Page 53

Joe

It’s impossible that Dinah and Reese Bishop are sisters. I almost say it, but the first rule of psychology is to let the patient speak, so I pin my lips together and wait for her to expound. She doesn’t, her gaze drifting off to the corners of the room.

I wait, silently counting to ten before I speak. “I don’t understand. Your mother and Dinah were siblings?”

“Yep. Estranged. Mom says they got in a fight when she was in high school, and Dinah moved away for college and they never talked again.”

Thump. Thump. Tha-thump. Her pulse, steady and strong.

Her gaze returns to me. “I know it’s probably like the middle of the night, but could I have something to eat?”

“Of course.” I stand and walk to the door, appreciating the moment to think.

She’s having delusions, which might be a side effect of the sedation.

Not common, but not necessarily uncommon.

I walk past Dinah’s door, and it’s quiet in there.

What is my wife doing? Thinking, no doubt.

Her beautiful little mind will be ticking through all the possible angles she will take when I step back into the room.

I’ll have to think several moves ahead to spot her deception as soon as she delivers it.

There will be deception. She is drenched in it.

If she wasn’t earlier today, then definitely now.

I think of this morning, of her standing at the sink, her hands in the soapy suds.

She glanced over at me and didn’t smile.

Not right away; the smile snuck up on her, like a mask she forgot to affix.

I chalked it up to an off moment, but my wife has been a very busy little bee, and I’m beginning to wonder how much of her honeycomb is constructed of lies.

An hour ago, when I woke up in our bedroom, my first thought was that Dinah was in the bathroom.

I had waited, my irritation growing at the amount of time she was spending in there.

Then I stood and walked over to the door, listening for her before knocking and pushing it open.

Empty. My confusion had turned to alarm after a tour of the house and the outside deck.

Alarm turned to anger at the discovery of my missing cell phone and vehicle.

I took one of the mountain bikes here, my anger ramping up with each pump of the pedals.

It was both a relief and a concern when I got to the clinic and saw the Excursion parked in front.

There was no good reason for her to sneak out and come here, but it wasn’t until I entered and found the meds cabinet open, a vial of pento missing, that I grew suspicious.

I took a second vial and filled a syringe out of an abundance of caution, one that proved valid.

But still, I hadn’t expected to use it on my wife.

I hadn’t expected to find her with a weapon in hand, leaning over one of my patients.

Is this what happened with Tricia Higgins? Healthy one day, dead the next, her overdose on benzodiazepine troubling, given our strict control of medication.

Is it possible I don’t know my sweet wife as well as I think?

I open the fridge and take a beer from the bottom shelf.

Cracking it open, I tilt it up to my mouth.

As the ice-cold liquid rushes down, I remind myself of how ridiculous Jessica’s statement is.

Dinah cannot be Reese’s sister. It’s a genetic impossibility.

Reese is almost fifteen years older than her.

Dinah’s mother would have had to get pregnant at thirteen in order for the math to work, and if there is anything I know about Dinah’s battle-ax of a mother, it is this: First, that she waited until her marriage at age eighteen to lose her virginity.

Second, that she would never give up a child.

Not that woman, whose entire life revolved around her children.

Still, there is the uncanny resemblance between Dinah and Jessica, the latter a miniature version of my wife.

A familial connection would explain why I feel such a sense of familiarity with the young woman.

Mannerisms and voice inflections have been proven to be hereditary, showing up even in cases of adoption, where the parent never has any contact with the child.

I finish a sip, and the rush of alcohol numbs my brain for a moment, pausing the thought process.

I need to dress Jessica’s wounds. Restitch her up.

I think of what would have happened had I been a little later.

She would have been bleeding out, and I would have used the blood packets that we keep in the secondary fridge.

Jessica is O positive, which makes things easy. Same as Dinah.

What was Reese?

I take another long sip, then close the fridge and go to the file cabinet in the corner of the room. I open the top drawer, pull out Reese Bishop’s file, and lay it out on the table, flipping through the pages until I find what I want. Blood type: B positive.

I set down my beer, then drop into one of the chairs.

B positive.

A B-positive parent cannot birth an O-positive or O-negative child.

Reese Bishop is not Jessica’s mother.

She knows my mom. She pretends she doesn’t, but that’s a lie.

Mannerisms and voice inflections have been proven to be hereditary, showing up even in cases of adoption, where the parent never has any contact with the child.

Jessica is O positive, which makes things easy. Same as Dinah.

It’s all there, but it can’t be.

My wife, sneaking out to kill a patient. Another impossibility I would have sworn against with my life.

I pick up my beer and consider its remaining weight, then finish the contents in one long swallow. I know Dinah intimately.

Now I know her motives.

And the truth is unforgivable.