“I don’t remember standing in the middle of Rachel’s living room, covered in blood.”
“I don’t know if I checked my body for cuts.”
“I can’t say what my state of mind was, or if I was confused.”
“I don’t remember hearing sirens or going to the window to look outside.”
“I sort of have a feeling that I saw someone familiar-looking standing across the street under a streetlamp, but I don’t remember telling that to anybody. Maybe an alter has that memory.”
“The next memory I have after going into Rachel’s apartment is my mother showing me a pepperoni pizza she bought for me even though I don’t like pepperoni pizza.”
“Yes, I realize that was a year and a half later.”
“I think that’s because an alter of mine named Eve took over to protect me, and she had all the memories of the arrest and Edgewater, not me.”
“I don’t remember telling Dr. McHugh I wasn’t alone.”
“I don’t remember telling him I was scared about having my head put into a bucket full of ammonia.”
“I think I was talking about the night of the murder when I said those things, but I don’t really know.”
“I don’t recall ever having my head forced into a bucket full of ammonia.”
Attorney Navarro asks more questions and she answers them. He looks pleased.
The judge suggests a recess before the prosecution starts their cross-examination. Everyone agrees. Attorney Navarro talks to her at the counsel table, drinking water because it’s so hot. He takes his jacket off to cool off, and unbuttons his shirt sleeves. She watches him wipe the sweat off his brow and forearms using a cloth towel. He doesn’t have an extra towel, but he offers to get her some paper ones from the bathroom. Her gaze is locked on him, and she can’t look away. She stares blankly, nods her head, answering his question, but she feels funny now. Not faint from the heat, just … funny. Off.
“Do you need something to eat? Want a Coke? Anything?”
The last word repeats, then fades out until she can’t hear what’s being asked of her at all. Attorney Navarro’s lips are moving, but she hears only a loud ringing in her ears, a high-pitched piercing sound, and soon her head begins to throb, powerful and pounding, like a sledgehammer thumping inside her skull.
The strangest sensation washes over her. She feels her body become weightless, but her eyes are heavy, and she fights off a strong urge to close them. She feels dizzy, as if she’s stood up too quickly. Then a sensation like she’s heading into a tunnel, with a point of light up ahead that beckons to her. The feeling is quite strange, but vaguely familiar. The knowing voice returns to tell her that the vanishing has begun.
Oh no, she thinks.
And that’s the last conscious thought she has.
CHAPTER 51
JACK, SWEATING FROM THE HEAT, his long hair looking damp as if he’d showered not long ago, leaned over to his mother and whispered, “Something is wrong.”
Grace agreed. Every day of the trial had been a blessing as well as a curse, because every day Grace got to spend time with Penny. She didn’t understand why Eve had let Penny take the stand; Mitch couldn’t explain it either.
“Edgewater is Eve, and outside its walls is Penny” was the best he could offer.
But now it wasn’t Eve, or Penny, or Chloe, or any alter Grace knew of who’d taken the witness stand for her cross. When the judge resumed the trial, Penny didn’t immediately move when she was called back to the stand. Navarro had to guide her to her seat, and she seemed utterly out of sorts getting settled in the box.
Grace glanced back at Mitch, who sat two rows behind her. He looked puzzled. Her eyes scanned the back of the courtroom, and they settled on Vincent Rapino on one side of the gallery, and Maria Descenza, with her mother Barbara accompanying, on the other. Their presence here was all it took to make Grace’s skin crawl, but there was nothing she could do about it. Both Vince and Maria were as free as anyone to attend these sweltering-hot proceedings. No doubt they had come to court to hear Penny’s testimony. But was it Penny who was about to testify? Grace wasn’t so sure, and judging by Mitch’s baffled expression, neither was he.
A vacant look invaded Penny’s sweet eyes, as if she were under a hypnotist’s spell, and her whole demeanor changed. In what Grace could only describe as an Alice In Wonderland moment, either the witness stand had grown larger, or her daughter had shrunk four sizes smaller.