“Death,” Celeste whispered.
Emma realized she’d squeezed her fists tight against her thighs, and she concentrated on releasing them. She willed herself to open her mouth and say something cutting, to sneer at the whole process. But her entire life seemed laid out before her in cardboard. She couldn’t bring herself to move.
The hint of a smile played across Celeste’s lips. “The cards don’t lie,” she whispered. With that, she gathered up her deck and swept away.
Emma kept staring down at the table as if the cards were still there. Had something … supernatural just happened?
Thayer touched her elbow. “Don’t tell me you believe in that crap.”
Emma swallowed. “She was right, Thayer. About my mom.”
He rolled his eyes. “She just saw what you were reading and made some guesses. She’s trying to mess with your head.”
Emma blinked hard. Of course. The books scattered around her were titled things like Clinical Insanity and A Guide to Psychosis. Celeste had played her. She breathed out, relieved. “Now I feel even stupider.”
“You’re not stupid,” he murmured. “You’re scared. But it’s all going to be okay.”
If I crowded as close to my twin as possible, I could almost believe he was speaking to me. That it was my face he looked at like that.
Emma shoved the books away from her and gritted her teeth.
We both knew what she needed to do: find out more about Becky, one way or another, and discover what our mad mother was capable of.
18
MOM, INTERRUPTED
As soon as tennis practice ended, Emma drove straight to the hospital and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. The pungent smell of air freshener stung her nostrils, along with a harsher, antiseptic odor. The hallway was eerily silent, as if the whole ward was bowed under the pressure of its own secrets and delusions. She tightened her jaw and strode to the nurses’ station, her heart beating like a drumroll in her chest.
The young male nurse, bespectacled and prematurely balding, looked up from his computer screen. The reflection from his monitor made twin glowing squares in the lenses of his glasses. “Can I help you?” he asked.
She clenched her fist around the strap of her messenger bag. “I’m here to visit Becky—I mean, Rebecca Mercer.”
He gestured to a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. “Sign in.”
The page was depressingly blank. Emma printed Sutton’s name neatly. The nurse stepped out from behind the desk and read the inscription with a raised eyebrow. “You’re the daughter, right?”
What was the right answer? Sort of. Used to be. Just genetically. Instead she just nodded.
“She’s been asking for you,” he said, jerking his head to indicate she should follow. Emma trailed behind him. “That’s all any of us can get out of her. ‘I want my daughter.’”
Which one? Emma wondered.
There was a large social room on their left, a half dozen people visible through the windows. Their eyes were trained on a TV tuned to Dancing with the Stars. A bathrobe-clad girl only a little older than Emma stood swaying in time to the music. A middle-aged woman sat by the window, her head in her hands. One of the patients in front of the TV, a man with gray, greasy hair curling down over his neck, looked into the hall and gave Emma a wink. His grin was missing several teeth. Emma hurried after the nurse, swallowing her almost palpable fear. For a moment, she wanted to run back to the elevator, back to Sutton’s car, back home. But she had to do this. She had to talk to Becky.
I drifted behind Emma, wishing I could warn her to be careful. This was not a good place. Maybe I was more sensitive now that I was dead, or maybe I was just feeding off of Emma’s anxiety, but all around me I could feel sadness and rage and fear. It was even stronger now than the first time we’d come here—emotions buffeted me from all sides. I felt like a raw nerve.
“Sutton?”
A hand curled around Emma’s bicep. A scream caught in Emma’s throat. For a split second she was sure it was the gray-haired man from the social room, and a shudder of revulsion swept through her. But then her eyes refocused.
“N-nisha?” she asked.
Nisha’s red-and-white striped uniform was immaculate, and her thick hair had been pinned up in a French twist. A few feet away rested a cart loaded with outdated magazines and beat-up paperbacks. Her lips parted in surprise. “What’re you doing here?”
Emma swallowed hard. She hadn’t planned on being seen by anyone she knew. How could she have forgotten that Nisha volunteered here? Ahead of her she could see the balding nurse waiting impatiently for her outside Becky’s room. She leaned toward Nisha’s ear.
“I’m … visiting a friend. But this has to be a secret. Please don’t tell anyone you saw me here. I’ll explain later.”