I eye the folder again, reaching out and touching the flap. My broken skin is bandaged over from the cut from the wineglass, and I can feel my heartbeat in my palm, thumping hard in my hand. Then I take a deep breath and pull the folder onto my lap, flipping it open and scanning the pages of notes that doctor had taken as he listened to my mother cry.
Her official diagnosis waspostpartum psychosis, a “very rare, severe yet treatable condition that can occur after the birth of a baby,” exacerbated even further by the trauma, grief, and isolation following the death of said baby. Words likedelusions or strange beliefs, inability to sleep,andparanoia and suspiciousnessleap out at me from the page, branding themselves into my brain.
All of it had been there. All of the signs, the symptoms, if only someone had cared enough to look.
There’s a sense of relief knowing that I was wrong about Margaret—knowing that it wasn’t me who led her out there, heldher body down in the dark—but still, the uneasiness isn’t gone. It’s just something new now. Something different.
Postpartum psychosis is considered a clinical emergency, I continue to read.Symptoms wax and wane, meaning a woman can be lucid enough to hold a conversation, then suffer hallucinations and delusions just hours later. There is a five percent suicide rate and four percent infanticide rate associated with the illness, and the risk of developing postpartum psychosis is higher in women with a history in their family, such as a mother or sister—
I slap the folder shut and toss it back onto the passenger seat before turning out of the cemetery and finding my way back to the highway, letting my mind wander as I drive. The thought makes me sick: That maybe I did something to Mason in the same way my mother did something to Margaret. That maybe I really had acted on those thoughts, peeled myself from bed that night, and wandered into his bedroom the same way my mother had wandered into mine.
Or maybe, justmaybe, I could be wrong about this, too.
It feels good to let myself believe it, if only for a second: That if I didn’t hurt Margaret, then maybe I didn’t hurt Mason, either. That maybe there’s another explanation, another reason, that absolves me of any guilt.
I could talk to Dr. Harris, perhaps, ask him more veiled questions in another desperate attempt at answers. Or I could go back to Paul Hayes’s house and try to figure out, again, who that old man is. What he knows. Maybe he’s lying about seeing me walking around at night, Mason wrapped in my arms. Maybe he’s just trying to confuse me, scare me. Get me to stop asking questions. I decide it’s better than nothing, because right now, I’m back at square one. Waylon isn’t on my side anymore—he made that perfectly clear yesterday, sitting in my living room, accusing me of murder—which means, once again, I’m back to being alone.
Back to trying to find my son without the help of the police, the public. Ben.
There is something about Ben, though, that’s been tickling at mysubconscious. Something about our meeting yesterday that felt familiar, though I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe it was the surreality of staring at Valerie up close, at finding myself so swiftly flipped into the role that Allison once held—no longerthe other one,but now,the old one.The one he had discarded for something shinier, better, like a malfunctioning toy. The way she had sashayed into the archway, her tanned skin visible behind the translucency of his shirt, like she had just rolled out of bed—hisbed—and grabbed it from the floor, plucking it from the spot where he had abandoned it the night before in a fervent frenzy and shrugged it over her shoulders.
The way she had called to him from the kitchen, her singsongy voice floating through the halls.
“Ben? Are you out there? Who is it?”
And his response, like a swift kick to the stomach: “Nobody.”
I’ve been driving on autopilot, these familiar roads of home leading me back to the city, but suddenly, the scenery around me seems to get brighter, sharper. The edges magnified with a startling clarity, like I’ve ingested some kind of drug.
I know what it is. I know what was nagging at me. I know what it was about yesterday that made me feel so uneasy.
It was those words. Valerie’s words had dislodged another memory from somewhere deep inside me: the guilt, the shame, of being pushed into the bushes at the memorial as Ben peeled himself from me, jogged up the porch steps, and discarded me like his cigarette, still smoldering in the grass. The fear of holding my breath and letting the branches claw at my hair, cut at my cheeks, like a gnarled hand pressed tight against my mouth. Dirty nails digging into my skin, keeping me quiet.
The panic that swelled in my chest as I watched that man saunter into the backyard, hands in his pockets.
“Ben? Are you out there?”
Watching his shoulders tense as he spotted my glass, champagne still fizzing, and the smudge of lipstick on the brim as he lifted itup, inspected it, like he had found some kind of clue. I hadn’t seen his face—I ran before he had the chance to turn back around, face the house, and find me hiding there—but I heard him. I heard his voice loud and clear. It was a voice I didn’t recognize at the time, but now, I would recognize it anywhere. It’s a voice that has been so prevalent in my life for these last two weeks, ever since he introduced himself on that airplane, sat across from me at my dining room table. Rang loudly in those giant headphones clamped tight around my ears.
That man was Waylon.
I grip the wheel harder, my foot like lead pushing down on the pedal. Even after all these years, I feel sure of it in a way I haven’t felt sure of anything. All this time, Waylon’s voice felt familiar. I knew I had heard it before—Iknewit—I just couldn’t figure out from where.
But now, I know. He was there, at that house. This is what he’s been hiding. This is Waylon’s secret. This is what he didn’t want me to know.
He knows Ben.
I throw my car into park on the side of the road and dig out my phone. Does Ben know he’s here? Did he send him to me for some reason? To extract information, maybe? Another way of keeping tabs?
I launch a new browser and type his name into the search engine, my fingers shaking as I pound at the screen. The page fills with articles about the podcast, interviews with true crime forums, mentions of the Guy Rooney case and his involvement in getting it solved. None of this is helpful, so this time, I refine my search:Waylon Spencer and Benjamin Drake.
When the results load, I feel the breath exit my lungs.
I remember us sitting at dinner together, the tension in my chest as I told him about Ben, our past. About what happened to his wife and how her death was our birth. The clank of my fork as I dropped it, hands shaking, recounting the way she had died.
“Doesn’t any part of you think that her death was very… convenient?”
That very first night in my dining room and the light from outside growing dimmer by the minute. Staring at that wall, tasting blood on my tongue from my torn cuticle.