“Is everything else okay?” Kate asked, nudging her into the conversation.
Maddie’s eyes grew soft and fragile, and suddenly the little girl re-emerged. “Is she a suicide risk like me?”
“Who? Your roommate?”
“Is that why they keep checking on us?”
“The nurses just want to make sure you’re safe.”
Maddie’s mood shifted. “They don’t know what they’re dealing with,” she said darkly.
Red flags popped up all over the place. It was such an adult thing to say. “What do you mean? What are they dealing with?”
“They’re having a fight over my soul,” Maddie whispered conspiratorially.
“Who?”
“My parents.”
“Are you talking about the Devil? Possession?”
Maddie gazed out the window and didn’t answer.
Kate pulled up a chair and took a seat. “Maddie, does your father have a work number where he can be reached?”
A head shake. “We’re not supposed to call him at work.”
“I see. Then how do you contact him in case of an emergency?”
Maddie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Taking a different tack, Kate took a pack of chewing gum out of her pocket. “Would you like a piece? It’s spearmint.”
Maddie grinned. “Thanks.”
Kate handed her a stick of gum and watched as she unwrapped it and folded it into her mouth. Maddie drew her knees toward her chest and chewed contentedly, the smell of spearmint wafting Kate’s way.
She tried again. “If there was an emergency at school, and your mother wasn’t available, who would the principal call? Do you have any relatives nearby? Any aunts or uncles? Cousins or grandparents?”
“Nope.”
“Nobody?”
She shook her head.
“What if the school had to reach your dad in case of an emergency?”
“Calling him wouldn’t stop me,” Maddie said harshly.
Kate paused. “What do you mean?”
“When I say I want to kill myself, I mean it.”
Most fourteen-year-olds couldn’t articulate their alienation like this, let alone admit to suicidal tendencies. “Why would you want to kill yourself?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does the voice inside your head tell you to kill yourself?”
Maddie stopped chewing.
“When your father gets angry, does he ever hurt you or your mom?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?”
“Because you haven’t answered the question yet.”
The girl’s face reddened. She studied Kate as if she were the enemy—and perhaps she was. “Once, when I wouldn’t stop bugging him, he pushed me.”
“What were you bugging him about?” Kate asked.
“Stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Maddie shrugged noncommittally. “Sometimes I feel like bugging him.”
“And he shoves you away?”
“Only because I annoy him. Like this.” She nudged Kate gently.
“No harder than that?”
“No.”
“More than once?”
“I told you!” Maddie’s face darkened. Her eyes watered.
“Are you sure?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?” Bright tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Sorry,” Kate backtracked. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Maddie wiped her wet face.
“Is he religious?” Kate pressed.
The girl sighed. “I dunno.”
“Is your mother religious?”
She sniffled, and Kate handed her a box of Kleenex. “She’s Catholic. She believes in God. She believes in Jesus and the Holy Ghost and the Devil and hell and curses. Daddy doesn’t.”
“What do you believe in, Maddie? Do you believe in the Devil?”
Maddie’s eyes widened. She stared at Kate with growing anguish. “Mommy says she went to school with you, a long time ago, and one day your sister disappeared, and the whole town went looking for her, but then when they finally found her, she was dead. Buried alive.”
Kate’s heart skipped a beat.
“Mommy says that’s what happens to bad little girls. They get killed.”
Kate sat in troubled silence, leaping back in time. She had been sixteen when Savannah disappeared, and Penny had been eighteen, a senior in high school. Kate barely remembered the shy, awkward, blond-haired girl who kept mostly to herself. A shrinking violet nobody thought much about, truth be told, until her uncle’s trial, when she was suddenly everywhere—on TV, on the Internet, in the newspapers. Penny was the state’s star witness and had put Blackwood in prison, but you could tell she hated the limelight. When the cameras were on her, Penny would duck her head and raise her hands in front of her face.
“What else did your mother tell you?”
Kate asked. Maddie frowned. “She says you can fix me.”
“Is that all?”
A shrug.
“You just said you didn’t have any relatives. Did you forget about your mother’s uncle? Henry Blackwood?”
Maddie flinched. “He’s in prison.”
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
The girl was becoming evasive—probably trying to protect her mother from Kate’s scrutiny.
“What else did she say about me?” Kate persisted. “Besides the fact that my sister was killed, and we went to the same school together?”
Maddie gave her a worried look. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“But your face is red.”
Kate drew a breath. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I was heartbroken when I lost my sister, and it’s still very painful for me.”
Maddie nodded solemnly. An empathetic warmth suffused her cheeks.
Kate experienced a creeping paranoia, but she would have to check her anger and confusion at the door and deal with it later. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s back up a minute. I have a few more questions about the voice. When did you start hearing it?”
Maddie sighed. “I don’t remember. A long time ago.”
“What’s the worst thing it ever said to you?”
“Jump out a window.”
“It told you to jump out a window?”
“I was upstairs in the attic, and it said, Do it. And I knew what it meant, because I jumped out the window.”
Bad news. This was a clear sign of psychosis, a voice demanding that its host do something terrible and the host complying. “When was this?”
“I was eight years old.”
Kate cocked her head. “But weren’t you eight when you fell out of a tree?”
“No. I jumped out a window and hit the tree on the way down.”
“So you didn’t really fall out of a tree?”
“No.”
“Did anybody push you out of that window?”
Maddie made a face. “The voice said do it. So I did it.”
“Can you hear the voice now?”
She paused for a moment, then shook her head.
“How would you describe your relationship with your mother and father?”
The girl eyed her suspiciously.
“Just say whatever pops into your head.”
“They’re afraid of me.”
“Why?”
“They don’t understand me.”
“And how does that fear manifest itself? What do they do?” Besides—Kate thought sarcastically—drape you in rosaries and drop you off at some faraway hospital, and then scurry home.
“Mommy prays all the time.”
“What does she pray for?”
“For me to get better.”
“Does she believe in possession?”
“That’s sort of an understatement.”
Another oddly adult response from a child-like teenager.
“Does she think you’re possessed?” Kate asked.
“She doesn’t talk about it much.”
“Why not?”
“My dad told her not to.”
“So your father doesn’t want her saying you’re possessed?”
“Once, she said there was a demon inside me, and he hit her.”
At last. “He did?”
“He slapped her across the face.”
“Just once? Or more than once?”
“Like this.” She demonstrated by slapping the air.
“And what about you, Maddie? Has your father ever slapped you?”
“No.” Defensive posture.
“Are you sure?”
“I probably deserved it,” she blurted out.
“But you just said he didn’t hit you.”
“Sometimes I make stuff up,” Maddie admitted.
Uh-oh. That put a new wrinkle into the mix. But psychosis and lying weren’t mutually exclusive. Abused children sometimes lied to cover up their parents’ sins, making it difficult to untangle the truth from delusion and flat-out falsehoods.
“He hit you? Why? What happened? What were the circumstances?”
“I told him something he didn’t want to hear.”
“What was that?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Try.”