The Girl from Widow Hills, page 16
Their voices still echoed a decade later.
Living off other people’s hard-earned money—
My parents said they donated, probably paid for your house—
A group of girls scattered around me. One in particular standing between me and the exit of the gym locker room, the walls narrowing as the voices grew. Until I had to move. Had to get out.
The school counselor attributed the incident to PTSD, but it didn’t change the reaction. I was sent home for a week. I was just lucky it hadn’t made it on the news.
But it was a good story. Describe her in three words: angry, unpredictable, dangerous.
My mother stressed the need to stay offline, to keep random people on the Internet from contacting me on social media, and private messages, and lesser-known chat rooms. I had quickly learned never to search for my own name. But I still saw it, heard about it. Kids bartered information, discovered the power of it. At that age, it was what we had.
Ten years later, we hadn’t much changed. We all just had more access to the truth and the lies.
* * *
IN MY OFFICE BETWEEN meetings, I pulled up Elyse’s employment file. I hadn’t been involved in the hiring process, not since I’d taken on my full-time role.
But this was all information at my disposal. If she’d gone home, as Bennett suggested, I might find another contact number in her file—to put my mind at ease. To stop seeing the image of her staring out my window, frowning.
If my mother could see me now, I was sure she’d laugh. Call me, in an offhand way, the powers that be. That unseen, unnamed force that determined her fate each time she was removed from a position or reassigned. The powers that gave her shit hours, or denied her employment, or ignored her situation. The powers that be were unwavering and unsympathetic. Robotic assholes, I think was her preferred term. And now here I was.
But I was nothing like she’d imagined us to be. I wanted to make a difference. Fix a broken system from the top down.
The small thumbnail photo with Elyse’s ID badge was up on the screen, grainy to the degree of blurry, along with her original application. Elyse Ferano was twenty-five and had three different places of employment before landing here, including a few months’ gap in between, noted as a medical leave. I remembered she’d mentioned a bad accident, and I wondered if she had follow-up issues. It had been the same for my arm.
But still. She had moved around a lot in the time allotted. I wondered who had hired her, how she’d gotten through the referral calls. She’d listed previous jobs from all over the state. Her most recent referral was from a rehab facility near the coast, at least four hours away. I couldn’t tell which place she might consider home.
On impulse, I called the most recent contact name.
“Henry Masters,” he answered on the first ring.
“Hi, my name is Olivia, and I’m calling in regard to a referral for a previous employee of yours.” I’d opted against giving away my information unless specifically asked.
“Hold on,” he said. Then, “Go ahead,” like he was pulling up the files on his own end, waiting for a name.
“A nurse by the name of Elyse Ferano.”
“We are not able to comment at this time,” he said without even a moment’s pause. Those were the types of lines we gave instead of putting a name on blast. There were repercussions for that, for saying the wrong thing and keeping someone from getting a job. What some called honesty, others called slander. So we stuck to the neutral comments, speaking in code, but we all knew what it meant.
“Oh, I’m surprised, I was under the impression that you referred her in the past?” Unless the hiring committee had failed to follow up, which was really unacceptable.
“Yes, sorry, we’re in the midst of an internal investigation, which has put all referrals on hold.”
So it may not have had anything to do with her at all. Except he’d asked me for her name first. He’d acted like he would answer. He’d made a mistake.
“Can you share the specifics?” I was grasping at straws here, and I knew it.
“I cannot, as it’s ongoing.” I could hear his chair squeaking in the background, like he was twisting his seat back and forth.
“What sort of investigation?”
A sigh. “A previous issue that’s just recently come to light during an inventory audit.”
Dammit, Elyse. “Thank you for your time,” I said, my voice sounding small even to me. I placed the phone gently in the cradle.
Bennett had mentioned things going missing from the medicine room. I thought back to when he’d caught me in there, laying in to me, borderline accusing me, before apologizing after for the overreaction. Someone had been taking things. He’d mentioned it casually; maybe he wasn’t sure. But he was keeping an eye out. Had he been suspicious of her?
I wondered if this was what had sent Elyse on the road so quickly. The police lingering around my house? Seeing Detective Rigby in the hospital?
Sean Coleman’s death had nothing to do with her, but she’d spooked when she saw the detective at the hospital after she showed up in the middle of the night; she’d seemed uncomfortable with the police activity outside my house, watching out my window.
And then she’d gotten into a fight with Bennett.
Even now I didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to see the worst in people. Especially someone I’d really cared for. But people were like that—often you only got to see the shell. The surface calm. The charm.
Even the manager at the bar had hinted at it—that she’d hung around a lot. Maybe he was referring to things I wasn’t aware of, a crowd of people other than my own. Maybe that was what she and Trevor had been discussing and why he’d been so cagey on the phone.
She’d been skimming from our inventory. Possibly to use or possibly to sell.
And now she was gone. Not returning to a safer haven. But off to the next place, no forwarding address, no notice, no goodbye. Like she could feel the net closing in on her and had to escape it first. How many of us were outrunning something?
I stared at my computer screen, unsure what to do next. Protocol said I should report this to Bennett, but it could wait. There was no urgency any longer. And I still felt some allegiance to her. I didn’t want to be so wrong about people—again.
I looked to the empty couch and debated checking out, attempting a nap. It was lunchtime, but without Bennett or Elyse, I didn’t want to brave the whispers in the cafeteria. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, settling on something close to meditation instead.
A few moments later, there was a shuffling of fabric from out in the hall. I opened my eyes, thought I saw a shadow under the door. I stared at it, wondering if it was someone pausing in the hall, checking their phone, when the doorknob began to faintly turn. It barely made a sound, and I held my breath, watching it move.
My heartbeat grew louder, and I looked for a way out: the windows behind me that I could crank open, but I was three floors up, over the parking lot; the phone on my desk, though I didn’t know whom to call.
I pretended to make a call, hand on the receiver, just in case. “Hello, this is Olivia Meyer,” I said loudly. The door handle dropped. The shadow left.
I waited, listening, before leaving the phone and walking around my desk. I opened my office door, peered down the hall. Expecting maybe someone lingering, waiting to talk to me. But it was empty from the stairwell entrance on the left to the locked double doors on the right. Whoever had been out there was gone.
My ringing office phone drew me back inside.
“This is Olivia,” I answered, heart still racing.
“Olivia, it’s Dr. Cal. Can you please swing by my office this evening before you head out?”
I was caught off guard, wondering why he was calling, whether I’d gotten my schedule wrong. “Oh, um, I didn’t think we had an appointment this soon…” I pulled up my calendar, didn’t see anything in there.
“It’s important. A few items we need to discuss. Some paperwork I forgot to take care of. So. Five-thirty?”
“Sure,” I said.
This time I locked my office door behind me on the way out.
RETURN TO SENDER
No Forwarding Address
POSTMARKED: LEXINGTON, KY
MAY 21, 2011
How much did they give you for that new brick house, for that white picket fence, for that nice black car? What’s the going rate for that fake life you’re living?
How much do you owe the people who made this life for you?
How much do you have left?
I know the answer to that one. More than you deserve.
If you’re not careful, you’ll get what you really deserve.
CHAPTER 17
Monday, 5:30 p.m.
HELLO?” I CALLED, STEPPING into Dr. Cal’s outer office. His secretary seemed to have left for the day already. Maybe there’d been some wires crossed. Maybe I wasn’t on the final calendar. Maybe the mistake with the appointment was his and not mine.
“Come on in!” Dr. Cal’s smooth voice called from his inner office, door partly ajar once more. “Sit, sit,” he said, with his too-wide smile and too-white teeth. He crossed his ankle over his leg, in that same chair, and I checked his socks. Orange. Pumpkins, maybe? It was still August.
“I know it’s a little early for the season,” he said, shaking his foot, “but fall is always my favorite time of year.”
I had no idea what I was doing here, and he wasn’t giving me any hints. “Um, I wasn’t sure why you needed to see me, and I’m on my way out, have to be somewhere soon…”
“Right,” he said, planting both feet firmly on the ground. He grabbed a folder beside him, opened it up, twisted it my way.
He held himself very still. His demeanor was making me nervous.
The form appeared to be a disclaimer, with my name and birth date already filled in. Something about a sleep study, best practice recommendations, a release of liability—
He cleared his throat. “I forgot to have you sign this when you were here, when you opted out of doing a sleep study.”
I tilted my head. Had I? He’d mentioned one, and I’d put it off, saying I didn’t have the time right then—I wouldn’t have said my response was official in any way.
“It’s standard,” he said, handing me a pen.
“Sure,” I said, adding my signature. He’d left the date open, and I hastily scribbled it in. I wasn’t sure why he was calling me in so urgently over this.
He flipped the folder closed, took a slow breath, shoulders relaxing. “Have you been keeping that journal, like we discussed?” he asked.
“Not yet. I’ve had a few rough nights.”
His face darkened, and then I knew for sure he’d heard. “My secretary told me there was an emergency the other night. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
He looked down at my knee, at the way I held my leg out straight to keep the stitches from pulling. I could walk without a limp, but I was being cautious—not wanting to pull anything apart before it had fully healed.
“Is that from…” He let the thought trail.
“I tripped,” I said.
He drummed his pointer finger against his knee, the pace increasing. “Were you—did you—was it like you mentioned last time? That you woke up outside?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I tripped because I found a body in the dark.”
His face was impossible to read, no emotion behind it. “That must’ve been terrible,” he finally said, like he was trying on empathy for the first time.
“It was,” I said.
He sat back in his chair, the folder still in his lap. “Olivia, these things we were discussing, it’s hard to determine what the diagnosis is without a sleep study. Whether you could be a danger to yourself or those around you.”
I stared at him blankly until he cracked first, looking down, making some useless note.
The twenty-year anniversary approaching, the panic of being found and put on display for others to pick apart. The night terrors becoming something more… Anything I said now would indeed end up in some medical file. If it got to that, a detective asking for the records, subpoenaing them somehow, I wanted there to be a record of this, too.
“Must’ve been extra stress, like you said,” I offered.
He let out a slow sigh, like he was relieved. “Good, good.” He put the folder on his desk, patting it once.
I could’ve laughed. It was the first time I’d found him truly funny.
That paperwork was to cover his own ass. Dr. Cal had called me in here, worried about his liability. He’d heard the rumors, and he knew I’d been to see him beforehand, and, like Bennett, he’d made that leap. I’d come to him for help, and he’d brushed me off, and now he was scrambling.
Here Bennett had been worried about word getting out that I’d been seeing someone for sleepwalking and everyone would know—HIPAA laws be damned. When really Dr. Cal was terrified. Maybe not a sociopath after all. He was too nervous, too unnatural.
A narcissist, though, yes.
It wasn’t good for business if your patient woke standing over a dead body. Not a five-star recommendation. Not the type of press he’d want, either.
“I’m sorry to hear about… everything going on. It must be very stressful. How have you been coping?”
“It is,” I said. “You know Sydney Britton in the ER?”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the name,” he said.
“She gave me this pain pill/sleeping aid combo. Knocked me right out. I didn’t move all night.”
He blinked at me slowly. “Well, that’s good news, knowing you didn’t have an adverse reaction to it. Why don’t you email that name to me and I’ll get you a refill, should you need it.”
“Perfect,” I told him. Fucking perfect.
He’d feared he had made a mistake, and now he was swinging to the other extreme. Everyone wanted to save their own ass, present the perfect image. At the end of the day, we were all products to be consumed by the public, at their will.
“I’d like to keep working with you,” he said. “I think you’re a very interesting case.”
I almost didn’t respond, because he was, even now, trying to see how he could use this story for himself. So many careers had been made from the original event: the reporters who were there, watching it live; the doctors who looked over my case until my mom realized they were using me for their own case studies, something to help their public image and pad their résumés; the friends who had shared photos and anecdotes, inserting themselves into the story for their own momentary taste of fame.
But I had to keep him on my side. “I think I have an appointment with you on Thursday. Guess I’ll see you then?”
“Great, yes. And just so you know, you can talk to me, Olivia. I take privacy very seriously. I spoke with my secretary, too. She understands the sensitive nature.”
As evidenced by the fact that I was here after hours, that he’d called instead of emailing to set this up, that there was absolutely no record of my presence today.
Only Bennett knew the full truth—knew about my visit here and how it might connect to the case. And I had to believe he was on my side.
* * *
THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE DR. Cal’s office was mostly empty already. I’d checked my phone, looking for any contact from Elyse or Bennett. But I had no new messages.
It was late enough in the day that I knew Bennett shouldn’t be sleeping, especially if he hadn’t had a shift here today. I needed to ask him if he had suspected Elyse. I had called his cell, leaning against the wall, when the door to Dr. Cal’s office swung open again.
“Didn’t mean to spook you,” he said, looking at his watch, “but I’m heading out, too.”
The call switched over to voicemail, and there was nothing to do but fall into stride beside him, heading toward the elevators.
I didn’t want to mention that I wasn’t planning to take the elevator but was heading toward the fire stairwell instead—would take the five flights down, like I always did. With the doctor beside me, it was hard to break away without getting into all the reasons why a steel trap was not my ideal means of travel.
The elevator doors dinged and slid open, but no one was inside. “After you,” he said.
I hesitated for a moment, thinking I could tell him I needed to swing by my office first, except I had my canvas bag with me, and I’d already claimed I was in a rush, on my way out.
I stepped inside, closed my eyes as the doors slid shut, pressed my back into the cold metal wall. Listened to the hum of the gears kicking in as the elevator lurched downward.
My stomach dropped as it started to move.
I counted the floors with each ding. Four—“It’s a real tragedy, about that man…”
Three—“My secretary said he wasn’t from here. Drugs, maybe? We’ve all seen the statistics rising. No place is immune…”
Two—“Are you going to stay out there still? With everything that’s happened?”
The elevator jolted to a stop just before the chime for the first floor. “Excuse me?” I said, stoic.
“Jessie said, well, it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. And you live all alone.”
Jessie sure had a lot of information for someone I’d met once for twenty seconds.
“I’m not all alone out there,” I said, because at the end of the day, no matter what had happened in Rick’s previous life, I realized that was absolutely true.
* * *
ON THE WAY HOME, I paused my car at the entrance to my driveway. I hadn’t checked the mail in a few days. Not Friday night, when I’d stumbled in from the bar, and not Saturday, when I’d been brought back home by Elyse, watched over by both her and Bennett.
Now there were several days’ worth of envelopes and magazines stacked inside. I usually tossed half of it as junk. As I sorted through the stack, I found a handwritten envelope at the bottom of the pile.
