“Where were you when you were reading it?” Mitch asked.
Ruby shut her eyes tighter, a clear indication she was deep in thought, straining to recall.
“I’m … I’m not alone.”
The accent. Gone. Ruby gone. The voice that spoke was quiet and sleepy … dreamlike and tiny.
“It’s not good. Very bad.”
Mitch could feel his heart rev up. “What’s very bad?” he asked. “Can you tell me?”
“She’ll go to prison for what she did.”
“Who will? Who’ll go to prison?”
“A woman … no, Mommy … Mommy will go to prison if she doesn’t stop. She’ll go to prison.”
Mommy … a young girl’s word.
“Is Mommy’s name Rachel?” Mitch whispered, afraid anything louder might break this spell.
She nodded—whoever this was, Ruby, Penny, someone nodded—her eyes still closed.
“Yes … Rachel is my mommy … and my mommy is going to prison for a long, long time if she doesn’t do as she’s told.”
“Do what?”
“I heard them yelling … so mad at each other.”
“Who’s angry at her?”
Mitch was thinking of Grace and her conviction that someone else was involved in Rachel’s murder. He thought of the boyfriend, Vincent Rapino, who certainly had a past that included prison. Before he could press this young girl for additional information, she spoke in that quiet, trancelike voice.
“Topeka … West Virginia … Pasadena … Tucson…”
She then repeated the names of places she said before.
“Michigan … Florida … Key West…”
And with each name she hit the side of the tub with her hand, like the tapping he’d heard in the 911 call.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Mitch got out his phone and quickly typed in the new locations she’d listed off, as well as the ones from before.
What do they have in common? he wondered. What’s the link?
He remembered other names she’d recited.
Alabama … Alaska … Chicago …
Were these places she’d visited? Places Rachel wanted to go?
Before Mitch could ask her any more questions, another howl came down the hall, more animal than human. Whatever was happening to the poor patient Dr. Bouvier had been treating in the ER didn’t sound good. The girl in the tub looked as though she’d been roused cruelly from a deep sleep. She stared at Mitch, eyes unblinking like a pair of headlights. He saw her body tense up and then relax. For a moment, she looked as if she were seeing right through him to the wall behind. A shift was taking place, he could see it, could feel a change of energy in the room. A moment later, the harsh look was back, and he knew.
She cocked her head at Mitch and said in a chiding way, “Watching me take a bath, Doctor? Think there may be a few lines being crossed, don’t you?” She sent Mitch a wink to go with her haughty smile.
“Hello, Eve,” Mitch said, feeling flustered at having lost the opportunity to speak to Ruby for longer. He didn’t show his disappointment though. She wasn’t the only one who had masks for her feelings. “Long time no see.”
CHAPTER 38
OF ALL OF YOUR alters, I have to say Ruby is my favorite. It feels a bit like a betrayal of sorts, like I’d rather she was my sister than you, Penny, but I guess in a way she is my sister. I mean the diagnosis of DID might be controversial, but the symptoms sure are real, so I suppose that makes Ruby real, too. Here’s a question though, one I still can’t answer. Is Ruby like a metaphor for some emotional state, or is she truly an autonomous person capable of her own willful action? Capable even of murder?
Film directors use metaphor in their work all the time. I, Robot （a solid action flick, I’d say, starring Will Smith, a solid action actor） is a metaphor for how the technology we depend upon might one day be used to annihilate us. Another, Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray film about a self-centered TV reporter who lives the same day over and over again until he becomes a charitable person, is actually a metaphor for Buddhist enlightenment. Professor Warren Brown graciously pointed that out to me in one of his lectures. I’m guessing Ruby is a metaphor for living the unburdened life, but is she also a life force unto herself?
She’d always appear at times when you needed a confidence boost to come out of your shell and have a bit of fun that didn’t require Eve’s dark energy for protection. Anything slightly unsettling could summon Ruby, like the time you worked up the nerve to ride your first loop roller coaster.