AFTER HER SHIFT WAS over, Kate took the 95 north out of Boston and drove past mini-malls, industrial parks, forests, and lakes on a steady trajectory toward Blunt River, New Hampshire. It was mid-afternoon and the traffic wasn’t bad for a Friday.
Sixteen years ago, Penny Blackwood had sealed her uncle’s fate inside a Manchester courtroom after his defense team claimed he was with her on that fateful night. But Penny contradicted his sworn statement, testifying that her uncle had left the house for six hours that evening, returning in a disheveled state. The jury believed her, not him. The state’s evidence alone had probably been strong enough to convict Blackwood, but Penny had made certain that the monster was put away. Kate recalled her vaguely, with pity—a shy dishwater blond drifting through the high-school hallways like a ghost, never calling attention to herself. An invisible kid, like so many of Kate’s troubled patients.
Although she wasn’t allowed inside the courtroom while Penny was testifying, Kate had seen plenty of video footage of the state’s star witness leaving the courthouse on the six o’clock news, deluged by reporters and camera crews clamoring up the steps and shouting questions at her. She would drape a sweater over her head in order to hide her face. On TV, Henry Blackwood always looked the same. He frowned a lot. He had a nasty shadow across his face. Kate couldn’t think of him now without those grainy media images playing inside her head, as if he didn’t exist except in some staticky, cathode-ray memory.
She’d been driving for over an hour now through patches of snow and patches of sunshine, and she’d fallen into a kind of waking slumber. She turned off the radio and drove in silence along the eastern branch of the river. She was in southwestern New Hampshire with its hazy mountains and wintery landscape—a palette of gold, platinum, and silver. Some of the houses were stately, whereas others had junk stacked in the yards.
The town of Blunt River had once been a manufacturing hub for shoes, and its Ivy League university was nearly as old as Yale. The town’s greatest shame was its crumbling lunatic asylum, closed in 1996, now just a cluster of deteriorating edifices nestled in conservancy lands not far away from the modern, university-affiliated Blunt River Hospital with its updated, compassionate psych ward.
Kate’s mother had been committed to the old asylum when Kate was ten years old and Savannah was six, both of them too young to appreciate what was going on. At the beginning of her illness, Julia Wolfe heard voices. She saw things no one else did—faces in the window, strange lights coiling through the air. She was convinced somebody was following her all over town. At the asylum, Julia was treated for bipolar disorder and a major depressive episode. Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, was a brain chemistry disorder, a chronic illness with mood swings that ranged from depression to mania. In some cases, bipolar disorder was accompanied by visual or auditory hallucinations. These psychotic symptoms were more commonly linked to schizophrenia, however, and as a result, patients with severe mood swings who also hallucinated were often incorrectly diagnosed. The doctors insisted that Julia’s bipolar disorder had manifested itself in hallucinations, but her delusions were so severe, Kate often wondered if her mother had been misdiagnosed. Bipolar schizoaffective disorder might’ve been more accurate.
The doctors released her six months later. A few weeks after that, she filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself in the river like Virginia Woolf, her favorite writer.
Kate took the exit ramp off the interstate and followed the familiar, arcing road toward Blunt River. She hadn’t been home in three years—not that her father ever complained. She rarely heard from him, except for the obligatory Christmas card or birthday gift—always a book. She made an attempt to call him a couple of times a year and usually got his machine. You have reached Dr. Wolfe. Leave a message after the tone. Eventually, she’d stopped leaving messages, because there was so little to say.
Now a wave of dread washed over her, along with a splash of nostalgia. Her curiosity was piqued. Nothing had changed— Blunt River was the same quaint New England town it had always been, charming and slow-paced, with a prestigious university nestled in its bosom. Her hometown. She passed by cottages and Gothics and Victorians where some of her childhood friends used to live, people she’d lost contact with years ago: she used to play doctor with Ashley Walsh’s brother in that green house; in that split-level she’d once barfed in Dara Bogdanova’s bathtub; in that Tudor-style home, she’d been the most unpopular sleepover guest ever when she couldn’t stop trashing Alanis Morissette.
She slowed down for the blinking yellow light and took a left onto Three Hills Road. She felt a slight apprehension as she dipped and rolled over the three hills—up and down, up and down, like riding a galloping dragon.
Almost home.
Well, not exactly. She hadn’t told her father about today’s little excursion and didn’t plan on dropping by unexpectedly. Instead, she would cut through her old neighborhood on her way to Wilamette. Hi Dad, bye Dad. Sorry, Dad.
The GPS system spouted directions, and Kate mindlessly obeyed, turning left, driving one-point-five miles, taking a right, et cetera. The town the Wards lived in, Wilamette, was an ugly carbuncle of a place on the other side of the river. She crossed the rib of steel spanning the cold blue river and passed a sign that said WELCOME TO WILAMETTE—LUMBER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Lies, all lies.
Here the landscape changed dramatically. The roads were in terrible shape. Half the shops on Main Street were boarded up and the hardware store had a 60% OFF sign in the window. Daffy’s was The Four-Leaf Clover now, and Barney’s Bar & Grill was a fast-food joint. The movie theater had been permanently shuttered. After a mile or so, Wilamette’s depressing commercial drag head-butted into a demoralized dead-end, and Kate had to turn left at the railroad tracks in order to keep on going.
What had once been a booming logging town was now struggling to rebrand itself into a woodsy, idyllic tourist destination. Good luck with that. Wilamette boasted bike paths and hiking trails, but the infrastructure was pretty torn up, the roads pitted with potholes. There were too many disintegrating trailer parks and bungalows painted “fun” colors that’d been passed from one generation to another. A few candy stores and souvenir shops had sprouted up here and there, but the poverty was spreading. The people were struggling, the mayor was corrupt, and it had been like this forever.
She took a right at the intersection and meandered for miles into the hills, past illicit farmsteads—puppy mills, mink farms, pot farms. The good people of Wilamette enjoyed collecting car parts and rusty wheelbarrows. Some of her friends from Wilamette used to laugh at their parents’ oddball behavior, and she wondered if those same bright, ironic, promising Gen-Yers were still trapped here. Or had they escaped “Whack-o-mette” for more sophisticated destinations? Hopefully some were on a mission to drag their hometown kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.
It was late in the afternoon by the time she’d reached Nelly Ward’s drab-looking mid-century modern. The navy blue Toyota Camry was parked in the driveway. The residence was at least sixty years old and poorly constructed, as if it were being pulled apart by an angry seamstress—cracks in the siding betrayed the subsiding foundations.
Kate parked on the street and got out. Rows of icicles hung like tinsel from the roof. She trudged up the walkway with a sense of purpose and rang the doorbell.
When Nelly answered she gasped, “What’re you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
“You could’ve warned me you were coming.”
“I tried to. Did you get my messages?”