Page 47

“I really try to be,” he says.

She throws one last crumb to the squirrel. “I think you are,” she says.

And his heart lifts.

CHAPTER 48

They’ve come to the pond on the hospital’s west side, where dozens of koi fish glide through the cold, black water. According to Mitch, Delia Belman was “an undiagnosed manic depressive who spent all her money on funding a psychiatric hospital and breeding exotic Japanese carp.” One of the pond’s fish, Mitch claimed, had been worth twenty thousand dollars. “But then,” he said, “it got eaten by a hawk.”

Hannah’s gone quiet, despite Jordan’s attempts to draw her back into a conversation. Her hands are shoved into her pockets and her shoulders are hunched protectively up to her ears. He doesn’t know what happened: one minute they were talking about the soul-sucking hellhole of chain restaurants, street performers, and tourists that is Times Square, and the next minute she was staring mutely down at her shuffling feet.

Then he remembers: that’s where Hannah had been found on January 17th, half naked and fully psychotic.

Shit, he thinks,and I just made her go back there.

She’d last left Belman, against medical advice, in November. Where had she spent the two months before being admitted again? No one had any idea. Maybe she’d left town, or maybe she’d livedunder a bridge—all they knew was that she broke down in front of a Gap, and then the police were called.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he says.

At first he thinks she hasn’t heard him. Or that she’s just done talking for the day. But then she says, “Everyone always does. Lulu, Amy, Dr. Nicholas … The phrasing varies, but it all boils down to ‘what the hell is wrong with you, and why won’t you getbetter?’”

“My question isn’t one they like to ask you.”

This seems to spark her interest. “What is it?”

“I want to know more about the castle,” he says. “Can you just … describe it to me?”

She sighs. “You think you can help me. You think youneedto help me. But I don’t need to be helped—I need to bebelieved.”

“Just tell me what it’s like,” he urges.

She doesn’t say anything for a whole circuit of the pond. And then she says, “It’s made of black stone, with a gatehouse in the south wall and towers at all the corners. It’s not like a Disney castle, with turrets and fluttering flags and whatever. It’s a fortress. A place that doesn’t like to let people in or out.” She looks up at him. “You with me still?”

He nods. “Do you live in it?”

She gives a short, sharp laugh. “I’m a peasant, remember? I live in a one-room, wattle-and-daub hut with my family and some goats—before we had to eat them, anyway.”

He decides not to ask what wattle-and-daub means, or what it was like to share a room with livestock. “Right,” he says. “But you get to visit the castle?”

“Well, first I tried to rob it,” she says matter-of-factly. “Andthen I got locked inside it. There are two women who take care of me, and one’s nice and one’s not, and they give me beautiful dresses that are literally against the law for a person like me to wear.”

From the depths of Jordan’s mind, an AP history note swims up: medieval sumptuary laws forbade people from “dressing above their station.”

“Do you read nonfiction?” he blurts.

She turns to him in confusion. “What?”

“All your favorite books are novels—I … I just wondered.”I’m wondering if you’ve just read a million books about the Middle Ages.

“Novels,” she says firmly. “Are you trying to change the subject?”

“No, no, sorry.” He pulls his hat farther down onto his head. Her past world is so detailed … sotangible. When she talks about it, he almost feels his own grip on reality fading.

“Have you ever tried to find it? Like, have you googled the castle to find out what happened?” Jordan is surprised by the questions tumbling out of his mouth.

She raised an eyebrow. “Of course I’ve tried to find it. And sometimes I’ve thought that I have, but they didn’t exactly keep stellar records back then. Now that we’ve established that there wasn’t Zillow in the Middle Ages, can we get back to where I left things?”

Jordan flushes a little with embarrassment. “Yes, of course. I’m listening.”