“Burned it up like the house on Duke Street,” said Jack.
The discovery had left Grace wondering if those burn scars on Penny’s forearms, which the doctors had noted way back when, weren’t in fact from a curling iron but from the fire that had consumed her home.
“That is a bit of a sideways turn,” Annie admitted. She blew on the tip of a second slice of cheese pizza before giving it a bite. “I thought the fire in that drawing had something to do with Maria,” she said while chewing.
Grace still had her doubts about Maria’s innocence, but didn’t have time to voice them. Mitch arrived with apologizes for running late. To Grace, he looked breathless and out of sorts; nervous, too. He took a seat and got caught up on the earlier discussion.
“It could be Penny’s subconscious is at work here, and the fire in the picture Chloe drew is symbolically connected to Maria, not a specific reference to Duke Street. The subconscious mind works in symbols because it’s the most efficient form of communication. So it’s possible, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think the drawing and fire are strongly linked.”
Grace nodded her head. “I do too, Mitch.”
“But here’s where it gets tricky,” Mitch said. “Penny, Ruby, Chloe, Eve—they’ve all experienced a dissociative state in Edgewater that’s characteristically been the same. I’d call it dreamlike, trancelike, either way—different from the prior personality state, correct?”
Grace nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “So when she’s in that trancelike state, is that the fourth alter, the one we’ve been thinking is hiding from us?”
“I don’t think so,” Mitch said, and something in his eyes, his voice hinted at trouble.
Grace studied him with curious intent. “What is it then?”
“We thought it was Chloe who told us she burned it up, but she didn’t go away. We also thought it was a memory from the night of the murder, but now we know it was from her distant past. What if it wasn’t Chloe’s memory we were accessing, and what if all the recollections we heard—‘she’ll go to prison’ … ‘I wasn’t alone’ … the ammonia, even—what if it all came from Penny’s distant past, same as the toaster on fire?”
Grace sat back in her chair, stunned. “Are you suggesting everything we’ve learned, everything Eve, Ruby, Chloe, and Penny herself have told us, is all from the same time period?”
“What I may have done here—unwittingly, I’ll give you that,” Mitch said, “is help Penny tap into her subconscious mind to access memories she’s blocked out, maybe even memories of the traumatic experience or experiences that caused her personality to splinter in the first place.”
Grace’s mouth hung open. She’d never considered that possibility, and the implications felt shattering.
“If it’s all from the past, then what Penny told us about her not being alone is from the past, too. That means she was most likely alone that night and she killed Rachel.”
“Maybe,” Mitch said. “We still don’t have a good explanation for the rope restraints.”
“She tied herself up to stop herself from committing murder,” Jack suggested. “She was at war with her own self.”
“Possible,” Mitch said. “Or Rachel tied her and somehow she escaped. But that’s not what I called you all together to discuss. Penny, and each of Penny’s alters, needed to be in a dissociative state to access these memories. Why? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself, and the answer I think was there all along. They weren’t Penny’s memories.”
“So it is a new alter?”
“But these are memories from the past,” Mitch clarified. “Think about the park. You found Penny. She couldn’t tell you anything about what happened to her … who dropped her off … why … she wouldn’t even answer to her name. And, she didn’t cry for Rachel. Why is that?”
“She was traumatized,” said Jack. “That’s what the psychologists and social workers said. She wouldn’t tell us anything because the abandonment was traumatic for her and Rachel probably abused her.”
Annie’s expression turned unsettled. “Oh God,” she said, putting her hands to her mouth.
“Are you suggesting…？” Grace fumbled for the words, her color blanching.
“I’m suggesting that Penny couldn’t answer your questions that day, or the day after, or the day after that—couldn’t tell you what happened to her, didn’t know who put her in the park, didn’t respond to her name, didn’t miss Rachel—because she had no memories to share. Because Penny herself … is an alter.”