Chapter 21

I found Doyle in the parking lot before school started. He looked relieved I was still talking to him. “How was your Betty adventure?” he said when I waved.

“Way more full of Jesus and prowlers than I’d like,” I said, and left it at that. “Listen, I’ve got a track meet this weekend. After, I’m going to meet my grandmother.”

Doyle’s forehead wrinkled. “You want some company?”

My skin warmed at his words. I’d been hoping he’d offer, even though I knew we’d both get into a world of hurt—literally—if Simon or Doyle’s father found out. I couldn’t imagine doing this without him.

I smiled up at him. “If you’re not over my family drama yet,” I said.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do this weekend than go visit your dead grandma,” Doyle said.

“Spoken like a true gentleman,” I said. He laughed.

“Never that. But ferrying you around is a good reason to not be at home, and I’ll take all of those I can get.”

“Happy to help,” I said. The bell rang, and I let him walk me inside. I just had to get through one more week, I told myself. Then I’d know.

Doyle picked me up in his rust-bucket Jeep that weekend after the meet—which we lost, but I was so keyed up I could barely sit still, even after running three events and listening to Armitage’s speech about why we all sucked.

Valerie caught up with me as I was walking to Doyle’s car. “We’re gonna drown our sorrows in coffee and chocolate—you want a lift?”

I froze, not sure what to do. I had started to genuinely like Valerie, but I needed Doyle with me to see my grandmother. He was the only one I trusted with whatever I was going to find at the psych hospital.

She followed my gaze toward Doyle. “Oh.”

“Valerie,” I started. “It’s not—”

“You know what?” she said, putting up a hand to stop me. “It’s cool. I’m not into jealousy and girls hating on other girls. All I’m gonna say is you could do a lot better than Doyle. He’s never gonna leave Darkhaven, and you seem like you’ve got bigger plans.”

If only she knew. I exhaled, and tried the truth, which was unusual for me. “I’m not dating him,” I said. “He’s helping me with a family problem. I . . .” I forced myself to keep talking, be sincere, even though the urge to lie, to placate, to say the thing that would bend the other person into doing what I wanted was so strong I could taste it. “I do like him, Valerie. But I like you too, and I want to keep being friends. I haven’t had a lot of female friends. Okay, any, really. If my hanging out with Doyle will make things weird, please tell me.”

“Pfft,” she said. “Go on, your knight in rusty armor awaits.”

“It’s really not like that,” I said.

She patted me on the arm. “You’re a bad liar, Ivy. Look, am I thrilled? No. But I’m not surprised either. You’re his type. Way more than I am.”

“Meaning what?” I said, hesitating.

“Damaged,” she said. “Vulnerable. In need of a white knight. I was just having fun with him. He couldn’t rescue me, so I wasn’t fun for him. I’ve got my shit together.”

I thought about telling Valerie that she might have all that, but she sucked at reading people. But I bit back my impulse to say something cutting and awful. She was angry, she had a right to be, and I just needed to give her space. “Okay, Valerie,” was all I said. “You have a good weekend.”

I crossed the lot and got into Doyle’s car. He looked at me as he started the engine. “I won’t ask what that was about. Where are we going?”

“Mid-Coast Psychiatric,” I said, reading the address off the screen on my phone. I propped it on the dash so Doyle could follow the little blue arrow on the screen.

“Glad you’re not Amish anymore,” he said. “But you know that thing won’t work on the island.”

“Simon got it for me because I stayed out longer than I said I would and he flipped his shit,” I said.

“I’m having a hard time picturing that,” Doyle said. “Much as he sorta creeps me out, he’s pretty quiet.”

“I wish I still had a hard time picturing it,” I muttered.

We drove, the silence less than awkward but more than pleasant, until the hospital came into view. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting—not that I’d spent a lot of time in psych wards that weren’t state-run, where patients actually paid to be treated rather than being locked up there by the county sheriff after they tried to stab their boyfriend with a linoleum knife. To give Mom credit for one thing, I at least knew how to bullshit my way past the front desk and the doctors at most of these places.

Doyle looked out the windshield at the modern glass-front main building, orbited by several pleasant dormitories that looked like upscale country hotels. Patients in scrubs or civilian pajamas were walking on the lawn between buildings, some sitting in a circle on the grass in heavy sweaters and bathrobes taking advantage of the last of the warm fall days before it got really cold, chatting with a nice-looking female shrink. It was about as far from the bleach-scented, Thorazine-tinged nightmares my mother had been locked in as you could get.

“You need me to come in?” he said. I shook my head.

“I’ll be fine.”

He sat back, looking relieved. “Good. Hospitals give me the creeps.”

“So you’re fine living on the creepy island and chatting me up about curses, but one hint of a white coat and you’re over it?” I said.

Doyle grunted. “Some people are bothered by normal shit that bothers people,” he said.

I patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them give you any shots.” He didn’t laugh, so I slid out of the Jeep and crossed the damp pavement to the entrance by myself.

The door swished in front of me, and an orderly wearing a jacket and tie approached when I stepped into the lobby. Fountains, classical music—if my grandmother was here, this place had to cost a small fortune. Maybe that was why the manor house on Darkhaven was falling apart and we ate practically nothing but meat loaf.

“Can I help you find something?” the orderly said, and it took me a second to realize he was being genuine, not snotty.

“Uh . . . I’m here to see about visiting my grandmother,” I said. “Her name is Simone Bloodgood.”

The orderly raised an eyebrow and then gestured me over to a desk. “I’ll need to see some ID, Miss . . . ?”

“Also Bloodgood,” I said, handing over my student ID. He scanned it through a little reader, tapped a few keys, and then nodded.

“You’ll have to forgive the procedures. I didn’t know Simone had any family besides her son, so we don’t have a visitor list set up for her.”

I felt my stomach flip hard, like I was still on the deck of the boat that first morning I’d come to the island. She was alive. Not “I’m so sorry, your grandmother died years ago.” Not “We have no record of that name.”

She was here; she was alive enough to have visitors.

That was that. Simon had lied to me.

“I lived a long way away up until a month ago,” I said, when I realized I’d been quiet a heartbeat too long. “I’m just now meeting most of my extended family.”

He nodded as he typed again, then picked up his handheld radio and muttered into it. “It’s day-room time right now,” he said. “Someone will be here to escort you in just a minute.”

He’d barely finished talking when a nurse in pink scrubs came out of the locked ward, all smiles, and took me by the elbow. “So nice to hear Simone has some family,” she said. “We’re all very fond of her.”

“Is she . . . ,” I said, trying to tamp down the reflexive nervousness at being in a mental institution. It might be nicer than most of the homes I’d had, and there might not be screams and straitjackets, but I didn’t miss the two layers of security doors we had to walk through to get to the day room, the thick metal mesh over all the large windows, and the panic buttons by every door. A locked ward was a locked ward, no matter how you dressed it up.

“What’s wrong with her?” I tried again, as the nurse indicated a small table against the wall in the hall outside the day room.

“Your grandmother is a paranoid schizophrenic, and unfortunately in the last few years she’s also been showing signs of dementia,” the nurse said. “She’s not violent, though. You don’t have to be nervous about seeing her.”

“Trust me, this is not my first rodeo,” I said, and to prove it I emptied my pockets and bag onto the table, letting the nurse see I didn’t have contraband or anything the patients could use to hurt me or themselves.

“Take as long as you like, but don’t be offended if she doesn’t know you,” the nurse said. “Does she? Know of you?”

“Yes,” I lied as she waved her key card at the sensor and the day-room door swung open. I felt my vision spiraling down to a tunnel from nerves and took a deep breath to calm myself. “We’re family.”

The nurse pointed me across the day room to a pair of easy chairs by the window. I felt like I might throw up. If I’d managed to eat anything after the meet, I definitely would have heaved into one of the plants decorating the day room. I didn’t know if I was livid at Simon’s lie or just nervous about talking to Simone.

Maybe Simon had a reason to lie. Hard-core mental illness wasn’t pretty. Maybe this was just his effed-up attempt to protect me.

But I’d never been that good at giving people the benefit of the doubt. People lied because they were selfish, because they got something out of it.

I stopped just short of the chairs. A woman sat in the one closest to the window, head nodding in time with something only she could hear, as her hands worked a puzzle spread out on a tray in front of her. The box lid had a picture of three napping kittens.

I had to keep moving, sit down across from this woman who was supposed to be dead, and try to think of some way to get her to talk to me. I was sure Mom had never sent baby pictures, school photos, good report cards—not that I had many worth bragging about. For all this poor woman knew, I was some con artist out to take her for everything she had.

And until recently she wouldn’t even have been far off the mark.

I still sat, trying not to stare as she looked up. Even though her face was sunken and one cheek muscle trembled slightly, her eyes and her nose and her whole face were like a version of Mom’s, if she hadn’t done what she did and had lived to be as old as Simone.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly. “Are you the young woman from the library?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say—leading with the whole long-lost granddaughter thing seemed like it might be coming on too strong.

She pursed her lips, looking disappointed. “The library sends volunteers to read to me sometimes. My eyes are starting to go. Cataracts.” Her cheek jumped again, more violently. I had the crazy urge to reach out and smooth it down, like a parent would do to a child.

“I can read to you,” I offered, pointing to a book sitting on the arm of her chair.

“Oh, thank you, Myra. I do love listening to you read.”

I bit my lip, trying not to react. She thought I was Mom. I reached for the book, rough cloth cover scratching my fingertips. Maybe this was for the best. “You’re welcome, Mom,” I said.

She blinked at me as she locked another puzzle piece into place. “Myra, you come visit me so seldom. Why do you stay away?”

“I don’t like these places,” I said, giving an actual Mom answer.

Simone snorted. “And you think I do? You think I belong here? I know you won’t talk about it, but I don’t belong here, Myra. Not locked up with these people. My sickness isn’t the same.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not up to me.”

“You let him take everything,” she snapped. “You were supposed to be smarter than that, Myra. You let me sign those papers, and you did nothing.”

“Who?” I asked. She pursed her lips disapprovingly.

“I don’t know what kind of silly game this is, Myra, but a woman pregnant with a child of her own should behave like an adult, not a spoiled girl,” she grumbled. “I may be the one in the crazy house, but you aren’t far behind me if you’re already starting to forget things.”

I looked down at the cover of the book. Rebecca. Of freaking course. “I guess I’ve got the Bloodgood sickness,” I ventured, wondering if she’d take the bait.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she grumbled. “Sickness, there’s no sickness besides bad brain chemistry and too much time alone on that damn island. Now either read or get the hell out, Myra. I get enough nutty talk from the people in here.”

I sighed, thinking that Mom had come by her shitty temper honestly, and opened the book to the marked page. I started reading. “If only there could be an invention,” I said impulsively, “that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.

I jumped when Simone’s hand clamped on my knee, her leaning into me, staring like she’d just seen a ghost. “You’re not Myra,” she rasped. “Who are you?”

I shut the book carefully.

“I’m Ivy,” I said. “Myra’s daughter.”

She looked at me and it was like somebody had pulled back the curtains in a dark room—suddenly she was as mentally sharp as I was, all the fog and helplessness gone from her face.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” I said. “I was under the impression that you were . . . um . . .”

“Ivy,” she rasped, pulling me into a violent hug. For a skinny old woman she was strong as a steel cable. “I am so sorry,” she whispered in my ear. “It’s the damn drugs—starts with the muscles twitching, then your mind goes soft, and pretty soon you’re like a rotted-out beam, just mold and dust that crumbles if you touch it.”

An orderly was watching us, and I gently extricated myself from her grip.

“Where’s Myra?” my grandmother said, her face lighting. “Is she here? Did she finally come back for me?”

“No,” I said softly. “No, I . . .” I took a deep breath. “My mom is dead, Simone. I came back to Darkhaven because of that. I didn’t know I had a grandmother still living until two weeks ago.”

Simone sank back in her chair. She didn’t move, but tears worked their way down her face. “Poor girl,” she said. “She was always a butterfly’s wing. Beautiful. Fragile.” She blinked the tears away and sat up straight. “You live here, you said? On Darkhaven?”

“Yes,” I said. “With Simon.”

Before I could ask her why the hell Simon would claim she was dead all this time, she lunged at me, and this time it wasn’t friendly. She grabbed my wrist, pulling my hand close to hers, her nails digging half-moons out of my skin. “Leave,” she rasped. “Leave and never go back.”

“Hey! Simone, let’s calm down,” the orderly called, starting for us. I turned back to my grandmother, who was holding on to me like I was a lifeboat.

“Why?” I said. “Why do I need to leave?”

“Before the devil finds you!” my grandmother said, starting to shake all over, her muscle twitches practically contorting her face. “Bloodgoods always die badly,” she cried as the orderly tried to pry us apart. “We tried! We took Benjamin in, we made him one of us, we even changed his name so he’d feel like family, but nothing worked! The devil found him, and he’s got his eye on you now!”

She let out an enraged howl as the orderly flipped the cap off a syringe and plunged it into her upper arm.

I flopped back in my chair, shaking, until the friendly nurse from before touched me, and I jumped.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s probably better if you give her a week or so before you come back.”

“She was . . .” I swallowed and got hold of myself, standing up. My wrist was bruised and covered in bloody nail marks. “For a minute there she was lucid. We were talking.”

“Dementia comes and goes,” the nurse said. “She’s best this time of day. The delusions, though, those are harder to control. Even with antipsychotics, your grandmother is very ill.”

“I’m sorry,” I said as she let me out the locked door. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”

“Don’t blame yourself, sweetie.” She patted me on the arm. “I just hope this won’t keep you from visiting again.”

I could still hear Simone screaming from the hallway. Suddenly I had to get out of this plush, overly clean and bright parody of a hospital before I vomited all over their tasteful carpet. I speed-walked as far as the lobby and broke into a run across the parking lot, jumping back in the Jeep and startling Doyle.

“Ivy,” he said. “What happened?”

“Drive,” I said, pressing my hands over my face, trying to get control. I did not want to break down in front of Doyle, not now. Not before I’d had time to process what Simone had said.

Doyle stayed quiet for about ten miles before he pulled over at a chain coffee place, disappearing inside and returning with a bottle of water and a bag of doughnuts. “Here,” he said. “Hydrate. Eat some sugar.”

The doughnuts tasted sickly sweet, but I forced one down, and after a few swigs of water I did start to feel better. “Thanks,” I said quietly.

“I take it you didn’t get what you wanted,” he said.

“She’s really far gone,” I said, but I didn’t elaborate. I had learned something. Not anything I wanted to hear, but that didn’t make it less true. I understood the photo and the birth certificate now. Why Peter Ross had been convinced my grandmother couldn’t have any more kids after my mom. Not why the certificate and photo had been hidden after someone tried to burn them, but why they existed in the first place, how Simon existed after my grandmother had been so sick giving birth to my mother she’d had to stay in bed for almost a year.

Simon was Benjamin. My uncle was adopted. And for some reason, my grandmother was convinced the devil—or whoever Mary Anne and my grandmother used the word to represent—was coming for us both.

The rest of the weekend felt like a year, and I still felt like I was underwater when I went back to school on Monday. Valerie confronted me at lunch. “Did somebody you love die or something? You look like you haven’t slept in a month and you’re about to cry.”

“Just my mom,” I said. “And love is debatable.”

Valerie flinched, and I reminded myself that Valerie was normal, and normal people felt bad when you said you hated your dead mother. “Sorry,” I muttered.

Valerie let the silence stretch until she pointed at my open backpack. “Tarot cards!” she said. “Cool.”

I shrugged. “They’re bullshit.”

“Then why do you have them?” She reached over and took the cloth-wrapped deck, turning a few over. “Wow, these are really old, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, setting down my fork. My lasagna wasn’t getting any less inedible. “How can you tell?”

“I’m into this stuff,” she said. “I know it’s a little weird, but it’s fun too.”

I took the cards back from Valerie, laying out a simple five-card reading. I’d been playing with them ever since I went back to the island, thinking about my mom, and all the stuff she’d said to me that hadn’t made any sense at the time. About the fact when I got home from school that afternoon Simon would be back from New York and I had no clue in hell how I was going to act, what I was going to say.

Plus, the doctor had left a message on the house phone confirming my psych appointment later in the week. I’d seen what my actual chances were in the genetic lottery when I’d met my grandmother. Who knew if it was really schizophrenia, or just a label the shrinks had slapped on whatever was wrong with all three of us—her, my mom, and me.

I could ignore that for now, as I flipped the cards down on the sticky cafeteria table. In my old life, Valerie would have been a prime mark—rich, young, and credulous. Just the way Mom liked them.

Maybe it was spite at her memory, maybe just a desire to prove I was nothing like her now more than ever, but I decided to do the decent thing for Valerie.

“I didn’t know you liked new age stuff,” I said.

“Maybe because you don’t let anyone know anything about you and you close yourself off from them just as much,” Valerie said, cocking one ginger eyebrow.

“Okay, smart-ass,” I said, flipping over the cards in succession. “Here’s how tarot readers work. They start vague—like ‘I see here a relationship just ended.’”

“Yeah, Doyle,” Valerie said. “Duh.”

“And this has left you wondering what’s next, in more than love. You’re worried about a big decision.”

“College,” said Valerie. “Again, duh.”

“A female figure in your life is pushing you one way, but you feel like another path is your true calling,” I said. Valerie raised a hand.

“Okay, whoa. That is freaky. My mother is totally pressuring me to apply to a bunch of state schools, and what I really want is to move to New York.”

I swept the cards back into a pile and tapped them. “That layout didn’t say any of that.”

Valerie frowned. “Then what the hell, Ivy? You were so spot-on.”

“Cold reading,” I said. “You’re almost college age but your biggest concern is your ex-boyfriend, not college or family problems, so it’s a good bet you come from a relatively stable home. You’re wearing expensive clothes and carrying a bag that costs more than a used car, so your parents are probably professionals and overachievers who push you. The rest is just watching your face and steering the conversation in whichever direction is right.”

Valerie sighed. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a fun-killer, Ivy?”

“Hey,” I said, “the more people I can save from being defrauded by people like my mother, the better.”

Valerie pushed back her chair as the bell rang, and I shoved the cards into my backpack. “You never did explain why you’re so grumpy today.”

I sighed as we walked to world literature. “I found out my uncle was adopted.”

“Does it matter? That he was adopted?” Valerie said.

I shrugged. “I guess not. It’s just a really big thing nobody ever told me.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Valerie said. “He’s what, like in his thirties? A lot of adoptions in the eighties were closed, and the prevailing parenting wisdom was to keep it secret from the kids.”

I stared at her for a beat too long, and she flipped a hand. “My mom is in family law,” she said. “You weren’t wrong about the pushy overachiever thing, by the way. Because of her I know wayyyy more about adoption law than any nonlawyer should.”

“Simon isn’t exactly the type of person I can just ask,” I said. “And I guess . . . I just want to know why he kept that from me. I kinda feel like I can’t trust him now.” Ironic, I knew, but something about the enormity of Simon’s two lies sat in my stomach like a boulder. They weren’t small lies like mine. They had shifted the earth under me, and I’d felt off-balance ever since I’d walked out of the psych hospital.

“If you really want to know, your best bet is to find the local branch of social services that handled the adoption,” Valerie said. “If it’s a closed adoption, that’ll be a dead end, but if not, it’s way quicker than requesting records from the state.”

“I have his original birth certificate,” I said, not exactly sure why I’d let that slip. “Well, what’s left of it.”

“Perfect,” Valerie said. “If you know the town he was born in, that helps narrow it way down.”

“Ladies!” Mr. Armitage snapped from the front of the room. “If it’s not too much to ask, could you attempt to let me educate you for the next forty-five minutes?”

I turned my eyes to the front, but all I could think about was maybe, finally, getting some answers.