footsteps approaching the front door. There was a pause, which sounded to her like the unfastening of several locks, and then the door opened.
It was Kendra who stood across the threshold—Allison recognized her at once. She was taller, of course, but not much taller. The braids with rainbow-colored beads were gone and now she wore her hair in natural curls. But those were the same large brown eyes behind her glasses and the same pretty face with the same full lips and the tiny mole on the bottom one, a beauty mark Allison had always envied.
“Can I help you?” Kendra said.
“Kendra,” Allison said with a nervous smile. “You probably don’t remember me. My name’s Allison. We used to live together with Dr. Capello in Oregon.”
Kendra’s eyes widened behind her glasses.
“I shouldn’t talk to you,” Kendra said.
“Why not?”
“I’m not one of you,” Kendra said, taking an uncertain step back as if she meant to shut the door.
“Well, technically I’m not one of them, either,” Allison said with an awkward shrug. “Last week was the first time I’d seen them in thirteen years.”
“So you didn’t go back to them? You’re not with them? Not one of the kids?”
“No. I promise. I’m not one of the kids. I left, too, remember?”
Kendra nodded slowly.
“What do you want?” Kendra asked.
This wasn’t the happy reunion Allison had hoped for.
“I was hoping I could talk to you. That’s all.”
“Do they know you’re here?” Kendra asked.
Allison instinctively knew “they” meant the whole family, the Capellos.
“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. Can you give me just a couple minutes? Then I’ll go, I promise. We used to play together on the beach, remember? You taught me how to make sand castles. Yours were palaces and mine were shacks.”
“You weren’t very good at it,” Kendra said.
“No head for architecture.”
There was a pause, a long one, and then Kendra stepped back again, but this time she held open the door to let Allison inside.
“You’ll have to forgive the mess,” Kendra said.
The house was even nicer inside than outside. It looked like a page from a Pottery Barn catalog. The walls were a soothing gray with white crown molding and white wainscoting. The brown sofa matched the brown-and-gray rug, which matched the rather generic abstract pictures hanging on the wall. It was all spotlessly clean and tidy.
“The mess?” Allison said as she followed Kendra to the sofa. “Where?”
Kendra sat down and faced her across the coffee table. Computer coding books were arrayed on it in neat piles, and Allison remembered Roland saying that was her area of expertise these days.
“I’m the mess,” Kendra said, and gave her the faintest of smiles.
“Mess?” Allison asked. “You?”
“I—Just a joke,” Kendra said. She turned her head, looked away and didn’t look back. “Why did you come to see me?”
“Roland wrote me a letter a couple weeks ago. Like I said, I hadn’t heard from him in thirteen years. He told me Dr. Capello was dying. Did you know that?”
She shook her head.
“I flew out to see him. I ended up staying longer than I intended. Roland and I are...we’re involved.”
“Oh,” she said. “You always did like him.” Kendra didn’t show the slightest flash of surprise or jealousy or guilt.
“Dr. Capello operated on Roland, didn’t he?”
“Better talk to him about that.”
This was getting Allison nowhere.
“You remember why I left?” Allison asked.
“Someone in your family took you in,” Kendra said. “After you fell.”
“Right,” Allison said. She thought about telling Kendra the whole story about the phone call to her aunt and Oliver and all of that, but she decided to wait and see if Kendra brought it up. It was hard to imagine this anxious and quiet young woman hurting anyone, but if she had a guilty conscience, maybe it would come out on its own.
“So, ah...” Allison continued. She hadn’t really planned this far ahead. She’d make a terrible detective. “Since I got back I was just curious how everyone was. You remember Oliver?”
“I remember.”
“Did you...” Allison didn’t know how to say it. “Are you in touch with him?”
“No, why?”
“I was wondering if you knew... Oliver killed himself right after he left the house. Had you heard?”
“No,” Kendra said. “But I’m not surprised.”
“You aren’t? Why not?”
Kendra shrugged and didn’t answer.
“Do you know a boy named Antonio Russo?”
She shook her head again.
“He used to live with Dr. Capello, too,” Allison said. “For a week or so. Before my time there.”
“He dead, too?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
Allison sighed, frustrated.
“Kendra, I’m really sorry for just showing up out of the blue. I’m trying to figure something out, and I was hoping you could help me.”
“I don’t think I can,” she said. “I wish I could.”
“Maybe if you told me a little more?” Allison said. “I guess we don’t know each other very well anymore, but—”
“It’s not you,” Kendra said. “Don’t think it’s you. I’m not mad at you. You and me, we were good. It’s... I can’t talk about this.”
Kendra finally looked at Allison again.
“I suppose they didn’t tell you about me,” Kendra said.
“Well, Roland told me you two used to be a couple.”
“When we were kids,” she said. “Just dumb kids.”
Allison decided to try a new tactic.
“Someone maybe tried to kill me,” Allison said. Kendra’s eyes widened again. She sat up straighter.
“My Lord. Recently?” Her shock was as genuine as her question. Either Kendra had nothing at all to do with the fall or she was the best actress in the world.
“No, in the house,” Allison said. “When I was a kid. My fall wasn’t a fall, I don’t think.”
Allison told Kendra about the phone call, about Dr. Capello telling her he thought Oliver was to blame, how unlikely that was as Oliver had left before any of it happened.
Kendra listened intently, asking no questions. When Allison came to the end of the story, she looked at Kendra and with her hands open and her voice pleading she said, “Please, if you know anything at all, tell me.”
“They told me you fell,” Kendra said. “That’s all I ever knew about it. Except... Roland thought you wanted to leave after because of him.”
“You don’t know anything else about it? About Roland? About Dr. Capello? Anything?”
Kendra took a long, slow breath before raising her hand and, with her index finger extended, indicated the roof of the house and the four walls.
“Dr. Capello bought me this house,” Kendra said. “That’s why it’s hard for me to talk to you. I wish I could. I do.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not following you,” Allison said.
“There was an agreement. I can’t break the agreement.”
An agreement. Where had she heard something like that before?
McQueen.
“A nondisclosure agreement?” Allison asked.
Kendra paused, then nodded.
Allison inhaled sharply. Why would someone with nothing to hide make someone else sign a nondisclosure agreement?
“I like my house,” Kendra continued. “I spend a lot of time in the house. I work from home. I don’t go out very much. I freelance. If I don’t work, I don’t make money. Sometimes I’m too sick to work. I don’t want to lose my house.”
“It is a very pretty house,” Allison said. “I wouldn’t want to lose it, either.”
K
endra looked at her with a deeply apologetic expression. It was the look of a woman who desperately wanted to talk but couldn’t. Allison wouldn’t force her to say anything for all the money in the world.
“Okay,” Allison said. “I’ll go. I’d hate to get you into any trouble.”
“Thank you,” Kendra said, standing up. Their little interview was apparently over.
“It was good to see you again,” Allison said. “I have nice memories of you.”
“If I knew something about your fall I’d tell you,” Kendra said. “But I don’t know anything to help you.”
“I believe you,” Allison said. “I just thought... Never mind. I won’t ask.”
She started to walk to the door but Kendra stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“You should use my bathroom first,” Kendra said. “It’s a long drive back.”
“I don’t have to go, but thank you.”
“But you should try,” Kendra said. “You should really try before that long drive.”
Kendra looked her in the eyes as if trying to tell Allison something.
“You’re right,” Allison said, playing along. “I should.”
“It’s over here.”
Allison followed Kendra to the bathroom. She switched on the light for her and pointed around.
“If you need hand lotion after you wash your hands,” Kendra said, “there’s some in the medicine cabinet. I hate dry skin.”
“Me, too,” Allison said. “Thank you.”
Kendra left and Allison closed the door. After she flushed the toilet, she washed her hands and dried them on a hand towel. Allison opened the medicine cabinet to find the hand lotion. She stared in utter astonishment at the sight that greeted her.
Pill bottles. One entire shelf in the cabinet was lined with nothing but prescription pill bottles. There were over a dozen different medicines. Kendra was only three years older than Allison. How could one twenty-eight-year-old woman be on so much medicine? Allison scanned the labels. She didn’t know what many of the pills were for but some of the names she recognized. One was a well-known and often-prescribed antidepressant. The other was an antianxiety pill. Allison pulled her phone out of her bag and took quick pictures of the labels on the bottles. She’d have to look them up later to see what they did. But Allison already had an idea why Kendra wanted her to see them.
A house. A nondisclosure agreement with a retired surgeon. And a whole row of prescriptions. It all added up to one hell of a malpractice suit. Dr. Capello had operated on Deacon and Thora and on Roland, too. And on Oliver. Which meant it was very likely he’d operated on Kendra. He’d operated on her and something had gone wrong. Kendra’s family had sued or threatened to sue, and Dr. Capello had settled with money in exchange for Kendra, and probably her family, signing an NDA in order to keep it quiet.
When she finished taking the photographs, Allison quietly closed the medicine cabinet and went back out to the living room.
“I did have to go, after all,” Allison said.
“Never hurts to try before a long trip. You used my hand lotion?” she asked.
“I did. It smells nice, like strawberries. I noticed all the medicine in your cabinet.”
“Told you I was a mess,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Allison said. “I wish... I’m just so sorry.”
“Do you have medical problems?” Kendra asked.
“No,” Allison said. “I wasn’t one of Dr. Capello’s patients.”
Kendra’s lips were set in a firm, straight line. She nodded. “Lucky you.” She managed a smile as Allison walked out the door. “Drive safe.”
“Thank you,” Allison said. “It was good to see you.”
“You, too.” Kendra stood in the doorway, her hand on the door ready to close it. “If you see Antonio, say hello for me.”
She shut the door.
Allison stared at the closed door. Behind it she heard the locks engaging. Say hi to Antonio... Kendra had said she didn’t know Antonio.
Another hint. If Allison had been on the fence about tracking down Antonio Russo before, she wasn’t on it anymore.
Back in her car, Allison frantically typed in the names of the prescription drugs from inside Kendra’s medicine cabinet. Nearly all of them were psychotropic medications—there were the pills for depression and anxiety, yes, but also OCD and mood disorders. There was an antiseizure medication, too, plus two different sleeping pills. Allison nearly wept as she read through the conditions the various pills treated. Kendra, sweet, nerdy, quiet, gentle Kendra, must have a legion of mental illnesses. And if Dr. Capello had settled a malpractice suit with Kendra or her family, that meant he was the cause of them.
Allison turned her car on and off again immediately.
She looked at Kendra’s ancient Mazda in the driveway, at the house her former sister was scared to death of losing. Allison dug into her handbag and found the brick of cash McQueen had given her. He’d said not to give it to strangers with sob stories. He never said anything about giving it to family. She counted out ten-thousand dollars, wrapped it up in a ponytail holder, walked back to the house and shoved it through the mail slot. Then, before Kendra could find it and give it back, Allison drove away.
As Allison made her way to the interstate, she reminded herself that lots of doctors had unintentionally harmed patients. It didn’t necessarily prove any kind of malice. It just happened. Surgeries were risky, and sometimes they had good outcomes, sometimes they had bad outcomes and sometimes there were lawsuits—that’s what malpractice insurance was for. Dr. Capello himself had spoken with deep feeling of the surgeon’s graveyard he carried within him, which contained every patient he’d ever tried to help and lost. Kendra’s medical problems were heartbreaking, devastating, but they might not have had anything at all to do with Allison’s fall or the phone call. Kendra was a very ill woman, but she didn’t seem violent or aggressive to Allison at all. When Roland said Kendra was incapable of hurting her, he’d meant it, and now Allison believed him.
But still...
Allison stopped for gas. Before driving away she sent McQueen a text message asking if he had an address or phone number for Antonio yet.
She’d made it fifty miles down the road before her phone buzzed with his reply. She glanced at the message and wished she’d been smart enough to pull off the road before she’d read it. The message nearly caused her to swerve onto the shoulder.
Russo’s been in a private mental hospital for fifteen years.
A private mental hospital?
This was getting worse and worse by the minute.
Allison saw a McDonald’s just ahead, so she pulled in and parked. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel and breathed. Her phone buzzed again, another message from McQueen.
I have the address if you want it.
Did she want the address? No, of course she didn’t want the address. She would rather eat glass than go to a mental hospital to see a man who’d been living there over half his life. There was no reason for her to go. Antonio had lived with the Capellos for such a short time, then he’d left long before Allison had arrived. It was absurd to think he’d had anything to do with her fall or the phone call. If she went to see him, that would mean she wasn’t investigating her accident anymore. It would mean she was investigating Dr. Capello. And why would she do that?
Because her former sister was on fourteen different drugs and