DR. LOVELL insisted on being present, along with her mother, when the police questioned Penny about the shooting at the Van den Maagdenbergh farm. When she stuttered over her answers, the doctor broke in, his voice ringing with unshakable authority. "Officer, you can see she's innocent. She nearly lost her mother, and she's only fifteen. How can you think she had anything to do with that mess?"
Dr. Lovell also drove Barbara to the Sandborn County Courthouse the day they both had to testify in the Hamilton murder trial. Penny insisted on coming along to Sandborn, even though she was not allowed inside the closed courtroom.
"Wait for us in the library," her mother told her. The Sandborn library was across the street from the courthouse.
"It shouldn't take longer than two hours," Dr. Lovell said. "That Blanche wants this to be finished as fast as possible."
Penny watched them climb the courthouse steps. Her mother was dressed in the same black clothes she had worn to the funeral. Dr. Lovell opened the heavy door for her mother to step through, then the courthouse swallowed them both. Penny turned to the street, waiting for a lull in traffic so that she could cross to the library, a pillared building that reminded her of the mausoleum in the Presbyterian cemetery. Her mother had been going to visit Laurence Hamilton's grave every day.
When Penny reached the bottom of the library steps, she found she could go no farther. The building repelled her. It was so cold and severe, like a big stone idol condemning her. Carved in the masonry over the double doors were the words Truth Is the Highest Thing That Man May Keep. She turned again to look back at the courthouse. The sheriff's office was somewhere in that four-story building. The county jail was only a few blocks away.
Tugging her hat low over her eyes, she began walking up die sidewalk, pointing herself away from the library and courthouse. Dr. Lovell said that they didn't need to worry about the outcome of the trial. There could be no dispute that Irene was her father's killer. Although Barbara Niebeck was the only surviving witness, the police had found Irene's fingerprints on the hunting rifle she had thrown to the floor before running out of the house. When the police had questioned Irene, she confessed her crime, albeit in garbled and confused language. She had meanwhile been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. It was better that way, less humiliating for her aunt and the rest of her family. Surely Ina and Isobel had been through enough without their sister making a spectacle of herself in the courtroom. After the trial was over, Aunt Blanche was returning to Hanover, New Hampshire, with Ina and Isobel in tow. She wasn't the maternal sort. Penny had heard she would be sending the girls to boarding school. And she would be leaving Irene behind in the asylum. A woman of her wealth and position wielded special power. She would not have her niece sent to prison for murder, or even for manslaughter. But neither, according to gossip, did she want to bear the responsibility of having Irene re-leased again into the world. It was easier to have her committed. Dr. Lovell said that at the asylum, it was a simple matter of signing a declaration. Penny imagined Aunt Blanche would be happy enough to let her niece rot there. Now Irene and her mother shared the same fate—life in an institution, no more Sunday visits.
Penny thought again about the words carved over the library entrance. Truth Is the Highest Thing ... She had let her mother and Dr. Lovell lie for her. Especially Dr. Lovell. He knew, she realized, from the moment she had offered up her flustered confession, when he and his wife had run into her on Sandborn Main Street. His wife must have chalked up her admission to the confused ramblings of a shook-up girl. He had recognized the truth, yet he would not allow her to turn herself in. Her mother had told her, "You can't do it. You're all I have." Penny had promised Cora, promised her mother, and now she was free to walk down the sidewalk in the crystalline winter sunlight while Cora was on the run and Irene locked up.
Penny's gaze rested on the tall roof of the asylum, visible from everywhere in town. It looked like a castle with its sheer walls rising straight into the sky, its narrow barred windows. Razor wire wreathed the high brick wall enclosing the grounds. The asylum drew her toward it, a vacuum sucking her in. Her mother had bought their train tickets. They were leaving Minerva tomorrow. This was her only chance.
When she knocked on the front entrance, the nurse at first did not want to admit her. "Only relatives are allowed to visit." The nurse had a broad peasant face and wore her hair in thick flaxen braids pinned around her head. From her sensible low-heeled shoes and the blunt cut of her fingernails, Penny guessed that she had grown up on a farm, that her life had been full of responsibility even before she came to work here. Maybe she was the oldest of ten children, used to getting up early and staying up late to take care of everyone else.
"Please," Penny said. "We grew up together. I'm catching the train out west tomorrow." She tried not to cringe under the nurse's scrutiny. If she were asked to give her name, the nurse would figure out that she was the daughter of the woman Irene shot.
The nurse just shrugged and rubbed her hands together. "I can give you fifteen minutes." Penny followed her bulky white form down a long passage and then into a narrow brass cage of an elevator.
"Can't we take the stairs?" Penny's head began to pound as the door clanked shut, blocking her escape.
The nurse grinned, revealing a gold-capped tooth. "You ain't never been in an elevator before? Oh boy. It sure beats climbing all them stairs."
When they reached the top floor, the nurse ushered her through several locked doors, opening each with a key she kept on an iron ring. Guarding the last door was a thickset young man who could have been the nurse's brother. "Hey, Clem," she said. "This is a friend of the family coming to visit Miss Hamilton." She nodded toward Penny.
The young man unlocked the door, only to lock it again the instant they stepped through. A tremor crept up the back of Penny's legs as she heard the heavy bolt sliding into place.
"This way." The nurse showed her into a windowless room. "You wait here, and I'll get the patient." She disappeared through another door.
Penny sat down on a hard metal chair, which faced a thick glass wall reinforced with iron bars. At first she didn't recognize the shockingly thin, sharp-chinned girl who appeared on the other side. Her hospital gown hung as loose as a flour bag on her bony frame. She wore black canvas shoes that looked too big for her.
"Irene?" She could only speak to her through a small opening in the glass. "It's me. Penny."
The creature on the other side regarded her with blinking mole's eyes. Penny's empty hands itched. It was wrong for her to visit without a gift. She should have thought of flowers or chocolates.
"Irene." She tried to sound patient and kind, though the urge seized her to slam the glass with the flat of her hand and shout, It's me, Penny. Your enemy, the girl you pushed around for eight years. The girl whose mother you tried to kill.
How could this quivering bag of bones be the tormentor who had plagued her since she was seven years old? Viewing Irene through the wall of glass was like looking into a dark mirror and seeing a lost self reflected. They were guilty of the same crime, except only Irene was being punished. Irene, who had always had everything in life given to her without having to fight for it, without having to work or earn a penny. We could have been sisters, she thought. If your father had married my mother.
The nurse joined Penny in the visiting room while another nurse hovered in the shadows on Irene's side. Aware of their eyes on her, Penny reached through the window. Irene would not take her hand. Still, Penny called out to her. And what she felt as she tried to reach her was no longer rage nor even pity but a horrible familiarity. The truth was that they were more alike than she wanted to admit. As fear took her by the throat, Irene finally sprang to life, her eyes locking on Penny's, her face assuming its old scowl as she threw herself at the glass and began to shriek.
"She did it, she did it! It's her fault. Let me go. She's the one who did it." Irene sank her fingers into Penny's wrist. And now Penny began to understand what it was like to hear voices—Irene's taunting voice raised to full pitch. "Look at her face! She's the guilty one!" she was yelling at the nurse. "Even someone as dumb as you could figure it out. Ow! Let me go."
The nurse on the other side caught Irene in a grip that made her loosen her hold on Penny, who staggered away from the glass and stumbled against the nurse who had shown her in. "Don't cry, miss." She guided Penny to the door. "They get like that sometimes. Don't take it personally." She rapped on the door, signaling the guard to unlock it. "Ain't by accident that she's on the criminal ward. Ya, she's a dangerous one. Can't trust her. Once she threw her dinner tray at a nurse. Hit her smack in the face. Poor gal needed stitches." The nurse kept speaking calmly as she guided Penny through the labyrinth of doors and down the shuddering cage elevator. "I don't like that Hamilton girl a bit. I like the quiet ones. They're the ones who stand a chance of getting better. The quiet ones can be real sweet."
Penny found her mother and Dr. Lovell in the library lobby.
"Where were you?" her mother asked at once. Penny could tell she had been worried. And she must have had a grueling time in the courtroom, too. Her face had taken on a sickly tinge. She had grown so thin, she resembled a brittle stalk.
"I went for a walk." Penny could hardly confess that she had just gone to visit Irene. She was still shaking, could still feel Irene's fingers latching on to her, hear that mad voice screeching inside her head, accusing and ravenous, a hungry beast that had to draw blood.
"I think both of you should eat something." Dr. Lovell, who looked rather sunken and weary himself, led them in the direction of a quiet café. Following a few paces behind, Penny observed the way he took her mother's good arm and guided her around the slippery patches on the sidewalk. When she saw the way he looked at her, she had to wonder if he, too, had fallen under her mother's spell. Was that why he had been doing all of this for them? If so, her mother seemed too deadened to notice. And Mrs. Lovell? Penny bit her lip. It was a good thing they were leaving tomorrow.
"What you both have to realize," Dr. Lovell told them in the café, "is that it's over now. You both have to put this behind you."
Penny swallowed a spoonful of lukewarm soup. She was careful not to appear ungrateful, but he was mistaken. It wasn't over, would never be over for as long as she and her mother lived. Her mother would never forget what had happened—a part of her would linger forever by Mr. Hamilton's grave. And Penny would carry Irene's voice and Adam Egan's face, his frozen eyes, inside her always. How easy it would be to let that dead man force her down into the world of shadows where Irene lived. He was dragging her there now, to that place where Irene's hot breath hit her face, her hand latching on to Penny, never to let go.
For her mother's sake, Penny finished her soup and bread. When they left the café, she drew her shoulders back and tried to walk calmly even as they headed straight into the wind, which was so strong and bitter it brought tears to her eyes.