That was not what Dr. Anderson said, but I collapsed backwards in the very uncomfortable armchair in the front sitting room. “Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I said I was fine.”
“You were gone. You weren’t—”
“I checked myself back into Belhaven.”
I folded over my legs, a pain in my stomach that was spreading to my chest. I heard from her a week ago and then silence. No answering her cell phone. Emails. Texts. I went by her apartment, and it was empty. Like . . . empty empty. And I’d spent the last week sure she’d . . . done something horrible.
“You don’t have to be in Belhaven. You can come—”
“To your house? You know that’s bullshit. Your husband made it pretty clear how he feels about me.”
To my incredible shame, I could not argue with that. But if she was in Belhaven, it was only because I would be paying for it. And paying for it only happened because of the senator. She knew that and punished me anyway. I knew it would be this way when I accepted the proposal. Oddly, that didn’t make it any better.
“You used to tell me what you were thinking,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
“That I’m glad you’re safe.”
“I’m fine. I’m safe. I . . .” I could hear her take a deep breath. “I went after that fucking asshole who raped the twelve-year-old.”
Of course she did. This was how her psychosis worked. She was judge, jury, and executioner in her mind. “Did you . . . hurt him?”
“No. I didn’t even get close to him.”
But she would have hurt him. This was my nightmare four years ago, all over again.
You can’t do this, I thought. You can’t do this to me again. I can’t do this again. There is no other part of my life I have left to give up to save you.
“What stopped you?” I asked.
“Not what . . . who. That fucking guy you hired to watch me.”
“I didn’t hire anyone.”
“Then your prison guard husband did.”
I took a deep breath, because I didn’t know that, and it was entirely within the realm of possibility that the senator would do that. And not tell me. “You know that what you do . . . it reflects on him.”
“Yeah. I fucking know that. And frankly the best thing for that asshole is if he’d just keel over and die.”
The ceiling in the front sitting room had a mural on it. A sky at dawn kind of thing. A warm glow around the edges. The lights hung in the middle of clouds. It was ridiculous. I paid a lot of money for it.
This was the part I could never say out loud but part of last week, part of not knowing where she was, was hoping she might be here. Hoping the evil person she was stalking was the senator.
Which was worse, I wondered, the weapon or the person who wanted to use the weapon?
“I’m sorry, Poppy,” my sister said.
“I know.” I took a deep breath and let it out slow.
“No really, I am. I know . . .”
“Just stop doing this.” This vigilante revenge thing my sister could not stop herself from on her own. If left to her own devices and brain chemistry, she would right the wrongs perpetrated on young girls all over the world. And there was a lot about it that was admirable, but she did it with a knife. With violence. She wanted justice in blood.
“You know it’s not that simple.”
Yeah. I knew it. I’d been living with my sister’s psychosis since she was sixteen and I was eighteen. Managing it. Cleaning up after it. Trying to find ways to funnel it into something useful.
Zilla was a genius, and by rights she should be able to do anything she set her formidable mind to. When it was healthy. She tried law school, thinking that might help her find the justice she craved. But the stress sent her into a manic phase that nearly killed her. I urged her to apply to the police academy and when she didn’t pass the psych eval, social work. But when she left in the middle of her second week of school, I settled for keeping her safe.
And contained.
Belhaven.
The last two years she’d been in and out of care between Belhaven and her apartment I paid for in Brooklyn.
“Remember that pond at the back of the property in Bishop’s Landing?” Zilla asked.
“Of course.” That pond had been magic in a childhood without a lot of magic. The willow tree beside it had been a fort and a secret play place and safe. Safe most of all. More home than our actual house.
“Dad wanted to drain it. Said it was a breeding ground for mosquitos and that we would wander down there and drown.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “So Mom taught us how to swim in it.”
“He was so mad.”
“But she won the fight, right?”
“Yep. And she won the fight with all the staff that tried to keep us away from it, too,” I said. The housekeepers and tutors, even Monsieur Belleville the chef who tried to tempt us away from frog-catching with cakes and cookies.
“I’m fighting for the pond right now,” my sister whispered.
“What’s the pond in this scenario?” I asked.
“You. Us. The willow tree. The frogs. The way things used to be.”
I let out my breath as slow as I could, curbing the rising tide of tears. “I know,” I said. “I know.”
“Don’t be mad at me,” Zilla whispered.
“Me? Mad at you? I can never be mad at you.”
“Well, that’s a lie.”
“Fine,” I said with a laugh because that was what she wanted. “I can never stay mad at you.”
“You can come see me in two weeks,” Zilla said. I was silent. Because the senator wouldn’t allow it. Not without some wild story and help from the staff, who would eventually turn on me, resulting in some painful punishment.
The last time he’d taken my phone away and didn’t let me leave the house for a month. I’d been bored, yes. Lonely. Terrified. But the real repercussion of it all was that all those people who called and texted me, who offered lunch dates and tickets to galas, who asked if I wanted to be on boards or fundraising committees – they all vanished. And when the month was over I was even more alone than I’d been before.
As punishment it had been wildly effective.
“Please come visit me, Pops. Pops—” her voice broke, and so did I. My nickname in my sister’s voice was one of my favorite sounds in the world, and I was so scared for my sister and by my sister.
But she was all I had left, and I loved her so much. And it would be worth the punishment. It always was.
“Of course,” I said. “I love you, Zilla.”
The phone clicked twice, which was the end of the amount of allotted time I had to talk to my sister who was locked up in what was an insane asylum with a fancy name.
I listened to the echoing silence for a few seconds before hanging up, sitting limp in the chair. Relief and guilt and anger tossing bombs at each other in my stomach. And my heart.
My love for my sister was so complicated. And I wished that it could be easier. And then felt guilty for that wish.
A deep breath and the last of the adrenaline rippled out of my system and I sat, wrung-out in the chair I’d collapsed in.
God, it was an uncomfortable chair. It was uncomfortable, and I’d picked it out. I’d picked it out and had it reupholstered to match the couch and the area rug. All varying shades of blue and grey. Bits of pink and turquoise to match the vases on the coffee table. I’d just finished this room. Because I’d spent a year on the kitchen. And another two months on all the bathrooms. In another three months I would have redone this whole house.