“And she’s pretty?”
“She’s nice-looking, I guess,” Adam said, tossing me a confused look. He didn’t know what Lanie was getting at, but I did. Professor Leland had been a colleague of our father’s, and she was quite pretty—I remembered meeting her on campus several times. Poppy Parnell had reported a rumor that our father was involved with students . . . or possibly other professors. I had dismissed it as just gossip, but, from the expression on Lanie’s face, I could tell she felt differently. The only question was whether she had a specifc reason for suspecting Professor Leland. I waited to see if she would tip her hand.
“Her name’s Pearl, right?” Lanie asked, her voice soft.
“Yeah,” Adam said. “Good memory.”
“I wish,” Lanie said quietly, bringing the knife down through the tomato with a sharp thwack.
Lanie sent me into the dining room to collect the salad bowl, and as I stood in front of the china hutch, surveying the matching cups and saucers and cut crystal glasses, Adam entered the room.
“Come to help me find the bowl?” I asked lightly.
Adam glanced over his shoulder, and stepped so close to me that I drew back. “Lanie hasn’t slept in two days,” he hissed.
My skin prickled a warning, and I glanced toward the kitchen, mentally running through the checklist I had developed when we were teenagers. Pupils? Normal. Breath? Neutral. Demeanor? Unremarkable, even pleasant, with the brief exception of her fixation on Professor Leland, but that could easily be explained. The podcast was making us all crazy.
“Are you sure? She seemed okay enough to me.”
“I guess I’m not sure she hasn’t slept at all,” Adam amended. “But she hasn’t come up to bed in two days. And when I’ve gotten up to check on her, I found her down in her study, painting.”
Despite Adam’s obvious anxiety, I smiled. “She was always a good artist.”
Adam nodded shortly. “I know. I’ve tried to convince her to teach some classes at the community center. But that’s not the point, Josie. The point is that she’s not sleeping, and I’m worried.”
I bit my lip, remembering my father saying nearly those exact words to me about my mother. The first time I could recall him saying them, I had been about the age that Ann was now. Our mother had begun vacuuming the upstairs hallway at six in the morning, rousing Lanie and me, and we had complained to our father.
“Be kind to your mother,” he had advised. “She’s going through a bit of a phase. She hasn’t been sleeping, and I’m a little worried about her. But I’m sure if we all just work on being extra-nice to her, she’ll be able to sleep again.”
Over the years, she had suffered from frequent bouts of insomnia, although it was a kind of insomnia where she would never even try to sleep. We would come down for breakfast and find her just where we left her, wearing yesterday’s clothing, scribbling in her journal or reading a book. It was how she had gotten through Anna Karenina so many times.
“What do you want me to do, Adam?”
“I don’t know. I just hoped you might have some insight. She does this sometimes, you know—just goes a little off for a few days—but she’s been on edge for weeks, ever since that podcast started.” He shifted and cast another nervous glance toward the kitchen. “From some of the things Lanie’s said, it sounds like your mom might’ve had some similar patterns. I was wondering—”
“She’s not our mother,” I cut him off. “Has she been to see someone?”
“Multiple someones. I’m starting to get desperate.”
The anguish in Adam’s eyes was evident, and, despite the circumstances, a small part of my heart warmed. I was glad Lanie had someone who loved her and looked after her, even if that someone was Adam.
“I don’t know what to do,” he continued. “She won’t talk to me. She says there’s nothing to talk about. But Josie, the longer the podcast goes on, the more erratic her behavior becomes.”
“It has to end soon,” I rationalized. “The podcast can’t keep going forever.”
“I don’t know how much longer we can wait. We’ve got to protect your sister. She’s unraveling, Josie.”
The niggling doubt that had formed when I listened to the podcast throbbed in my mind. Reconsidered had been hard on all of us, but if it was really affecting Lanie as severely as Adam claimed . . . was Lanie worried? Did she know that Poppy Parnell was onto something?
“Adam,” I said carefully, “when Lanie and I got in a fight the other day, it was about the podcast.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice tense.
“I’m starting to think there might be some truth to Poppy’s theory,” I said, dropping my voice to just above a whisper. “Do you think Lanie might be wrong about Warren?”
Guilt flashed through Adam’s eyes, and I realized I wasn’t the only one influenced by the podcast.
“Adam?” I prodded.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Not you, too. It’ll kill her.”
“Just between us—”
“There is no ‘between us,’ Josie. Not anymore.”
“What’s going on here?” Lanie suddenly demanded.
Color rose in my cheeks as I turned to face my sister, half-formed excuses coagulating in my head.
“Nothing,” Adam said, lying with an ease that surprised me. “I was just helping Josie find the salad bowl.”
Lanie’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, darting from me to Adam. “She couldn’t find it on her own?”
“Nope, this sister of yours is blind as a bat.”
Lanie stared at me.
That was when I realized the soft underbelly of Lanie’s left forearm had a gash, a thin trickle of dark blood sliding down her pale skin.
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “Lanie, what happened to your arm?”
She looked down at the wound, her face unreadable. “The knife must have slipped.”
“Jesus, Lanie, that looks bad,” Adam said. “Come on, let’s get a bandage on that right away.”
She nodded and allowed him to lead her out of the room. I took the salad bowl from the shelf and followed them, my limbs prickling with unease.