Poor Little Dead Girls (29 page)

When she finished, Jessica just stared at Sadie for a full minute, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. When she finally formed a question, it was a simple one.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you telling me all of this? I mean, these people sound completely insane … won’t you get in trouble for telling someone who doesn’t belong?”

Sadie eyed the driver in the front seat and lowered her voice.

“Like I said, I needed your help. And also … I left something out.”

Jessica shifted uneasily, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything else.

“I think there’s something else going on, something way bigger than charities and parties and making connections. I have this memory — not even a memory really, almost like a scene from a dream that I can’t really grasp. I’m rushing down a hospital hallway toward a white door.”

“A nightmare?”

Sadie shook her head. “It was more than that. I think they took me somewhere last night, and” — her voice broke — “I have to find out what they did to me.”

Jessica gazed out the window for a moment, then suddenly her eyes cleared. She leaned toward Sadie.

“What do you need me to do?”

They split up at the door, Sadie tucking herself into the shadows on the porch and Jessica breezing through.

“Hi there, I’m hoping you can help me with something,” Sadie heard Jessica say in her best future-president-of-the-Junior-League voice. “I was walking by the grounds just now, and I saw one of your patients drop this on the lawn.”

Sadie peeked through the doorway as Jessica held up the diamond pendant she had been wearing just a few minutes earlier. “I was hoping to get it back to her.”

The woman at the front desk tapped away on her keyboard while looking up at Jessica and smiling. “What did the patient look like?”

“Oh, I got a great look,” Jessica said. “She was brunette, maybe mid-thirties, and she was wearing a white robe over a hospital gown.”

The woman’s smile faltered a bit and she stopped typing. “Well, all of our patients do wear the same gowns. Do you have a name?”

“No, sorry. But I did hear her say something about a daughter named Cassie. You must have names of family members in there, right?”

Sadie held her breath. If she was wrong about all of this, she would never hear the end of it.

The woman looked up at Jessica, her mouth a grim line. “I’m sorry, we don’t have any patients matching that description.” She held up one index finger. “Can you stay here for a moment please?” She started dialing her phone, her eyes never leaving Jessica.

Shit. Sadie hadn’t even thought about what would happen if the staff members knew about what the Sullas had done during her visit.
Now, Jess,
she thought.
Do it now!

Sadie heard a crash as a silver cup filled with pens teetered off the desk and clattered to the floor.

“Oh, I am so sorry! That was so clumsy of me,” Jessica cried. “Here, let me help.”

“Stay there, please. Miss,” the woman snapped. “I’ve got it.” She sighed loudly and ducked behind the desk to collect the silver ballpoint pens that were rolling in every direction on the floor. Silently, Sadie made her move.

Jessica turned and saluted, grinning, as Sadie ran past her, taking the stairs two at a time.

Just as Sadie reached the landing, the woman’s head popped up.

“Did someone just come in? I thought I heard footsteps.”

“No ma’am,” Jessica said, her eyes wide and innocent. She casually leaned a hand on the desk and sent a stack of files crashing to the floor. “Oh, gosh,” she said, putting her hands over her face. Sadie heard the flutter of papers settling on the floor as she slipped through the doorway and onto the second floor.

She combed each of the four floors, walking hallway after hallway, but she still couldn’t find the door. Everything felt wrong, too — the hallways too wide and the ceiling too high. She stopped at a window and rested her forehead on the glass. Maybe she had been wrong about everything? The thought made her feel crazy, like she belonged inside one of these rooms instead of out roaming the halls.

She decided to do one more sweep, and when she emerged on the ground floor, she walked slowly, trying to take in every detail. This floor was less polished than the rest, like a staging area for the rest of the hospital. She didn’t see any patients, and most of the doors led to broom closets, or offices filled with old filing cabinets. The lights were dimmer down here, and it was colder, too. Sadie pulled her sleeves down over her hands and hugged her arms close to her body. She could feel goose bumps rising on her skin.

In the middle of the long hallway, there was a long white curtain that hung from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. She paused. It was odd — a curtain covering a wall — and on a hunch, she walked closer. As she watched, a slow breeze passed behind the curtain, ruffling the heavy fabric so that it rolled like waves.

Sadie took a deep breath and looked behind her, but the hallway was quiet. Quickly, she slipped behind the curtain and waited for her eyes to adjust.

She had expected to see a door, or maybe another long hallway, but instead she was on a small landing. A staircase descended down a few feet in front of her, growing darker and dimmer with each step. With a flash, she remembered her first visit to the hospital. The woman in the garden’s voice echoed in her head. “Don’t let them take you into the basement.” She exhaled, willing her nerves to stop screaming, and climbed down.

There was another door at the bottom of the stairs, and she didn’t even hesitate. The knob turned easily, and she stepped into a bright hallway, a smaller version of those on the upper floors. It was pristine, and the floor gleamed like glass. Against the far wall, at least fifty yards away, was a small white door, unmarked, except for a small black rectangle in the center.

Sadie swayed on her feet and leaned back against the wall for support. It was all real. She had been here last night.

Before she could calm down, she saw the door at the end of the hallway start to open. She ducked back into the stairwell and pulled the door shut just as a pair of men in white lab coats emerged into the hallway.

She watched through a crack in the door, listening for wisps of their conversation, but she couldn’t make anything out. As they neared the door she was forced to retreat back up the stairs. She hovered in the darkness just inside the curtain and stood completely still as the door opened. If they looked up, it would all be over.

They paused. “I’ll notify the boss — let him know the procedure was successful,” one said.

The other gave him a mock salute and grinned. “Let him know that if he happens to keep sending us hot ones, that’s just fine with us. Maybe a brunette next time, though.”

They both laughed, and Sadie’s stomach felt like it was filled with ice water. Barely breathing, she stumbled back through the curtain.

“Hey, what was that?” she heard the taller one say behind her.

She ran. She didn’t care that patients were staring, or that one of the doctors tried to stop her as she passed. She just ran and ran until she was flying through the foyer, ignoring the woman at the front desk, and pushing her way out the front door.

When Jessica saw her face, she started running too, and they didn’t stop until they got to the front gate and then two blocks down the street, where Sadie finally collapsed into a heap on the curb.

They sat there for what felt like an hour. She told Jessica what she had heard, and how she still had no idea what she was dealing with. Now, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

When the sky started getting darker, they finally stood up. “I didn’t want to mention it before, but our car left us,” Jessica said.

“It’s okay, we’ll just call another one.” Sadie flipped open her phone. She had six unread messages from Jeremy. She erased them all without reading a word.

Jessica looked uneasy. “I don’t know — it’ll take them a long time to get out here, and we’re supposed to be back on campus in,” — she glanced at her watch — “two hours.”

Sadie shook her head, picturing the twins as they stumbled into the room at four
A.M.
“Trust me, curfew is not an issue.”

Jessica raised her eyebrows. “The faculty is in on this thing too?”

“I don’t know. Either that or they just look the other way. I just know that last night I didn’t get home until five, and no one said anything.”

“Well, we still have to get back eventually. Want me to call Regency?”

Sadie shook her head. “I have a better idea.”

While they waited for the twins’ driver to pick them up, Sadie flipped open her phone. She had learned so much about her mom in the last week, and now truth and lies had all blurred together. She wasn’t sure she could believe any of what Thayer had told her anymore, or even what she had read online. She had to talk to someone she could trust.

“Hey, kiddo.” Her dad sounded so happy, she felt terrible. “I’m so glad you called — I missed you last week.”

She pounded her fist against her forehead in frustration. “I’m really sorry, Dad. I was just so busy with homework I didn’t have time.”

“Hey, that’s okay. You’ve got to keep up with the kids whose private tutors do all their work for them, right?”

She laughed weakly, then winced. Even she could hear how half-assed it was.

“Hey Sadie May, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing really. I’m just tired.”

“Ah. Big night last night? Did you go into town with Jessica and Brett?”

“Yeah, we saw a double feature,” she lied. “Ate too much popcorn and then stayed up way too late.”

She hesitated, trying to decide how to bring it up, but her brain was so fried she couldn’t think.

“Dad, I know about Mom’s family.”

The phone was silent.

“Oh. Well … ” He trailed off and sighed. “I knew eventually someone at Keating would mention that to you, but I was hoping it would be later rather than sooner.”

She didn’t respond, and eventually he continued.

“You have to understand, Sadie. This was your mother’s choice. By the time you knew her, she didn’t want to be Maylynne Ralleigh, the heiress, anymore. She wanted to be May. My wife, your mother, her own person. That’s the mom she wanted you to know, and it’s never been my place to change that.”

Sadie wasn’t convinced. “But they were her family. How could she just leave them behind like that?”
Like she left us?
She bit her lip to stop the tears from flowing.

“I know it’s hard to understand, but the Ralleighs are a powerful family — you must know by now what they do, the business with the diamonds — and your mom didn’t agree with any of it. She was an idealist, and their business takes a certain … hardness. I really don’t know the details about what happened between them. May didn’t like to talk about it, and it made her sad so I didn’t push it. I just know they had some kind of falling-out after she figured out where the diamonds came from, and when she turned eighteen they disowned her and she them. After that she didn’t consider herself one of them anymore. I never met her parents or the rest of her family, not even on our wedding day.”

Sadie took a deep breath as she felt her eyes start to well up. Jessica put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, and the tears spilled over. She cried for who her mom was and what she had been through, and for her own failures — falling for this whole scheme and convincing herself that belonging to this group was important. She had been neglecting everyone who actually mattered — her dad, Jessica, her friends back in Portland — all for people she couldn’t even trust. Just because they had given her a taste of things she had never even thought she wanted: wealth, power, status.

“Are you there, Sadie? Talk to me.”

“I’m here, Dad. Sorry — I’m really, really glad you told me. I just needed to hear the truth.”

She paused, not sure how far she was ready to take this yet. “There’s something else, too.”

“Anything. Nothing but the truth from now on, I promise.”

“I … ” she stalled, trying to figure out how to make sure he didn’t immediately hang up and call the psych ward. “Some weird things have been happening.”