The boys stared at her, an odd fear and uncertainty clouding their eyes.
“What?” Maggie felt a stabbing sense of terror. Had they seen her bloody head? Her fingers poked at her hair once more, and she made a mental note to turn up the heater. The house had never felt so drafty. “Come on, boys, sit down. I’ll get your snack as soon as you tell me about your day.”
Other children who had been let off at the stop had already walked home, and Casey and Cameron looked at each other. “Mrs. Stovall, why are we gonna sit here in the middle of the sidewalk?”
Maggie’s eyes widened, and she shot furtive glances about her surroundings. What am I doing? Cameron was right. A moment ago she had been certain she was back home at the dining room table. She hadn’t heard the passing traffic or realized that she was sitting cross-legged on the cold cement.
I’m crazy, God. What’s wrong with me?
She said nothing, only rose slowly and took the boys’ hands in hers. She was suddenly so tired she didn’t know if she could make it across the street.
Just go, Maggie. The boys are hungry. Squaring her shoulders and tightening her grip on the boys’ hands, she stepped off the curb.
It was Casey’s screams that caught her attention first, and then the horrifying realization that they were in the middle of the road, with cars coming at them from every angle. Seeing no way out, Maggie clutched the boys to herself and shielded them with her arms.
The sound of the crash was so deafening Maggie was certain they were all going to die. Please, God take me but not the boys …
And in that moment—believing her death was imminent and knowing she wouldn’t have to battle the demons another day—Maggie finally felt at peace.
The blow never came.
Maggie didn’t know how much time passed before she realized it, how long it had been since the screams of brakes and grinding metal and breaking glass all came to a stop. She just knew, for whatever reason, it was strangely silent around her.
Was this death? This silence and stillness?
She opened her eyes. She and the boys were fine, but two cars had collided head on—Maggie guessed in an effort to avoid hitting them. From where she stood, frozen in place, she could see that both vehicles’ airbags had inflated.
Let them be okay, God. I didn’t mean to …
There was a wailing coming from the wreckage, and Maggie wondered which car contained people who were crying. Then she looked down and saw that it was Cameron and Casey. The boys were shaking badly, crying and clinging to her in desperate fear.
My God, what have I done? I could have killed us all! What’s wrong with me?
She knelt between the boys and stroked their backs, keeping her eyes trained on the damaged vehicles and the host of people running toward them to help. “I’m sorry … ” She whispered the words over and over until in the distance she heard sirens, then not long afterward, a man’s voice behind her.
“Ma’am, I’m Officer Boe. You and the boys all right?”
Maggie looked over her shoulder and saw a policeman. “It was … it was an accident.”
The man’s face was filled with kindness. “We know that, ma’am. There were several witnesses who saw it happen. Looked like you and the boys were talking and accidentally walked into traffic.”
Maggie’s entire body was vibrating and she thought for a moment she might be sick. No, not here. She swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry.”
The officer came closer and put his hand on the top of her head, moving it so he could get a better look. “You’re bleeding.”
At this news another flash of fear tore across the twins’ still-stricken faces, and Maggie tightened her grip on them. “It’s okay, boys.” She turned to the officer once more. “I banged my head earlier. Twisted my ankle and took a fall.”
A knowing look filled the officer’s eyes. “Ma’am, I think you might have a concussion. Could be why you walked into traffic.”
Maggie ignored him and stared at the broken vehicles. “Are the people … is everyone okay?”
The officer nodded. “Only one person in each car. Both had airbags, so it looks like they’ll be fine.” He ran his finger over her skull and around the tender area, making her wince slightly. “Right now we need to take care of you.”
Officer Derek Boe stayed with the woman until paramedics lifted her onto a stretcher. He’d worked accident scenes for more than ten years and he knew a concussion when he saw one. Whatever else might be wrong with the woman’s ankle, one thing was sure: Her brains had been scrambled in the fall.
She had the dress and demeanor of a gentle suburban housewife, but when he ordered paramedics to load her on the stretcher, she was almost combative.
“No! Let me go! I’m okay, really, I don’t want to go to the hospital. The boys need a snack … hot chocolate … ”
The officer took the boys’ hands in his and directed his words at the woman. “Now, don’t worry about a thing. The boys and I will be right behind you. We’ll just get you in and have you checked out, then you can go home and have hot chocolate, okay?”
The woman shook her head and for a moment she looked like some of the drug overdose victims they found on the streets of downtown Cleveland. Wide-eyed and frantic, shaking from head to toe. Almost crazed. “Ma’am, you need to relax. Everything’s going to be fine. We just want to get you checked out.”
The paramedics were ready to roll when the officer realized he didn’t have her name. “Ma’am.” He raised his voice so she could hear him above the commotion and traffic. “Could you tell us your name?”
The woman stopped shaking and stared at him blankly without blinking. “My name?”
Seconds passed, and Officer Boe tried to conceal his concern as one of the paramedics jotted something down on his notepad. “Never mind, ma’am. We’ll get it later.”
Loss of memory was further proof of a concussion.
“It’s Mrs. Stovall.” One of the twin boys tugged on Derek’s arm so he would be heard. “Her name’s Mrs. Stovall.”
The officer looked down at the boy. “But I thought she was your mom?”
The woman tried to sit up, but the paramedics eased her back down. “I’m … I’m their foster mother,” she managed.
The officer sighed. That would complicate things. Whenever victims in an accident were wards of the state, the Social Services department had to be notified. He looked back to the woman. “What’s your first name, Mrs. Stovall?”
Again the woman hesitated. And then as if someone flicked on a light switch in her brain, she said, “Maggie. Maggie Stovall.”
She rattled off her phone number, and Officer Boe wrote it down quickly as the paramedics whisked her into the ambulance. “Wait!” she screamed. “I don’t want to go to the hospital. What about the boys? Wait! Isn’t anyone listening to me? Isn’t anyone—”
Her voice echoed in the roadway as they slammed the doors shut and sped off.
Officer Boe shook his head and walked back to his car, the young boys still at his side. There he telephoned Social Services and reported that two of their charges had very nearly been killed in a traffic accident.
Ben arrived at the hospital and rushed to Maggie’s side just as the doctor was explaining to her the severity of her head injury. Her heart soared at the sound of his voice.
“Doctor … I’m sorry, I couldn’t get here until now. I’m her husband. What happened? How bad is it?” Ben was breathless and looked several shades paler than he had that morning. He stood next to Maggie’s bed and intertwined his fingers with hers.
Warmth washed over her, surprising in its strength. I still love him, Lord … really. Help me understand what’s happening, why I’m acting so strangely.
For the first time in days, Maggie felt safe. Ben was with her, his hand warm and big enough to cover hers.
But nothing is big enough to cover the way you lied to him all those years ago. You’re a liar, a hypocrite. A sickening excuse for a wife.
r /> Maggie closed her eyes. Nothing could make her shake the feeling of dark desperation that seemed to be tightening its grip on her with each passing hour.
The doctor nodded at Ben and turned his attention back to Maggie. “It isn’t as bad as we first thought.” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully, and Maggie forced herself to listen. If it wasn’t bad, then there was no reasonable explanation for her behavior. She had sat down with the boys in the middle of the sidewalk thinking that they were at the dining room table. Then she had taken hold of the twin boys who had been trusted to her care and walked directly into oncoming traffic.
“Do I have a concussion?”
The doctor glanced down at the X rays in his hands. “No. Doesn’t appear so.” He approached her and ran his hand over a bandage on the back of her head. “The bleeding’s stopped, no stitches needed.”
Ben’s sigh rattled around the examining room. “Thank God.”
The doctor shifted his weight and stared first at Maggie, then at Ben. He obviously had something important to say, but instead he slid his hands into the pockets of his white coat and studied Maggie once more. “Officer Boe will be in to see you both in a minute.”
When they were alone in the examining room, Ben leaned over the bed and kissed Maggie’s forehead. “Honey, I was so afraid … I got the call as soon as I walked in the door. All they said was you’d been in an accident and you had a head injury. I thought … ”
Maggie saw tears form in his eyes, felt his love, his relief, his fear …
How can I love him so completely and hate him all at the same time?
“I thought … I was worried that if something happened to your head you might never be the same.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I thought I might have lost you.”
Maggie stared at him, not sure what she felt. It’s all your fault. You wanted perfection, and I gave it to you …
Ben bent over and put his face against hers. “I couldn’t bear it if I lost you, Maggie.”
She waited until he straightened up. “You never had me.” As soon as the bleak, flat words escaped, she chided herself. Ben didn’t need to hear that. He had no idea what she was talking about.
His eyes clouded and he set his jaw, but before he could speak, Officer Boe entered the room. There was something foreboding in his expression and he waited until he had both their attention. “Mr. and Mrs. Stovall, I need to talk with you about something serious.”
“Where are the boys?” Maggie’s voice was suddenly shrill with concern. “I thought they were with you.” How could she be a foster mother if she couldn’t even keep track of two well-behaved boys? Weren’t we just about to have hot chocolate?
The officer nodded toward the hallway. “They’re safe; they’re just outside.”
Ben crossed his arms and leveled his gaze at the officer. “Go ahead.”
“It’s about the boys. Social Services is sending someone over to pick them up.”
Ben cocked his head, his face a mask of confusion. “That won’t be necessary, Officer. I’ll be driving my wife and the boys home as soon as they discharge her.”
The officer frowned. “Well, that’s just it. The caseworker is concerned, what with Mrs. Stovall’s accident and, well, apparently there’ve been several incidents lately … ”
“What incidents?” Ben turned his focus on Maggie. “What’re you talking about? The boys are fine at our house, right, Maggie?”
She felt herself breaking into a sweat and she wanted desperately to escape, to run out of the hospital and keep running until she dropped. Keep running until she died from exhaustion. Anything to avoid the scene that was unfolding before her.
Officer Boe glanced at his notes. “Apparently the school reported that the boys were sent to school without lunches three times last week. Then yesterday the boys were left at the bus stop. Someone, a neighbor most likely, called the school, and the boys were picked up again and brought to the principal’s office where—” he looked up at Ben—“your wife picked them up nearly an hour late.”
Ben’s eyes grew wide and he stared at her. “Maggie?”
She had the unnerving feeling that something was crawling on her face and she realized it was her perspiration forming drops and rolling off her forehead. Ben was waiting for an answer, but she had no idea what to say. The conversation was headed someplace that terrified her. They can’t take the boys, God, no. Please, no! She closed her eyes and nodded.
“Yes? You forgot the boys at the bus stop?”
Opening her eyes, she nodded again. Officer Boe closed his notebook and stared at them, making eye contact only occasionally, as though he were uncomfortable with the awkwardness of the moment.
Maggie realized with surprise that her eyes were dry. What had happened to her ability to cry? Didn’t she care about this? Wasn’t she upset that the boys weren’t coming home with her? She noticed her legs stretched out on the hospital bed and she bit her lip. What am I doing here?
When the officer saw that neither of them was going to speak, he continued. “Either way … ” He paused and appeared to be searching for the right words. “Either way someone from the department is coming to take the boys.” He looked at Ben. “If you could go home and collect their things, that’d make the transition a lot easier for the children.”
“No!” Maggie screamed the word and threw the hospital sheets off her body. Before anyone could stop her, she was out in the hallway. “Casey! Cameron!” Everything seemed to be tilting. “Where are my children?” She turned on the nurses who had stopped working and were now staring at her. “What have you done with them?”
Officer Boe was there almost instantly. He shot the nurses an apologetic look and forcefully took Maggie’s arm. “Mrs. Stovall, if you don’t come with me I’m going to have to place you under arrest.”
Ben appeared at her other side, and together the men led her back to the hospital bed. A minute later, a nurse gave her a shot and she felt herself losing consciousness.
They’ve killed me. Good. I don’t want to live anyway. I want my boys. “Casey … Cameron … ” Her voice was weak, and she could no longer open her eyelids.
Then there was nothing but all-consuming silence and deep, utter darkness.
When Maggie woke up she was in her own bed, and Ben was asleep beside her. Images flashed in her mind. She had banged her head on the sidewalk and walked into traffic with the boys and gone to the hospital and someone had taken the boys and …
She sat straight up in bed. The boys! Were they really gone or had the entire ordeal been a crazy nightmare? She moved slowly out of bed and crept down the hallway until she reached the boys’ room. They’re here; of course they’re here. She looked inside and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The bunkbeds were empty; everything that had belonged to Cameron and Casey was gone.
Maggie collapsed slowly onto the floor outside their room. So it was true, all of it. They were gone; her boys were gone. She felt her shoulders hunch forward with the weight of the truth. The nightmare was real, and it wasn’t her dreams that were crazy.
It was her.
Minutes passed until she formed a plan. Moving quietly she made her way back to bed and crawled in next to Ben, where she pretended to sleep until he left for work. When she was sure he was gone, she got up, packed a suitcase, and wrote her husband a letter.
Then, at eleven o’clock that morning she did something she never in all her life thought she’d do. Something she was sure her Christian friends would consider shameful, a sure sign that perhaps she wasn’t a believer after all. Or if she was, the sin in her life was so severe that God had abandoned her.
Maggie drove to Orchards Psychiatric Hospital.
Refusing to think or feel or do anything more than survive moment by moment, Maggie stared at the building. It was over now: her life with Ben, her dreams of being a mother. No need to run from the darkness anymore. She went over her game plan and refused to give in to her desire to flee. It was this or
…
She shook off the thought. No, she would not flee. She would check herself in, and when the admitting nurse asked her to describe her current mental status, Maggie Stovall, popular columnist and formerly sane person, would have just one word:
Suicidal.
8
Orchards Psychiatric Hospital was a privately run facility supported almost entirely by donations and money paid out by insurance companies. The building was set back from the road and was difficult to see because of an imposing brick wall and a row of elm trees that lined the front of the property. The arch that ran over the paved roadway leading into the facility said only Orchards. As though the grounds might house a stately bed-and-breakfast or perhaps a fine dining establishment.
Red brick made up much of the exterior of the three-story structure, and a covered walkway led to heavy French doors and an impressive foyer filled with old English furnishings and, in one corner, a Steinway baby grand piano. Only the white uniformed nurse stationed behind the admitting desk gave visitors any indication that the nature of business conducted at Orchards might somehow pertain to the field of medicine.
Maggie waited for the woman to complete her paperwork and a sense of devastating shame washed over her. How had things gotten so bad? Why had it come to this?
“What religious preference are you, Mrs. Stovall?” The nurse’s voice was soothing, like honey melting into hot lemon tea.
“Does it matter?” Maggie knew the nurse meant well, but she was terrified of making this decision. What would the people at the Gazette say? What would her readers think? She couldn’t do this!
She started to stand up.
“Sit down, Mrs. Stovall.”
Maggie did as she was told.
“Orchards is a Christian-based hospital. We need to know for the records if that is something you’re okay with.”
“What? I thought it was for anyone … ” She had to force herself to stay in her seat. A Christian facility? They would kick her out as soon as they learned the truth. How could she bare her soul to a hospital full of Christian counselors and expect to get any real answers?