Itwisted, putting myself in a position where I could see both their faces.
One an effective stranger, the other one of my oldest friends.
Grace, her eyes bloody and teary, was staring at the back of Darcie’s head with a rage that should’ve been impossible given that they, too, were strangers. Darcie, meanwhile, had started to breathe in a different way. Faster, shallower.
“She’s insane,” she finally managed to rasp out. “Don’t listen to her.”
But I shook my head with slow deliberation. “No.” Putting the vehicle in neutral, I pulled the parking brake I’d only just released. “We’ll stay here as long as it takes to uncover the truth. Because that’s Bea next to Grace, Darcie.”
“No, it can’t be,” Darcie insisted on another hard-won breath. “I’m hurt bad, Luna.”
I looked at the growing stain on the white of the towel, nodded. “You’re bleeding again.” Probably from having struggled against Grace. “You need help.”
But I didn’t move the vehicle, didn’t head to the settlement and the assistance there. “So you better talk fast.” I almost didn’t recognize my own voice, it was so flat and callous. “Why does Grace want to kill you?”
“I told you!” A small coughing fit that I waited out, and that Grace didn’t interrupt. “She’s psychotic.”
I locked eyes with Grace. “Are you psychotic, Grace?”
Grace turned to look at Bea with the tenderest expression I’d ever seen on her face. When she glanced back at me, her eyes were wet and her voice a whisper. “ ‘Nae-nae, my fierce Nae-nae, she always loved me best. She never hurt me, never wanted anything from me except that I be me. I wish I’d told her about my wonky brain. I wanted to, was getting ready to, and now it’s too late.’ ”
Grace’s smile was sad, a portrait of aged grief. “That’s what your Bea said to me. She told me other things, too, like about the black-and-white photo shoot in the studio with the piano. You can ask her yourself when she wakes up.”
A million tears built up in my head until the pressure pulsed and pounded and threatened to crush me. “How—” I swallowed hard. “How do you know about the photo shoot?”
“Aaron!” Darcie cried out. “Obviously Aaron told her that. Bea must’ve told him and he told Grace! That woman is not Bea! She’s dead! I can show you the death certificate!”
I didn’t look at Darcie, my eyes only on Grace.
Her bruised, bloodied eyes swam with tears. “Bea never forgot that time at school when you swapped skirts with her.”
A hammer slammed into my chest, cracking open my rib cage to expose my insides. No one else knew that. Not a single person. Bea had been too embarrassed then, and later, it had become a memory shared only between the two of us. Of how we’d been two awkward teenage girls who thought the incident the end of the world.
She’d been thirteen, her period had come early, and she’d stained her skirt. Though I was older than her, I was shorter. Short enough that I could roll up her skirt at the waist and still not get in trouble for a uniform violation. Add in the oversize blazer I wore as part of the uniform, and we’d successfully masked the stain.
Our secret memory. Not to be spoken to anyone else.
I wasn’t angry Bea had revealed it to Grace. I recognized the act for what it was: a message that I could trust Grace, that Bea trusted Grace.
“How do you know Bea?” I asked this stranger who wasn’t a stranger after all.
Then I looked at Darcie at last . . . and had to accept the rest of it.
“What did you do to Bea, Darcie?” I asked before Grace could answer my question. “Don’t lie. You could bleed out in the time you waste lying.”
Darcie sucked in a breath, hung her head. Her shoulders shook, her sobs beautiful theater. “I did what needed to be done.” With her hands taped, she couldn’t use them to wipe away the tears and they dripped soft splashes onto her sweater. “I wanted to help her.”
“Liar!” Grace kicked the back of Darcie’s seat hard enough to rock it.
“Grace.” I shook my head in a curt negative.
Jaw shoving against her taut skin, she nonetheless sat back. “She did it because she wanted Ash, who only wanted Bea,” she bit out. “Darcie’s hated Bea from the instant she realized who her sister was going to become. She was meant to be the golden child, Bea the one in her shadow—only it didn’t work out that way.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Darcie’s eyes, so lovely and so blue, held a silent plea. “I told you she had mental problems. Serious mental problems. They began to intensify that year, but she wouldn’t get help.”
“I don’t believe you.” Because Darcie was implying a sustained decline at a level that would’ve begun to affect Bea’s everyday life. I didn’t care how good someone was at masking a condition, they couldn’t hide that kind of a change from a friend who saw them day in and day out.
I closed my hand around the necklace I hadn’t taken off since the day I put it on. “I dropped in on Bea without warning all the time. Not once did I surprise her in an unstable state.”
“My sister was clever at hiding her fragmentation,” Darcie sobbed, her gaze swinging to Bea, then back to me. “She was this dazzling butterfly around you and the others, and then when she was alone, she’d lie on her back and stare at the ceiling. She even cut herself. In places you’d never see. Been doing it for years. Had scars all down the inside of her thighs.”
Grace laughed, a genuine belly laugh.
Darcie’s expression flickered. “She’s mad. Listen to her.”
“No, Darcie. She’s laughing because you had to push your story too far and now I know you’re lying.” Because that shoot in the studio with the piano? It had been the nude one.
Beatrice’s skin had been flawless. “Bea had no scars on her thighs.” She still didn’t.
“She was very good at hiding it,” Darcie insisted. “Makeup, tanner, whatever it took. She was broken, Luna! I was just trying to help her!”
Grace jolted forward against her seat belt. “You tried so hard you had her drugged to the gills and locked up in a mental institution.”
The silence inside the car was a voracious, grasping thing that dug its claws into my brain and cut bloody furrows. “Darcie?” My nails sank into my palms. “What is Grace talking about?”
“She needed help!” Darcie screamed. “She was spiraling. I was afraid she was going to really hurt herself. Then she did! She tried to kill herself!”
“Only after you’d locked her in that horrible place and thrown away the key!” Grace shouted from the back seat. “You shut her away from the entire world, from everyone she loved, when you knew that she needed the energy of the world and of her people to thrive.”
It was at that moment that I accepted Grace truly knew my Bee-bee. Because that was what I had always understood about my friend. She was bright and lovely and beautiful—but she couldn’t be alone. She needed people, needed our attention to fuel her spirit.
That was why I’d held the power in our friendship: I needed no one. Not that way. I could spend hours alone in perfect contentment. Bea hadn’t understood that, had admired me for what she saw as a boundless internal well of strength.
“Grace, tell me all of it.” When Darcie tried to speak up, I said, “Shut up.” It came out quiet and calm. “I can’t listen to any more of your self-serving bullshit.”
The look on Darcie’s face was one I’d never before seen—a primal terror that stripped away all vestiges of sophistication and turned her into a hunted animal.
Then Grace began to speak. “Most of the mental health institutions in this country,” she began, “are linked to the public health service. Chronically underfunded and, yes, there might be the odd mistake in treatment, but those mistakes get caught by the strict oversight systems in place—there’s little room for corruption.”
I nodded; that was the impression I’d gained from media articles on the topic.
“But you see, Nae-nae, the rich don’t like to air out their dirty laundry—especially when that dirty laundry might include children with ‘defective’ minds.” Venom dripped from the last words and I knew she’d heard them directed at her.
“There’s a small and very exclusive private hospital an hour or so out of Invercargill,” she said, naming one of the southernmost parts of the country. “People in my father’s circle send their kids there for discreet rehab. Drugs, alcohol, sex. The usual poor-little-rich-kid syndromes.
“But there’s a high-security wing, too,” she continued, “for those judged at risk of harm to themselves or to others. It’s a place with cold walls, locks, heavy doors, and no way to get outside beyond two-hour walks in a fenced green space with no view and no flowers.”
“No one could get away with forcing another adult into an institution.” I frowned. “There are laws.”
“Darcie had medical power of attorney over her sister in case she ever became incapacitated,” Grace said. “Did you know that? Bea had the same over Darcie. Their lawyer suggested it since they were both adults and had only each other. It was meant to stop any red tape if one of them was ever hurt bad.
“Bea signed and promptly forgot about it—but Darcie saw it as a weapon. Saw how she could use her influence with certain people to get rid of a sister who was so much better than her.”
I trusted Dr. Cox, could really talk to him, you know?
The same Dr. Cox had walked her down the aisle in lieu of her father.
“A doctor couldn’t authorize that alone,” I said, working it through. “Especially if the ‘patient’ had the money to threaten legal trouble. Too much risk for a private institution that wants to stay private.”
“Oh, dear Darceline got a nice shiny piece of paper from her pet judge, too. Confirmed that Bea was off her head, no longer able to make decisions. Darcie, as her closest relation, was appointed her ‘welfare guardian.’ What a joke!” Grace kicked the back of Darcie’s seat again, and this time, I didn’t rebuke her. “As if this piece of human garbage has ever cared for anyone’s welfare but her own.”
Reaching past Darcie to grab a bottle of water from the glove box, I twisted off the cap and drank down half the bottle before making myself look at this woman I thought I’d known enough to believe that she’d never harm Bea. Compete with her? Steal her lover? Sure. But to actively hurt her? To lock her up. No.
“Why did the judge listen to you, Darcie?” I asked in a calm tone that felt outside myself. “Please don’t lie. It’s too late for that. No matter what happens from this point on, I’ll be alerting the authorities about Bea—and looks like I have Grace to give me all the information I need on that, so I don’t even need to rely on you.”
My blood was cold, my thoughts a glass lake.