“Poppy?” My sister pulled me back. “I know you’re crying. You can cry.”
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...emptyempty. 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.Ican’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 behere. 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.”