I’ve had enough. “Thank you for your time,” I say, backing away.
“Do you think it runs in the family?” he asks, just as I’m ready to bolt out the door.
“What?” I say, my heart suddenly beating fast.
“Insanity. Do you think insanity runs in the family? Do you think I have it? That I gave it to him?”
“Um…” Holy fuck, I need to get out of here. But Montgomery starts walking towards me, even as I back away.
“Maybe all my children have it?” he adds. “Maybe they get it from me?”
I’m still backing away slowly when I stumble over the mats in front of the doors and he reaches out to steady me. His hand comes into contact with mine. It is cold, just like him, and I pull away so fast, I trip again.
“Do I frighten you, Molly?”
“What?” I look over at the receptionists, but all six of them are looking down at the desk, their lips busily moving as they talk to people on the phone through their headsets.
“They say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Insanity tends to run in families.”
Jesus Christ, I don’t blame Atticus for trying to kill him. Old Man Montgomery has an ice factor that’s off the fucking charts. “I gotta go,” I say, turning and bursting through the outer doors. The sunlight that was peeking through the clouds is gone now, but when I get in my car and look up at the building, I see it has just changed positions. It illuminates the tip of the Blue spire like a spotlight.
I take that as a good omen, something uplifting, as I start my engine and put the car in reverse. But then my eyes wander to the front doors of the Blue Castle and I see the Old Man staring back at me from the other side of the bulletproof glass.
“Uhhhhhh.” I shiver. That man is so creepy.
I pull away feeling dirty and wishing I’d never come out here. I’m almost shaking off that feeling when I get to the other side of town and spy the asylum off in the distance. It looks like it belongs in Cathedral City with its gothic architecture and gloomy, black-stained bricks. There’s even an archway you have to pass through to get to the visitor’s parking lot, and there’s not a single break in the clouds to allow a stray sunbeam.
The place has hopeless gloom written all over it.
I park my car and walk into the building. I was here once several years back, but I never went farther than the front lobby. My mother was ‘having a bad day,’ they said, and couldn’t see visitors. It was the day before I left Wolf Valley for basic training, so I never got the chance to come back.
Not that that’s an excuse. I had plenty of opportunities to come visit before then, I just chose not to.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist says from behind a glass window. I hate people behind glass windows.
“I’m here to see Martha Masters.”
“And you are?”
“Her daughter.”
“Huh,” the woman says, typing on her keyboard. “I never knew she had a daughter. She only ever gets one visitor.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “Who?”
“Mr. Montgomery.”
I’m too stunned to say anything. That old creep has been coming to see my mother?
“It’s sad that he’s in here now.”
“What?” I say, realizing she means Atticus and not the Old Man. But she doesn’t hear me because she’s walking away to grab a visitor’s badge. She prints out a card with my name on it, slips it into the clear plastic holder with a clip, and passes it through the hole in the glass. “Put that on and have a seat. Someone will come get you when she’s ready.”
I take the name tag and walk off to molded plastic chairs lined up in rows in front of a TV. I feel more like an inmate than a visitor as I force myself to sit and stare at the sitcom playing on the television.
There’s only a few people here, and no one is talking. So I get to sit there and stew in my questions. Why the hell has Atticus been coming here to see my mother? And what does that have to do with him being in here now?
I know there’s a connection, but I feel like everything about this day is hidden in some double meaning. Chief’s comment about Blue Corp wanting him to hire me. The Old Man’s comment about insanity. Does he know Atticus comes to see her? Was that comment about insanity directed at me? Or Atticus?
“Miss Masters?” a woman calls from a door.
I get up and walk over to the door. “That’s me,” I say.