Emma looked at the walls.
“She helped me pick out the curtains, too,” Laura said.
“A regular Martha Stewart,” Dylan said.
Laura laughed. “Go get your flip-flops, honey,” she said to Emma.
They stopped by Cory’s house on their way to the beach, and the two little girls skipped ahead of her and Dylan along the paved path surrounding the lake. It was a hot day, and Laura was perspiring by the time they’d walked a short distance.
“That water’s going to feel good,” Dylan said when the beach came into view.
The beach consisted of a small crescent of sandy soil. Only the families living around the lake were permitted to swim there, so the beach was never crowded. A teenage boy sat on the lifeguard stand, his hair nearly white from the sun and his skin the color of caramels. Two teenage couples baked on their blankets. The only people in the water were a young woman and her little boy, standing in the shallow section roped off for children.
Laura and Dylan laid a blanket on the sand while Cory slipped into her green, dragon-shaped tube.
“C’mon, Emma!” Cory said, running toward the water.
Emma didn’t budge.
“Do you want your raft?” Laura asked her.
Emma shook her head. Her thumb slipped into her mouth.
“Come in, Emma,” Cory called. She was already up to her calves in the water, and Laura, the raft in her arms, followed her in to keep an eye on her. Once in the water, she turned to see Dylan crouch down on the beach next to Emma, talking to her. Emma didn’t move away from him, but she didn’t look at him, either, and Laura wished she could hear what he was saying to her.
“Push me, please,” Cory begged, and Laura bounced Cory and her tube around in the water.
After a while, Dylan stood up and walked into the lake himself, and Laura saw the look of resignation on his face.
“Thanks for trying,” she said when he’d come close to her and Cory.
“Couldn’t get her to budge,” he said.
The little boy paddling around with his mother called to Cory to come play with him. “Can I go over there?” Cory asked Laura.
“Yes,” Laura said, waving to the boy’s mother. “Stay right there, though, so I can see you.”
She watched Cory paddle off, then boosted herself onto the raft. Lying on her stomach, she watched Emma, the little blue-and-beige statue whose toes barely touched the water.
“I feel so sorry for her,” Dylan said, his hands on his hips as he looked toward the beach. “She wants to come in. You can see it in her face.”
“I know.”
“And watching Cory play with you and now with this little boy has to make it doubly hard on her.” He looked at Laura. “You deal with this day and night,” he said. “How do you cope with it? With how terrible this feels?”
“Not too well,” she admitted. “I’m a little more hardened to it than you are, though.”
Dylan lowered himself into the water, leaning back against the ropes. “So,” he said. “How’s Laura?”
“Laura’s a wimp.” She ran her fingers through the water. “I agreed to do the talk shows.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Ray’s brother pushed my guilt buttons last night.”
“You are so weak,” he said, with mock disdain.
“I know. But what kind of a wife would I be if I didn’t do it?”
Dylan ignored the question. “So, what did that decision do to your stress level?” he asked.
“It’s sky-high.” She didn’t tell him that trying to find a bathing suit to wear in front of him had only added to her anxiety. The water glistened on the dusting of dark hair on his chest. His arms were stretched out along the rope, and he was more muscular than she’d imagined him to be. Probably from working on the balloon. What was he thinking about her body? About her pale legs? The cellulite on the back of her thighs?
“What was this you were telling me on the phone the other night?” he asked. “About Sarah’s husband getting lobotomized? That sounded unbelievable.”
“You haven’t heard the half of it,” she said. “After the lobotomy, they took Sarah into their confidence.” She described Dr. Palmiento’s allusions to government-sanctioned mind control experiments.
“That actually happened,” Dylan said. “But not here. At least, I didn’t think it was here.” He looked up at the sky as if trying to remember. “It was in Canada, I think. In the fifties. The CIA was involved.”
“I vaguely remember something about it, too.” Laura said. “It sounded familiar when Sarah started talking about it. Did they actually experiment on psychiatric patients?”
“I think so. Along with some other unsuspecting victims.”
“I’ve been wondering if the person who sent me those letters might actually be trying to protect Sarah from her memories.”
“Could they be from her daughter?” Dylan suggested. “The elusive Janie?”
Laura pondered the possibility. It would certainly make sense that Sarah’s daughter would want to protect her from any distress. “But if Janie cared enough to protect her mother from me, then wouldn’t she also be involved in Sarah’s care? Wouldn’t she at least visit her?”
“Maybe she can’t. If she’s actually in hiding, for whatever reason, maybe she’d be afraid to see her mother.”
Laura watched Cory and the little boy splash each other. “I would really like to find out what happened to Joe,” she said. “Sarah never found out where he was institutionalized, or if they killed him, or what actually happened to him. I think it would give her some comfort to know. He might even still be alive.”
“Can people live that long after a lobotomy?” The sun was beginning to sink in the sky, but it still gave his eyes that translucent look that mesmerized her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He was younger than Sarah. Seven years younger, I think, so maybe it’s possible, though I’m sure he’d be in horrendous shape. But I’d like to see if I can find him.”
“Is this for Sarah’s sake or for yours?” he asked.
“Not sure anymore.” She smiled. “And while I’m at it, I think I’ll try to track down Janie, too.”
“Hey, why not?” he teased. “You don’t have anything else to do.”
She sobered instantly. “My obsession is showing.”
“No, your interest is showing. Your excitement is showing. Ray was cruel to try to squelch that in you.”
She started to defend Ray but managed to bite her tongue before the words left her mouth.
Dylan suddenly groaned. “I can’t take this,” he said, his gaze on the beach. “I can’t take watching Emma stand there like a lost, lonely little waif. Let’s go in.”
“All right.” She slipped off the raft and began walking toward the shore.
The sun had fallen behind the trees when they reached the beach, and Emma and Cory were sitting side by side on the blanket, Cory shivering in her beach towel.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” Laura asked Dylan as she dried off.
He shook his head. “Got a date, but thanks for the invitation.”
“Some other time,” she said, paying more-than-reasonable attention to the task of drying her shoulders. Well, at least he hadn’t lied to her. She may have been admiring his chest out there in the water, but to him, she was Emma’s mother, a woman in an old-lady bathing suit, nothing more. He dated numerous women who were probably glamorous and carefree. Childfree. Okay, so that meant that she and Dylan were friends. And if they were friends, she could ask him about his date that night. Who was the woman? Where were they going? How did he feel about her?
But she didn’t ask him. She didn’t want to know.
32
IT WAS A BLIND DATE, ONE OF THOSE EXERCISES IN FUTILITY to which he hadn’t subjected himself in years. But this woman was a friend of a friend of Alex’s, and with Bethany on hold, he’d allowed himself to be talked into it. Driving to her house t
o pick her up, he swore to himself he would not talk—would not even think—about Emma and Laura. He still remembered Bethany’s tallies of how often he said their names.
He found the Middleburg town house easily. Her front door was marked by a wreath of dried flowers, and he rang the bell.
“Hi, I’m Sherry,” she said as she let him in. She was a very attractive woman, with long dark hair and a body that was impossible to ignore. He watched her as she moved around her living room, hunting for her purse, her keys, her glasses for the movie. Then she disappeared into another room, and he heard her speaking to someone. She came out, smiling at him. “Just had to give the sitter her final orders,” she said.
A sitter. She had kids. Ordinarily that would have meant nothing to him, but tonight, it elated him. He tried to keep the pleasure from showing in his face.
He was able to refrain from talking about Emma throughout dinner, asking Sherry questions about her work and her hobby of horseback riding, and he tried to listen attentively to her answers, with some success.
The movie was one of those overly long, slow-moving British types, and his mind was back on the beach, wondering if there had been something else he might have said to Emma to encourage her into the water.
On the drive back to Sherry’s town house, he finally allowed himself to ask about her children.
“I have three,” she said. “All girls. Nine, seven and five. I hope that doesn’t blow you away.” There was an apology in her voice. Probably the disclosure that she had three kids sent many of her suitors running for cover.
“Not at all,” he said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time with a five-year-old girl myself recently.” He felt himself slipping like an alcoholic at a bar, knowing he would not be able to shut up once he started.
“Really?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
He could lie. Say Emma was his niece. But lies did not come easily to him. “She’s my daughter,” he said, enjoying the unfamiliar sound of the words.
“You have a daughter?” Sherry asked. “I thought you’d never been married.”
“That’s true,” he said. “And I didn’t know she existed until a month or so ago.”
“Oh,” Sherry said, obviously aware there was a long story behind that revelation and wise enough not to push for it.
“Tell me about your five-year-old,” he asked. “What is she like? What sorts of things does she like to do? Emma…my daughter is having some problems. I’m not sure what’s normal for her age.”
“Well, Jenny loves to swim. She’s in a tumbling class. And she collects Beanie Babies and Barbie dolls.”
“So does Emma,” Dylan said. “The Barbie dolls, anyway.” He told Sherry about the aquarium he’d given Emma and how she turned the bookshelf into an office building for her dolls.
“Yes,” Sherry said. “They can be pretty creative.”
Was that boredom in her voice? He didn’t care. “Emma used to love to swim,” he said, “but she’s suddenly afraid of the water. Do you have any idea how I can get her excited about it again?”
“No, I don’t, really,” she said. “All three of mine are regular fish.” She tried to steer the conversation back to adult topics. The balloon business. The movie they’d just seen. It bothered him that she had three daughters and didn’t seem to want to talk about them.
He pulled into the parking lot and stopped in front of her town house.
“I’d ask you in,” she said, lifting her purse from the floor of the van, “but it’s late and I have to get the sitter home.”
“I’ll walk you up,” he said, opening his door. She didn’t like him. It was obvious. And that was okay. He walked her to her door and left her without a kiss, which he figured was fine with both of them.
Driving home, he realized she had asked him nothing about Laura.
“Tell me,” she might have said. “What exactly is your relationship with your daughter’s mother?”
“It’s, uh, we’re friends,” he would have stammered.
He glanced out the van window at the diamond-lit sky, remembering the night he and Laura had watched the stars through her telescope. He wished he were doing that right now.
33
LAURA SAT ACROSS THE WAITING ROOM FROM SARAH, WATCHING the older woman stare at the nameplate on the receptionist’s desk. She was mouthing the name “Mrs. Quinn” to herself, over and over. Finally, she looked at Laura.
“Are we still at Meadow Wood Village?” she asked.
“No,” Laura said. “We’re at Emma’s psychotherapist’s office, and you and Emma will spend some time together here in a playroom. Since Emma has spoken to you, when she hasn’t spoken to anyone else, her therapist thought it might be helpful to have you here with her.”
Sarah looked at Emma, who sat in the corner of the room trying to balance a plastic horse on top of a pile of blocks. “I’ll play with Janie?” Sarah asked.
“Yes. But not out here,” Laura said. “There’s a special room to play in. You’ll be helping Janie…I mean, helping Emma, by playing with her. I’ll be very grateful.”
Sarah nodded, but Laura was still not certain she knew what was being asked of her. Sarah wore that resigned look of confusion that made Laura want to hold her.
Heather came out of her office and introduced herself to Sarah. She ushered Sarah and Emma into the playroom, seating them at a broad table topped with a box of small dolls and a dollhouse, and Laura was relieved to see that Sarah had no problem lowering herself into one of the child-size chairs. Then Heather and Laura walked into the next room, hiding behind the two-way mirror.
Instantly, Emma began to talk. “Pick out the dolls you want,” she directed Sarah, holding the box of plastic figures in front of her.
Laura glanced at Heather, who grinned at hearing Emma’s voice for the first time.
Sarah reached for one of the male dolls.
“No, not that one!” Emma said. Then more gently, “Can I have that one, please?” She took the male doll from the box without waiting for Sarah’s response.
“This one is pretty.” Sarah plucked a young girl doll from the box. “Did you want this one, Janie?”
Emma rolled her eyes in exasperation, and the gesture made Laura laugh. “My name is Emma Brandon Darrow,” she said sternly. “Now, put that doll in one of the rooms. Please,” she added.
“At least she hasn’t forgotten her manners,” Heather whispered to Laura.
For half an hour, they watched Emma and Sarah play. Emma was bossy, frequently telling Sarah what to do.
“This is too cool,” Heather said as she watched them interact. “This is a side to Emma she’s never let me see.”
“That’s the way she used to be,” Laura said. “Self-confident and a bit overly assertive.” Not the quiet little shadowy figure living at the lake house. Not the child who feared the dark, and wet her bed, and stood alone on the beach while her friend played in the water.
“This is very encouraging,” Heather said. “She has so much going for her. I know it’s hard to believe right now, Laura, but I think she’s going to be fine.”
“If she knew I could see her, though, she’d clam up,” Laura said. “That hurts.”
“For now,” Heather said reassuringly. “Can you bring Sarah again? She seems to be enjoying herself.”
“Maybe,” Laura said as she watched Sarah play with her daughter. Sarah seemed caught between the roles of child and woman, occasionally playing with the dolls as intently as Emma, occasionally guiding Emma in a more parental manner, and always, no matter how vociferously Emma objected, calling her Janie.
When the session was over, Laura buckled both old woman and child into her car for the return trip to the retirement home.
“Did you have a good time?” Laura asked them as she pulled out of the parking lot.
“Where were we?” Sarah asked.
There was silence from the back seat, where Emma sat.
“You were at a therapist’s o
ffice,” Laura said. “Playing with Emma in a playroom.”
“Do we go for a walk now?”
“Not today,” Laura said. “I’ll drop you off at your apartment, and then I have to take Emma home. But I’ll come visit you again tomorrow and we can go for a walk then, all right? It’s supposed to be a beautiful day.”
“I’ll put my walking shoes on first thing in the morning,” Sarah said.
“That’s a great idea.” Laura glanced at Sarah and saw that she was smiling broadly at the thought of taking a walk. “And maybe while we’re walking,” she said, “you can tell me what you did after you left your job at Saint Margaret’s.”
Sarah, 1959
Sarah was afraid of Dr. Palmiento and Gilbert. She knew the damage they had been able to do within the confines of a legitimate institution. The lengths they might go to outside that institution was a frightening unknown. Obviously, they would protect their so-called research at all costs. Dr. P.’s veiled threats toward Janie still rang in Sarah’s ears.
She decided to move to a different town. After selling the home she’d owned with Joe, she moved to an apartment thirty miles away. The move was painful. She felt as if she were wiping Joe and her memories of him from her life. But she still had Janie, the greatest connection she could possibly have with her husband. And every day, she wore the pin he’d given her.
She took a job in a blessedly conventional psychiatric hospital, Emery Springs, near her new home, and was relieved to find that the “progressive” techniques used at Saint Margaret’s were not being employed there. In her spare time, she tried to find either a Joseph Tolley or a Frederick Hamilton in the institutions in or near the metropolitan area. Driving from place to place, Janie in tow, she searched for him. None of the institutions had a record of either man ever being there, and she wondered if they might have checked him in under yet another fictitious name. That was, if he’d survived the lobotomy at all.
The only person from Saint Margaret’s she dared stay in touch with was Colleen. Colleen had been fired from the hospital immediately after Sarah left, and she’d been given the same threats regarding her own child, Sammy. Colleen was desperately searching for another job. She couldn’t afford to move, and Sarah felt guilty for her predicament, knowing it was Joe’s foiled scheme that had led to her unemployment.