“Once we’d broken up, he broke into the sorority one night, and I mean actual breaking and entering. He was ranting, raving. It’s like he was a different person all of a sudden. I tried to run for the stairs so I could get my phone and dial 911 but he grabbed me, wouldn’t let go. Pretty much everyone in the house was awake by that point and someone called the police because before I knew it Dayton was in handcuffs and I was at the foot of the staircase, in complete hysterics. Crying, screaming.”
“He went to jail?” Her prior knowledge of the arrest made it easier to keep her composure.
“If he did, he didn’t stay long. A few days later, one of our mutual friends told me he was hospitalized. I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t care. Do you know what I said?Good. What kind of person says that when they hear news like that?”
Despite their engagement, it seemed she was oblivious to his heart condition. Had he not been hospitalized after the incident in the woods, Kenna wondered if she would have known about it herself.
“Someone who’s been hurt.” She started to shake her head but stopped short. “Audrey, I am so sorry he did this to you. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.” Her thumb ran along the album’s spine. “Why do you keep this?”
Audrey lowered her voice, afraid of her own speech.
“I love Josh, I do, but true love is once in a lifetime and mine ended with my ex-fiancé in handcuffs and his bruises on my wrists.”
Fear chilled Kenna. The hair rose on her forearms. Though she had hostility toward her love for Dayton, she knew her feelings were just that.
Once in a lifetime.
* * *
Upon returning to Branch Spring, she went straight to Fairbrook. The version of Dayton who answered the door looked as if he’d been to Hell and back. An uncharacteristic pallor painted his skin. The same clothes hung on his broad frame as when she’d left days earlier.
He didn’t question where she’d gone. Rather, he seemed grateful for her presence on his doormat. She was thankful, of course, for his silent acceptance.
Hurt and longing swirled in his black irises.
She covered his mouth with an assurance that was gentle but forged. He drew Kenna into his arms and she surrendered fully to the belly of the beast, forgetting her time with Audrey, forgetting the troubling love she carried for him.
Perhaps that was the other women’s secret.
Burying everything until they were, inevitably, forced to feel.
25
ANOTHER ROUND
Kenna sat behind the reception desk, staring out into the empty waiting room. Not one patient had walked through the doors since her shift started three hours earlier.
The landline rested in its cradle, silent.
She had not seen Dayton upon her arrival. He had been holed up in his office the entire afternoon. Door locked. Not that she minded their lack of interaction.
It gave her a break from pretending she didn’t know as much as she did; something she should have mastered given all the time they spent together but of which she felt less capable with each passing day.
So many weeks had passed and the conversation with Audrey haunted her as if she’d been the one who lived through it. Her heart had grown cold and black and yet some buried part of it beat for Dayton.
There were three possible versions of her future. She’d move on but carry the collateral for life, like Audrey. She’d beat the odds and stay with him.
Or she’d disappear like Lacey Greene.
Kenna had no intention of welcoming the third option as her fate. When she returned from Los Angeles, she mulled over revisiting her notes and files for the umpteenth time but she was jaded. Exhausted. She had hit a dead end with the Polaroids a long time ago. He denied that the alphabetization bore any significance—not that she believed him. They were all former patients but it seemed like that was where the connection began and ended.
For curiosity’s sake, she had asked Audrey to recall as many of the women’s names as she could but they were all over the board. No order like the girls in the box.
Down the hall, a door clicked, followed by the clacking of dress shoes.
“It’s dead in here,” she said.
Dayton’s eyes drifted toward her in passing as he approached the set of metal blinds in the corner of the waiting area. “I wonder why that is.”