And you were all for it.
Yes. Okay. Promise.
And you posted a picture of the fingers crossed emoji.
Did Rachel interpret your giddy glee as indication you’d forgotten how you’d suffered at her hand? Was that the last mistake she made in her messed-up life?
All this is just one possibility to consider: you, or your avenging alter, took vengeance on your past abuser. And if it can be proven in court that you couldn’t control yourself, then you, Penny, will be found not guilty due to your mental illness. They’ll sentence you to a secure psychiatric hospital where you’ll receive the kind of care you need, and maybe one day you’ll get better. Maybe all of your alters will go away, become integrated （that’s the clinical term） into you, Penny, the host person. You may even get out of the hospital in time to have some sort of independent life.
But there’s another possibility, one that I’ve considered carefully, as have many others, according to the blogs, social media posts, opinion pieces, and news reports about you and your crime: that you don’t have DID, and you never did. That’s not to say there isn’t something wrong with you. Clearly there is. You might just be a psychopath, a person who chooses evil for evil’s sake, a violent individual who doesn’t care, who shows no remorse, the sort of person who deserves a lifetime behind bars.
It’s not a stretch to think a psychopath would invent alternate personalities to justify and explain away all sorts of crimes, including murder.
So which is it? Have you been playing us all along? Was DID your invented excuse to do as you wished, until your wish included murder? Or is your condition real, and you took Rachel Boyd’s life in a fit of uncontrollable violent rage to avenge some abuse you suffered long ago?
Are you deranged or damaged?
Sick or evil?
In the end, I pray my film will help me answer these questions.
CHAPTER 4
AT THE SOUND OF the doorknob’s metallic jangle, Grace took in a breath and held it. She dreaded this moment and yearned for it at the same time. She had to see her daughter, to set eyes on her, but would it be Penny who greeted her, or somebody else?
A young uniformed police officer brought Penny into the room as nonchalantly as if he were delivering a package. Grace had to suppress a gasp of utter horror, as it looked to her as if Penny had crawled through a slaughterhouse on hands and knees to get here. Dark blood was everywhere—on her jeans, soiling her blue tee, staining her hands as if she’d dunked them into buckets of paint. The pungent smell of death that followed her into the room was something Grace thought she’d never forget.
“How could you leave her like this?” Grace seethed to the baby-faced officer, who merely shrugged his shoulders in response.
“Sorry, nothing we could do about it. She didn’t have a change of clothes.”
“Well, someone could have found her something to change into, for goodness’ sake,” Grace scolded him.
“This isn’t Walmart, ma’am,” he said, in a calm and even voice that belied his years. “We’re a police station; we don’t have clothes to give her.”
Or compassion, thought Grace.
She turned her attention back to the girl standing by the doorway. She certainly looked like Penny, tall and thin-limbed, with thick bands of straight hair held together in sticky clumps of dried blood. If someone were to scrub off the damn blood, she’d look like a normal teenager: round, smooth face unworn by years of experience, cheekbones on the cusp of being enviable, glimpses of the beautiful young woman she’d become.
For a fleeting moment, Grace allowed herself to believe it was Penny. But no, that was an illusion. This girl had a menacing stare that radiated anger.
So familiar. So heartbreaking.
So damn Eve.
Penny was the child Grace had raised, but she was perfectly attuned to her daughter’s many mannerisms, speech patterns, moods, and behaviors. A squint of her wide eyes, a dip of her delicate shoulders, or an upward tic of her full lips might signal the arrival of someone new within, transforming her in a blink from friendly to sullen, from easy to anxious.
Each alter—and there were three Grace knew of, well below the average number of ten—was as distinct as any two people. There was Eve, the darkest and most outspoken of the lot; Chloe, the perfectionist, always striving for straight As in school; and Ruby, who spoke with a British accent. The alters were so different from each other, and from Penny, that Grace had come to view and treat them as individuals in the same way she did her two sons.