Rosebush (36 page)

I tugged at them, but they held. “Hello?” I called out. The door to my room was closed and the window had louvers on the outside. “Is anyone there? Hello?”

A key turned in a lock and my mother and Dr. Tan came in.

“Oh, Jane.” My mother was weeping openly. The entire pretense of perfection was gone. “Oh, darling, baby. What is going on tell me what to do I’m so sorry we didn’t come this morning first thing Annie was sick oh darling just—”

“Mrs. Freeman, if you wouldn’t mind.” Dr. Tan tried to step in front of her, but she shot him a look.

“In a moment, doctor. Right now I need to talk to my daughter.” She turned back to me. “Baby, I am so sorry. I feel like I failed you.”

She put her arms around me and hugged me tight. I had the sensation of falling I’d had before, but this time it was good. Great. “Mommy,” I said, trying to lift my arms to hug her back.

She pulled away. Her face was so full of love and trust and kindness for me. I wanted to brush the tears away. “Don’t cry, Mommy.”

“I love you so much, Jane.”

“I love you too.” I tried to move my arms again. “Where am I? Why am I tied down?”

Her smile was still there, but it faltered for a moment. She brushed hair off my forehead and rested her hand on my cheek. “We had you moved to the eighth floor.”

“I’m in the psych ward? Why? I’m not crazy.”

Dr. Tan came and stood next to her now. “If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Freeman?” he said, and she moved slightly but didn’t let go of my hand. She squeezed it, and I squeezed hers back. We were in this together. I was so happy I almost didn’t pay attention when Dr. Tan said, “You had a rather severe psychotic episode, Jane. You tried to pull out your IVs and started talking about ending it all.”

“No.” I shook my head. My mother’s hand in mine soothed me. I smiled at her. This was going to be fine, I just needed to explain. “You have it all wrong. I wanted to stop the medication so I could prove to all of you I wasn’t hallucinating, that someone was trying to kill me. Or to prove to myself that they were hallucinations.” I kept my voice even, rational. “One way or another, removing the medicine would clear it up. That’s what I wanted to stop, the medicine. The poison. I want my mind back, my life back.”

“And we’re here to help you with that,” Dr. Tan assured me.

“Good,” I said. “Then can we start with removing the arm restraints?”

“Maybe in a little while.”

Hadn’t he been listening? I tried again. “But if I’m right and someone is trying to kill me”—I said, pronouncing each word carefully—“having me strapped in place will make it very easy for them.”

Dr. Tan’s eyes burrowed into mine. “Who is trying to kill you? Can you tell us someone specific?”

I looked at my mother, but her eyes were on the psychologist, not me. That was when I realized this wasn’t going how I expected. “I don’t know. We’ve been over this. I think it must be a friend of mine. Someone very close.”

Dr. Tan patted my arm. “Until you figure it out, you’ll be safe in here. There are guards on your door now and no one can get in or out without appropriate authorization.”

“That won’t stop this killer. I have to get out of here.” I was trying to wriggle out of the leather cuff around the hand my mother wasn’t holding. If I could just get that free—

“Why would someone want to kill you?” Dr. Tan asked in his maddeningly even voice.

“I. Don’t. Know,” I said, gritting my teeth. We were wasting time. “But this must all be part of their master plan.”

“They’re omnipotent?”

I didn’t even have to see his face to know how insane that sounded. “Yes. No. God.” I started to cry.

He addressed my mother. “This is normal after a psychic strain. The best thing we can do right now is let her rest.”

She nodded and gave me a smile. The same smile as before, filled with love. Only this time she said, “This is a good place for you, Jane. No one can hurt you in here. And you can’t hurt—anyone.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said, but I realized that hadn’t been what she meant. She meant hurt myself.

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Mommy,” I said, pleading with her. “You have to believe me.”

She looked at me with the saddest face I’d ever seen. “Dr. Tan says that dredging up everything about Bonnie yesterday might have—” Tears rolled down her face. She bent down and held my hand against her cheek. “Oh, Janey, I’m so sorry we weren’t here this morning. I’m not leaving, not going anywhere until you’re better. Sweetheart, you have so much to live for. So many people who love you.”

“Please have them move me back to my room. I don’t like it here.”

“It’s just for a little while, darling. Until—until we’re sure you’re past this.”

“Don’t leave me. Please.”

“I won’t.”

“Mrs. Freeman, I really recommend—” Dr. Tan began, but my mother shut him down.

She stood up, squared her shoulders and announced, “My daughter needs me and I’m going to stay with her.”

They must have given me a strong sedative because I don’t remember much after that. Falling asleep with my hand in my mother’s, even if my wrist was manacled, was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

When I woke up again, she was gone, but the feeling of well-being persisted. This waking up was totally different than it had been four days ago.

God, had it really been only four days?

I thought about everything that had happened, the writing on the mirror when no one was there, the paranoia about my room being bugged when there was no bug, the phone calls that no one but me ever even heard ringing, the secret-admirer presents that everyone but me thought were nice. The weird looks and innuendos between my friends, which all seemed sinister but all had completely innocuous explanations. The only thing wrong, the only thing that made it weird in every example was me.

How did I get here? Four days ago I’d been a perfectly normal girl and now—I stared at my wrist, held to the bed by a thick leather strap. It looked like something out of a bad movie. My hands were fists and as I unflexed them, I saw the friendship ring on my right hand.

There. That was one thing—the only thing—I could be sure I hadn’t made up. My ring. Not only had it moved, but at one point it had vanished.

That sounded impossible, but it was true. And if that was true, everything else could be true as well.

Which meant someone
was
coming to kill me.

Don’t worry, Jane, our destinies are linked. I’ll take care of you anywhere you go,
my secret admirer had said.

“Mom!” I shouted. “Mommy!”

No answer. Given the eerie silence in the room, I had to imagine it was completely soundproofed.

I pulled against the arm restraints, arching to get out of them, but there was nothing I could do. I was looking around to see if there was anything I could grab when I noticed the glassine envelope on the table next to my bed. Looking closely, I saw that Officer Rowley had come through with the crime-scene photo.

It was stark yet beautiful.

That was the first thing I noticed about it. It showed that moment just before dawn, when the world turned monochrome and everything was subsumed under a blanket of blue-gray light. The streetlights had gone off, making the street a still gray ribbon scarred with two black marks trailing from the upper left of the picture to the lower right. In the background, blurry, large houses hunkered down, streaked dark from rain. In the foreground and slightly to the right, set in blue-gray grass, was a fantastic bush. It looked like something from a fairy tale, a witch cursed into an alternate form, gnarled fingers reaching for the sky. At the center lay a girl.

I looked at the photo as though it wasn’t me, searching for clues. Shreds of tulle skirt were tangled among the branches blowing in the morning breeze like tiny flags. A ceramic rabbit, a mother duck followed by five tiny ducklings, and a squirrel playing the flute stood silent guard around the girl. One of her legs was bent up; the other jutted out of the bush dangling a Prada platform shoe. Her left hand was under her and the right one, with a friendship ring on the index finger, reached up as though to pluck the single deep-red rose that hung above her—the only spot of color in the image. There was dark hair feathering over half her face. Her body was covered with angry gashes and a magenta river of blood trickled from her head. Her lips were parted, as though she was about to say something, share a secret.

“Hello, princess,” said a cheery voice from the door of my room. I raised my eyes to see an unfamiliar guy in scrubs walking in. I missed Loretta.

The new guy said, “I’m Ruben. And from the looks of this room, you’re Little Miss Popular.”

He fingered each of the bouquets that had been moved to the shelf opposite my bed, ending up with the two-dozen red roses. “This must have set someone back plenty. I wish I could find a boyfriend as generous.”

“They’re not from my boyfriend,” I said.

“
Whoo-hoo
, then you’re doing something right. What about this guy?” He picked up the teddy bear wearing a muscle shirt. “Not sure if that’s from a friend or an enemy.”

“Me either,” I said.

The harder something is for you to handle, the more deeply it will be buried,
Dr. Tan had told me. Looking at the photo, I felt like I was on the verge of it. The final secret.

Now Ruben was standing in front of the double-heart-shaped wreath. The doll Annie called Robert was propped against it and the ceramic figurine of the bunny stood to one side. Ruben squinted at the card next to the bunny. “‘From your secret admirer,’” he read aloud. “So let me see—you’ve got a boyfriend, a
not
boyfriend, and a secret admirer.” He shook his head at me. “Girl, no wonder someone tried to run you down.”
The harder something is for you to handle…

I stared at the face of the girl in the photo and thought about the mirror in the bathroom downstairs. The way it had steamed up, leaving only the blank outline between my palms where my face should have been. And the truth came rushing into my brain with the force of a rain-swollen river, inevitable, painful, leaving me gasping.

At once I knew everything. I knew how an invisible hand could write. How someone could call but never be heard. How a ring could vanish and reappear in the wrong place. I knew about the phone call. The drink. The car.

I knew I wasn’t crazy and never had been.

“I’ll be back to check on you in a tic, princess,” Ruben said, but I barely heard.

I knew who my killer was. I’d known all along, but every part of my brain had sought another solution, another explanation. A way out.

There wasn’t one. The last pieces of that night clicked into place.