My heart was beating like a racehorse inside my chest. My ears thrummed with the beat, as if someone were pounding on a bass drum inside me.
I unfolded the paper.
“Miss Daphne?”
Belinda. I scrunched the paper up and hid it inside my fist. “Yes?”
“Who was at the door?”
“No one. I mean”—I held up the envelope—“a message for Brad. I’m taking it to the office.”
“Okay.” She smiled and went about her business.
I ran into the library and uncrumpled the wad of paper in my hand.
Dear Brad Steel,
* * *
How important is it to you that your wife never finds out what happened to her? How much are you willing to pay?
* * *
I’ll wait for your call.
* * *
A friend
I gulped.
His wife? I was Brad’s wife. Something had happened to me? Something I didn’t know about?
My heart dropped into my stomach.
My hands shook as I attempted to smooth out the crumpled paper. I couldn’t put it back in the envelope now. Why had I even looked?
What could I do?
Nothing had happened to me. Except…there was still a lot I didn’t remember. A phone number was written on the bottom of the paper.
There was one way to find out what this was about.
I’d call the number.
“Hello?”
“This is Daphne Steel. Brad Steel’s wife.”
A throat cleared. “Mrs. Steel. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me where the hell you get off trying to extort money from my husband.”
The words left my throat before I could think about them. I wasn’t going to allow this to happen to my husband, to our family.
I became a lioness, fierce and protective.
I was no longer timid Daphne Wade, a colorless flower.
I was Daphne Steel, a full yellow bloom.
And I was angry.
Passionately angry.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I got your message. Let’s come to terms now.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Brad
I picked up the phone in my truck when it rang. I didn’t give this number out to just anyone, so I knew the call would be important.
“Steel,” I said.
“Mr. Steel, it’s Dr. Pelletier.”
“What’s the word, Doc?”
“Given your father has held me at gunpoint, I don’t think you should be calling me by a nickname.”
“I’m paying you a shit ton of money, so I’ll call you what I want. I hope you have good news for me. How much longer will Wendy be committed?”
“She won’t be. That hasn’t changed. She’s been a model patient, and she’s getting out sometime next month.”
Fuck. I’d tried everything, and no dice. “What do you want, then?”
“I want to talk to you about your wife.”
My heart softened. Daphne. “I’m sorry. Is she all right?”
“I told you after our first session that she had remembered some of the patients who were with her when she was hospitalized.”
“Yeah.”
“The facility finally got her old records to me. Apparently there was some turnover in the records department that caused the delay.”
Damn. I’d paid that department a lot to get those records unsealed and to Dr. Pelletier. Delay my ass. Good thing I hadn’t gone with my first instinct months ago and had them all destroyed.
“Some heads are going to roll. But at least you have them now. You can review them and help her even more.”
“I have reviewed them, Mr. Steel. That’s the issue.”
“Okay…” My stomach churned. “I assume there’s something in there I should know.”
“There’s a lot in there you should know,” he said, “but the most alarming is that your wife was heavily medicated.”
“I assumed so. That explains why she has such significant memory loss from that time.”
He cleared his throat. “That could be a partial explanation, yes.”
“What other explanation could there be?”
“Her diagnosis.”
“I know what her diagnosis was. Anxiety and depression.”
“Anxiety and depression were some of her symptoms, but her actual diagnosis was dissociative identity disorder.”
“Dissocia— What?”
“It’s also known as multiple personality disorder.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Did you read the book Sybil? It came out a few years ago.”
“I was in college for the last several years. I didn’t have time to read for pleasure, and I doubt I’d read some girlie book. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Dissociative identity disorder is the new name for split personality.”
“I’m still not following.”
“Your wife was kept heavily medicated,” he said. “And even when she wasn’t medicated, she had limited interaction with other patients. I always thought it odd that she remembered the patients but not their actual names. Now I have an explanation.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. “What’s the explanation, then?”
“The patients are all her. Aspects of her. Different personalities.”
The receiver dropped out of my hand and thudded onto my lap. I quickly picked it up and put it back to my ear.
“Mr. Steel? Are you there?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here.”
“It’s a classic case. She has memories of these so-called separate people. The memories are becoming more vivid.”
Multiple personalities. My Daphne. My Daphne whose own personality was the sweetest in the world. Why hadn’t Jonathan told me?