“Oh good … that’s very good. Can you see the title?” Grace felt her excitement growing.
“I’m not alone,” Penny whispered. Grace knew it was no longer just a book she was seeing in her mind.
“Who’s with you?” she asked. “Is it a man? Is it Vincent? Vincent Rapino?”
Penny opened her eyes as if jolted from a trance.
“You know that name.” Grace sounded stunned, but quickly composed herself. “He was Rachel’s boyfriend. Do you remember anything about him?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Penny said, her tone apologetic. Her eyes were open, but it looked to Grace as though she were seeing beyond the Edgewater walls.
Grace leaned in closer, thinking she hadn’t heard quite right. “Come again?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Penny said, this time with conviction. “Nothing.”
Her eyes soon filled, cheeks went rosy, and before long tears were streaming down her face.
“It’s okay … I understand. You’re safe,” Grace assured her. “What happened that night? Can you tell me?”
“Someone hurt her, but it wasn’t me,” Penny said, speaking in a soft, almost dreamlike tone.
“I’ll say a name,” Grace said. “You don’t have to answer, just nod your head if that person was with you.”
Penny went still as a painting, giving no indication she’d grasped her mother’s instruction. From her wide and frightened eyes it appeared she was still lost in the past, trapped in some terrible memory.
“Was Vincent there?”
The only movement Penny made was to close her eyes slowly.
“Was Maria with you?”
Penny gave no acknowledgment. Her body stayed still even as her eyes opened. She looked empty, the mannequin look again.
While her daughter remained motionless, inside Grace was revving up. These new revelations—I didn’t do anything wrong, I wasn’t alone—revived a hope in her long ago abandoned in the face of the overwhelming evidence.
Could Penny be innocent?
“You saw someone hurt Rachel. Can you give us a name?”
Instead of answering, Penny tapped her hand softly and rhythmically against the table.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Three times those taps sounded in short succession, and then paused before she did it again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said in a breathy whisper.
Mitch’s recording captured every detail: the way her lips pursed together, the squint of her eyes, how her hands had balled into tight little fists.
“Penny, who are you talking to?” Grace asked. “To me? Are you telling me that you’re innocent?”
It looked to Grace as though Penny had donned a virtual reality headset, and through its magical lens, she could peer into the past to confront a terror that felt visceral and real to her.
“Look at your room again.” Mitch’s words seemed to come out of the gloom, causing Grace to startle. “Do you see the book?”
“The book with boats and water,” Penny answered in a dreamlike voice. “I love that book.”
“Close your eyes and see if you can see it in your head. Tell me the title if you can.”
Penny closed her eyes. “I see only the bucket,” she said, unclenching her hands.
“Bucket? What bucket?” asked Mitch. He moved in closer, kneeling on the floor beside Penny, his attention focused on the patient more than his recording.
“It’s a blue plastic bucket … filled with that stuff … it smells … awful.”
“What stuff?” Grace squeezed Penny’s hand gently.
“Ammonia. The bucket is full of ammonia. I’m going to get my head put in the bucket, too, but I didn’t do anything wrong, so I shouldn’t get the bucket.”
Grace and Mitch exchanged horrified glances. Had someone tried to force Penny to inhale ammonia fumes on the night of Rachel’s murder? That scenario was sickening to the core, but it certainly explained why the scent had triggered a switch. Thoughts flurried through Grace’s mind as she tried to puzzle out possibilities.
Nothing about this made sense, but these were clearly her daughter’s recollections.
“It happened to her, and it’s going to happen to me.” Penny sounded truly terrified. Her eyes were closed, but her head was turned to a corner of the room, as if seeing Rachel there, on her knees, someone standing behind her, pushing her head down, down, into a bucket full of ammonia. “I heard the voice say it. She has to be gone and gone for good. I’ll get the bucket, too, if she’s not gone and gone for good.”