“Wasn’t me,” Eve said assuredly, and Mitch thought it could have been Penny, or one of her alters who had those correspondences, but he’d have to reach them to confirm.
“Was Penny in the house the night Rachel died?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“Well, can I talk to her?”
Eve sat more upright in bed. “And what will you do for me? Will you get me out of here?”
“You know I can’t do that,” he said.
“Then I guess pretty Penny has to stay away.”
Her tone was ice cold. Grace had returned to the treatment bay, taken one look at her daughter, and pulled back as if stopped by an invisible wall.
“Hello, Mother,” Eve said languidly with false cheer. “I’m famished. What are we having for lunch?”
CHAPTER 12
GRACE SAT ACROSS FROM Mitch in the Edgewater staff cafeteria, drinking a cup of coffee that was going to compound her jangled nerves. The cafeteria’s bright lighting vanquished all shadows, making the prepared food displayed in the under-counter refrigeration unit look as sickly as the patients. The coffee, however, was surprisingly good.
The news Mitch shared was less so.
“Explain it to me again,” Grace said. “Penny only thought she wasn’t alone at the time of the murder?”
“Think of it like signals in the brain getting crossed,” Mitch explained. “The stimuli she was experiencing produced such an overload of information that it led to the bleeding of one persona into another.”
“Like it broke down the walls in her mind?”
“Exactly,” Mitch said. “The shock, the trauma, of Rachel’s murder basically blasted a hole through the metaphorical bricks separating Penny’s alters. I don’t know which alter came through that night, but I suspect that was the other presence in the room.”
Grace found Mitch’s explanation heartbreakingly all too plausible.
“I thought you didn’t believe she has DID?”
“I said I haven’t drawn any conclusions, but I’m operating on the assumption that her diagnosis is accurate. To that end, I’d like to know more about Penny’s alters … about how you met them.”
“It began eight years after we found Penny in the park,” Grace said, after taking a moment to collect her thoughts.
“So Penny was…” Mitch added in his head. “Twelve at the time?”
“That’s right. She was twelve. And that’s when we met Ruby.”
* * *
Arthur had been at the stove, cooking up his weekend special. Ryan and Jack, Penny too, had all outgrown the days of Mickey Mouse–shaped pancakes, but Arthur made them anyway because some traditions were too hard to let go.
Arthur was thin, due to twelve-hour days spent on his feet coupled with the willpower to avoid sampling his wares. He had the sharpest blue eyes Grace had ever seen, keen as an eagle’s, somehow capable of seeing everything happening at the restaurant, including things that took place behind his back.
Without any prodding, Arthur knew when the sausage sizzling in the pan needed to be flipped. He set the table, poured glasses of juice, cut the fruit, flipped the pancakes, the sausages, doing it all effortlessly because he took to the kitchen like a fish does to water.
After her bath, Penny came downstairs damp, still wearing her bathrobe, nose in a Harry Potter book. She was entering adolescence and all that came with it—new places for hair, menstruation, buds for breasts. She was reading book four in the series, The Goblet of Fire, a thick and meaty tome that she carried with her everywhere she went. Penny loved her books, could get lost in them for hours, so it was no surprise to Grace that she fell hard and fast for the magical world of Harry Potter and the utter brilliance of his creator, J. K. Rowling.
The trouble all started with a single word.
“I’m quite peckish this morning,” Penny said as she took a seat at the table, speaking in a mock English accent.
“Peckish?” Ryan looked at Penny askance. “You mean ‘pukish’？”
“No, silly,” said Penny, keeping that accent going. “Peckish. Hungry.” She elongated the word and her eyes went wide at the sight of the pancakes and sausage steaming on warm plates.
“Are you going to talk like that all day?” Jack asked.
“Like what?” Penny studied them, confused.
Jack and Ryan stared at each other, equally bemused.
“Like with your dumb English accent,” Ryan said.
“What are you talking about?” Penny said, an edge invading her voice. “This is how I talk.”