I looked up from my book. I'd been reading the same paragraph again and again and still didn't know what it said. "They're beautiful," I murmured. "I like the white ones with the yellow in the middle."
"Narcissus," she said softly before I tuned her out again.
A woman. There'd been a woman with Holden. A beautiful, half-dressed woman. My gut clenched, and I felt tears threatening. You're so stupid, Lily. Of course I was stupid. Holden probably thought I sounded like someone who'd never left her house, rarely interacted with anyone at all. Because that was the truth of the matter. The women he dated were probably sophisticated and worldly. They probably talked about . . . talked about . . . I huffed out a breath. Well of course I had no idea what they talked about. Which was actually the whole point. Despair overwhelmed me.
" . . . glad you agree!" I shook my head as I realized my mother was speaking again.
"I'm sorry, Mom, were you saying something?"
My mom rolled her eyes. "Yes, but it really wasn't anything important. I answered for you. Recently I've been having the most interesting conversations with myself—very stimulating actually."
I offered a small smile. "Sorry, I got lost in my own head."
"What have you been thinking about so intently lately?" She gave me a speculative look. Half speculative, anyway. The other half of her face, the deeply scarred half, mostly failed to move at all.
Shaking my head, I said, "Nothing in particular." I pretended to read the book again. In my peripheral vision, I could see that she watched me for a moment and then sighed before going back to her arranging.
"Purple crocus, royal blue iris," she said, placing flowers in the vase. She brought one to her nose and inhaled. "Mmm. Hyacinth," she said. "Doesn't it smell wonderful?" She clipped the stem and placed that one in the vase as well. "There are so many vegetables in the garden here, too—lettuce and cucumbers, beets, potatoes, squash."
I nodded absently. My mind wandered again. Had Holden lied when he'd said there was something he needed to do? Was that just something he'd said so I didn't bother him while the woman was there? So he could walk around naked with her to his heart's content? Because that's what he'd been doing. I'd gotten an eyeful, and it was not disappointing. I kind of wished it had been. And yet, despite what I'd seen, he'd run outside to me, leaving her there. I didn't know what to feel . . . confusion, sadness, hope?
I shook my head, trying to shake off all the questions, all the doubt. I shouldn't care so much. So he had kissed me. So what? It wasn't like this could go anywhere. It was worthless to mourn the loss of something that could never be. I'd just . . . I'd thought he liked me the way I liked him. Despite not knowing him very well, I'd trusted him. My stomach cramped with remnants of the terrible, painful jealousy I'd felt when I'd seen them through the window. Her on top of him, his hands on her hips. Naked him. Beautiful her. And watching from the distance . . . idiotic me.
Maybe the other woman didn't even matter. Even if he really did want to spend time with me here, maybe it was better that he'd have someone to go home to. It wasn't like he was going to stay in Colorado permanently.
I glanced over at my mom and saw her grimacing and moving her face as if flexing it, as she placed the last flowers in the vase. Sympathy overcame over me. Lost in my own world, I'd been ignoring her lately. "When was the last time you applied any of the cream the doctor gave you?"
She shook her head. "Not in a couple days."
"Mom, you need to use that consistently. It works best that way, and you know it. Your skin is all tight now because it's dry. No wonder it's uncomfortable. Here, let me put some on for you."
She nodded and went into the other room to wash her hands and then came back and sat down in the chair next to the fireplace, leaning her head on the back, her shoulder-length blonde hair cascading over it. I could see strands of gray woven through it now, and they sparkled in the firelight as if they were glittering pieces of tinsel like she used to toss onto our Christmas tree. We didn't use tinsel anymore. I wondered why not. I supposed it had gone out of style, but I'd loved it. Shaking my head free of the memory, I grabbed the small tube of cream and stood behind her, using a small bit of it on my fingertips to massage it into the thick, crisscrossed scars on the left side of her face, and down her neck. She sighed. "Thank you, darling, that's better. What would I do without you?"
I smiled, but my heart squeezed painfully to think of her without me. All alone. Sometimes I dreamed of going somewhere where there were lots of people, where I could sit and watch them without hiding, where maybe they'd even talk to me, too. I dreamed of things I didn't dare share with my own mother. I dreamed of things I knew could never be real.
"I like that dress, by the way," my mother said.
I smiled. It was my favorite, too. The white lace.
"You probably shouldn't wear dresses into the woods, though. You're bound to ruin them."
I shrugged. "If I don't wear them, they'll eventually just rot away. They deserve to live a little, don't you think?" I asked, smiling. "What will be done with them otherwise? Donated to some vintage clothing store eventually?"
My mom smiled back, the right side of her mouth tipping upward more than the left. "I suppose they do deserve to live a little, being that they've been packed away in a dark basement for so long," she said and cracked one eye at me, smiling bigger. Why did I feel like that was a good description of me? Kept in the dark. Forgotten.
"Well good, because I'm giving them plenty of new memories." I continued rubbing the cream into her skin. I'd even received my very first kiss in one of them.
After a minute, she asked. "Where do you go, Lily? When you go into the woods—where do you go? You're away for so long, all day sometimes."
"Not far," I answered. It was a lie, I knew. "I like it there." It was where I felt alive. "Sometimes I just wander and . . . lose track of time, I guess."
"I worry about you. It can't be one hundred percent safe."
"Nothing is, Mom." I sighed. "There's no need to worry, though. I promise."
"You don't go far? You won't get lost or anything?"
"No, I won't get lost."
"And you don't ever see anyone, do you?"
"Who would I see? It's the middle of nowhere, in the woods."
"I don't know, hikers or—"
"There are no trails in these woods, Mom."
My mother's eyes, clear and green, were opened now and she studied me closely, her expression a mixture of confusion and sadness. She seemed to look at me like that a lot lately. All the time, actually. But she didn't ask any more questions, and I was relieved.
"You could come walking with me, you know."
She pressed her lips together. "I walk in the garden. That's enough for me."
I sighed. She'd never change, never venture out. So where did that leave me?
"We have to think about leaving, you know. We only planned to be here for the summer. It's already the end of August. It's going to be your birthday soon. What do you think about leaving right before?"
I frowned. Despite what had happened with Holden, I wasn't sure I was ready to leave yet. Here I had freedom. "Can we think about it? It's still so beautiful in the forest. And you love the garden, right? You're happy here, Mom?"
She nodded, and I smiled down into her beloved face, my eyes moving over the familiar lines of her features, my heart suddenly filled with a terrible, aching sadness. "I love you," I said, swallowing the strange emotion.
That whole business with Holden had crushed me more than it should have. I had trusted Holden, been swept away, and now I was left empty and confused. My emotions were all jumbled up. My mother gave me a tender smile.
"I love you, too, my darling Lily. I always, always will."
As I continued to smooth the cream over the half of her ravaged face, my mind insisted on returning to Holden. Will you be waiting for me, Lily? Yes. I'd been foolish to promise something so recklessly. So, how far would I go back into the woods
? I wouldn't go near his lodge. I wouldn't. I'd stay away. I would not subject myself to the pain he was sure to bring. I'd received my first kiss, and I'd have to hold on to that. It didn't have to mean any more.
CHAPTER TEN
Holden
I went into the woods every day for the next three days, wandering aimlessly, calling for Lily. A couple times I even tried purposefully to lose my way, but I must have started noticing things about this forest that I hadn't meant to keep track of. "How the fuck can a person fail to get lost in a remote forest when he's actually trying?" I muttered. "That proves it, Holden, you are hopeless. Completely hopeless."
Returning to the lodge, I paced relentlessly. There was so much good pacing area out here. I could pace for days and only occasionally cover the same ground. It was a pacer's heaven. Fuck. Lily. I ran my hand through my hair. I was going to pace a track onto the deck and go prematurely bald from all the hair raking.
How in the world had things gone downhill so fast? Fucking Taylor, the snake. What had I ever seen in her?
She's good in bed.
I'm sure she is. She gets plenty of practice.
The words flitted through my mind, causing my head to ache. I brought one hand up and massaged the back of my neck. Ryan, I'd had that conversation with Ryan. I'd had that conversation with Ryan that day. I shook my head. No, no, I refused to think about that day. I pushed it out of my mind forcefully. No.
I had to explain things to Lily. I had to let her know that what happened wasn't my fault. I had to know if she'd give me another chance. Never mind that I'd need to start all over with the detoxing. I couldn't do it until I knew things were settled with Lily. And now, thanks to Taylor, or maybe no thanks to Taylor, I had a fresh supply. But, no, that was good because I had to make sure Lily and I were okay. I had to know she'd be waiting for me on the other side, so to speak. Knowing that would help get me through the darkness. Her. So if she wasn't in the forest, where was she? She'd said she lived nearby, but where?
Going back inside, I pulled my laptop out and sat on the couch with it on my lap. I used Google Earth to look up the lodge. The only building for miles and miles was the abandoned mental hospital Brandon had mentioned. Whittington, Hospital for the Mentally Insane. I did a Google search and scrolled through a couple pages of information.
The Whittington Hospital for the Mentally Insane, later renamed simply Whittington, was first constructed in 1901 on a forty-acre spread of land. The sixty-thousand-square-foot building was designed by Chester R. Pendelton who believed the mentally ill should be cared for and treated with kindness and compassion, away from the many stressors of the outside world. That translated into luxurious interiors including chapels, auditoriums, libraries, private rooms for the patients, all with vaulted ceilings, and large and plentiful windows to allow for maximum sunlight and ventilation. The expansive grounds and gardens featured beautifully ornate statues, fountains, and benches, and excellent walking paths.
I scrolled through the few black and white pictures online, not noting the exact year they'd been taken. Despite the fact that the interior was indeed, very appealing—light and airy—the outside of the building looked like something out of a horror movie. Enormous and gothic with tall, ornate towers, grandiose arches, and sweeping windows. There were even screaming gargoyles flanking the upper windows. I was sure nothing put the mentally ill at ease quite like monsters outside their rooms. I couldn't help shivering.
Whittington was built over twenty miles away from the nearest community to ensure that should a patient escape, there was no risk to outside inhabitants. Whittington was a privately owned hospital whose patients were comprised mainly of members of wealthy families who wished to keep their relative's condition private. In later years, though still privately owned, Whittington began accepting donations, grants, and some state funding for the less fortunate.
Despite the good intentions of its design and beginnings, Whittington, originally intended to treat three hundred patients, had a population of almost fifteen hundred by the twenties. The staff numbers, however, remained stable. This meant the patients were often severely neglected, becoming sick and filth-ridden from lack of care, and the staff was unequipped to offer them more. It wasn't uncommon for a patient to die and not be discovered for days, even weeks sometimes.
In 1915, Dr. Jeremiah Braun became the director of Whittington and instituted treatments that have been associated with the horrors of psychiatric facilities of the past: padded cells used for solitary confinement, mechanical restraints including straightjackets, the over-medicating of those difficult to control, insulin shock therapy, psychosurgery, and the lobotomy. The icepick lobotomy, which was essentially an icepick to the eggshell-thin bone above the eye, was a radically invasive brain surgery used to treat everything from delusions, to migraines, to melancholy, to deep depression, to "hysteria," a term used for women who exhibited sexual desire and strong emotions. In the unfortunate patient, the frontal lobes would be disconnected from the rest of the brain by a simple, quick side-to-side maneuver, leaving the individual with irreversible effects. In a 1941 interview, Braun described Whittington's mentally ill as docile and compliant under his direction, however, visitors to the facility told of patients wandering aimlessly in a daze, sometimes into walls, vacantly staring at their own feet, and hitting their heads repeatedly on tables with no intervention by staff.
Eventually, Braun's beliefs regarding mental illness became even more bizarre and dangerous. When he noted that very high fevers could cause hallucinations, he theorized that infection didn't just cause diseases of the body, but of the mind as well. In 1923, he began extracting patients' teeth, and often their tonsils as well, though X-rays didn't always confirm infection. When this didn't cure his patients, he began removing other body parts such as the stomach, portions of the colon, gall bladder, spleen, ovaries, testicles, and uteruses, although he had no formal training as a surgeon. Moreover, these surgeries were often performed without consent from the patient or family, and sometimes, despite their vehement protests. Braun sited cure rates of over 90%, but in actuality, his surgeries very often resulted in death. This, however, did not deter him from his "pioneering work." What made the practices of Braun more disturbing, was that he regularly published his findings in highly read psychological papers and medical journals. And no one in the psychology community did a thing. Braun passed away in 1962.
Sickened by what I'd just read, I skimmed down the article a little more and found that by 1988, all but one wing of Whittington was closed. The entire hospital had been shut down just five years ago.
I sat on the couch for a little while longer, staring at the screen. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I closed the cover of my laptop. Jesus, it was a fucking house of horrors. Or it had been. Something about the fear and anguish of those who had been locked inside . . . I didn't want to dwell on it for very long, didn't want to consider the details.
But I suddenly had a deep curiosity to see it in person—to find out if the pictures online really did it justice. Mapping it out, I found that Brandon had been right. It was about five miles away and a straight walk through the woods.
It was only mid-morning. I gathered some supplies—food, water, a sweatshirt—and set off in the direction of Whittington. The terrain was deeply wooded for the most part, but there were no cliffs to scale or rivers to cross—thankfully—and it took me a little over three hours to make the walk through the misty forest. I called Lily's name intermittently, but received no answer.
I came out of the trees and was standing before what I recognized as Whittington, the gargantuan, gothic, stone building. My heart began to beat more quickly. It looked like a living, breathing thing and I shivered. Now that I was right in front of it, I couldn't help but imagine all the pain and unfathomable suffering that had gone on behind those walls. All because no one had been willing or brave enough to help. Those people had been invisible to society, deemed throwaways because of something they w
eren't responsible for. The weakest of the weak. And in that moment I felt the terror and hopelessness of that down to my bones, in my very marrow.
And yet, as I stood staring at it, tilting my head very slightly, it also exuded a strange sort of magnificent beauty, some hidden sorrow that lay just beneath the stone surface, as if the building itself wanted to say, what happened here was not my fault.
My gaze traveled upward until it settled on the highest window, something stirring deep inside, the grandeur of the structure stealing my breath for a moment.
I looked to my right and drew back slightly when I saw what must have been the asylum cemetery. I walked toward it, taking note of the crumbling gravestones, some topped with angels, reaching toward the heavens. This must be the oldest part of the cemetery. The farther I walked, the newer the stones looked, the dates carved into them corroborating my observation. Weeds thrived, almost completely covering some of the smaller markers. I wondered who was buried here—patients who had died with no family? Otherwise, wouldn't they be in family plots or closer to the homes of loved ones? Feeling totally creeped out, I turned around and walked back to where I'd started.
The massive, wrought-iron gate creaked loudly as I pushed it open and walked through. The walk from the gate to the front steps of the asylum was about a quarter of a mile. My feet crunched on the gravel, what had originally been a very long driveway, now overrun with weeds, grass and wildflowers growing in random patches. The sky overhead was a grayish-blue and filled with billowy clouds. Off in the distance, I could see a few approaching rain clouds, but nothing that looked like it would produce much of a storm. Hopefully. I still had to make it back.
When I finally arrived at the front steps, I climbed them slowly, glancing around. Everything seemed very still. I tried to turn the doorknob of the massive, double wooden front door, but it was locked. Looking around, I spotted a broken window on the first floor and it was easy enough to lift myself up to the windowsill and duck through. When I stood and had brushed off my jeans, I was standing in a dirty hallway. It was cluttered with debris, had paint peeling from the walls in large strips, and a rusted wheelchair lay overturned in front of me. I moved it aside with my foot and walked down the hall, craning my neck to see into rooms before I'd walked in front of the doorways. In one, there was an old gurney against the wall and in another there was a standing harp, most of the strings broken and curling wildly in every direction like the hair of some wild shrew. This place was creepy as shit. I expected Freddy Krueger to turn the corner toward me at any moment.