’s place, too tired to bother putting my clothes in the dryer. I softly undid the bolts to my neighbor’s front door and tiptoed across the living room.
I could hear the old man’s snores through the closed door to his bedroom. Kira and Lucy were asleep, spoonlike, in the top of the bunk beds my neighbor had put in his dining room for his grandsons. Mitch was on duty at the bottom of the ladder; he thumped his tail in greeting but wouldn’t leave his post. That was reassuring.
Back upstairs in my own place, I collapsed into bed, just taking time to drop my gold dress on a chair. I fell instantly asleep, but it was into another night of tormenting dreams, where I was tracking Chaim Salanter through a maze. When I tried to peer through the hedges, the leaves and twigs turned into barbed wire. A death camp lay on the far side. I tried to run back to the entrance but found myself instead inside Ruhetal, where I wandered around the lobby, studying the photographs of the hospital’s founders. In their midst, I discovered Leydon, hanging crucified next to the social worker’s great-grandmother. Fire was bursting from her hands and feet.
When I woke at six-thirty, I was still tired, but it felt like a release to leave my bed. Peppy had stayed the night with me. She followed me down the stairs while I put my laundry into the dryer. We went back into Mr. Contreras’s place, where everyone was still asleep, including Petra, who’d crashed on the sagging sofa bed in the front room some time after I’d looked in last night. I dragged a reluctant Mitch to the lake with us.
When we got back, everyone was still sacked out. I looked resentfully at my cousin: she turned over when Mitch raced to lick her face but didn’t really wake up. I wished the gods had given me the gift of untroubled sleep but I refrained from taking out my resentment by shaking her awake. Instead, I scribbled a note, asking her to call me with updates during the day. I left the dogs on patrol and drove south to the University of Chicago, my clothes clean if unpressed, my gun in an ankle holster under my jeans.
My dream of Leydon’s crucifixion had been so vivid, I’d been scared she’d died in the night, but the ICU nurse assured me her condition was unchanged. That was the less-bad news; the bad news was that Leydon would have to be moved soon to a nursing home.
“Your brother says the family won’t pay for private care, so it will have to be a public-aid home,” the nurse said, as she helped drape me in protective gear. “But I thought your family had a lot of money.”
I’d forgotten saying that I was Leydon’s sister. “The Ashfords do, but I’m not a legitimate part of the family. Sewall has never liked Leydon, and he’s always been annoyed with her for staying close to me. I’ll talk to him and his wife, but I’m sure he won’t pay attention to anything I say.”
The nurse’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry—I wouldn’t have said anything—I didn’t mean—”
“How could you know?” I smiled and patted her shoulder with my latex-covered hand.
As I sat with Leydon, stroking her face where it showed through its protective bandaging, I told her what I’d just said. “Can’t you picture Sewall exploding if he finds out I let that nurse think I’m your illegitimate sister? But I will talk to him, or at least to Faith, darling, I’ll try to swallow my bile and be persuasive, because you sure don’t need to be warehoused in some rat-infested hellhole. Ruhetal has a staff that cared about your welfare, even if they’re underfunded, but a public-aid nursing home—not even Sewall can condemn you to that.”
Leydon’s blue eyes rolled sightlessly in her gaunt face. Her breath came in short, harsh pants. I blinked back my tears and brushed a strand of red-gold hair from her cheek.
“Oh, why can’t you wake up? Why couldn’t you just tell me on the phone why you wanted to talk to me? If you’d said two weeks ago what you saw in the locked wing, you wouldn’t be here now.”
I pressed my lips together: if the brain-damaged can hear what we say, Leydon would suffer from listening to my recriminations. “Sorry, girl, sorry. We do what we’re strong enough to do, I know that. But what did you see? Does Chaim Salanter have an illegitimate child who’s been warehoused there for unspeakable crimes? Talk to me, babe, talk to me straight, none of those riddles about huntresses and fires!”