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CHAPTER TWENTY

Tessa

Caldera State Mental Health Facility was located about an hour outside of Shady Valley. I had to make the trip alone—the passenger seat loaded down with the goodies Rook had purchased for his mom.

With each mile I drove away from the town, I felt anxiety creeping up my spine, wrapping around my throat, making it hard to breathe.

It was silly to imagine that anyone was going to see me, pull out of a parking lot somewhere, chase me down, and drag me back to my own personal hell.

On a bike, nonetheless.

That didn’t stop me from tensing each time I heard the rumble of a motorcycle, though.

I’d gotten used to the sound again in Shady Valley, since the only people who actually rode on them were Rook’s club brothers. But outside of that safe zone, I was feeling antsy and paranoid, checking my mirrors, putting on big sunglasses, avoiding eye contact with any bikers who came up beside me.

By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the mental health facility, I was starting to feel like I should be asking if they had a bed for me.

“Relax,” I demanded, taking a few steadying breaths before reaching into the car for the gifts. I didn’t want to get turned away because I had that wild-eyed, losing-my-shit look. This was too important to Rook.

The building itself was a relatively small sandstone one with only two stories. But what the structure itself lacked in charm, it did kind of make up for with the lush, sprawling gardens with their intricately shaped hedges and bright purple, yellow, and red flowers.

At least the patients had nice views, I figured as I made my way inside.

Though any nice thoughts kind of flew out of my head as I walked into the dark, low-ceilinged lobby with its furniture straight out of a ‘90s dentist’s office.

That said, the woman at the front desk was friendly and efficient as she searched through the gifts to make sure there wasn’t anything contraband.

“Technically, I shouldn’t let you bring in outside food,” she said, holding up the little wrapper of the caramel pecan clusters Rook said his mother could never get enough of. “But if you take the wrapper out with you, it can be our little secret.”

I thanked her, got my badge, assured her I left my phone in the car, then was directed down a depressing hallway that eventually led toward a slightly less depressing common area.

Some of the patients were easily identifiable by their slippers, pajamas, or robes. Others, though, seemed to be wearing their own clothing as they sat and chatted with one another or visitors.

I made my way over toward another desk where a pretty blonde-haired nurse sat, keeping an eye on the goings-on.

“Hi! My name is Tessa. I’m here to visit with Lorna—”

“Oh, you’re Rook’s new wife!” the nurse, Amy, said, and I was reasonably sure this was the nurse who occasionally called Rook with updates about his mom, even though it was against the rules.

“Yes.”

“Oh, that’s great. I’m sure Lorna will love having a visitor. Here, I’ll show you to her room.”

“How is she doing?” I asked as we walked.

“She’s definitely a lot better with her new balance of meds. She’s out of her mania. We haven’t seen any signs of hallucinations or delusions. She’s definitely very medicated right now—”

“Understandably,” I said, thinking of what Rook told me about how she’d been behaving before they decided to change her meds again.

“Yes. It’s a long process to try to get the ratios right. Her doctors are thinking of lowering the dose of her antidepressants slightly to see if that helps motivate her to get out of bed. She’s definitely sleeping a lot. But we did manage to get her to go down to art therapy yesterday.”

Rook was going to love hearing that.

“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize she was functioning so well. Is that a first since she’s been here?”

“There were… two short periods where her team thought she was on the road to release. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. But we’re all very hopeful now. This has been a lot of progress in a short amount of time.”

The nurse stopped outside of an open doorway. Lorna, it seemed, did not get a closed door. But she did have a private room.

“Lorna, you have a visitor! Go ahead in, honey. And talk to her. Even if she doesn’t seem like she’s listening, she is.”

“Okay. Thank you,” I said, giving her a smile. “Rook wanted me to tell you how much he appreciates that you’ve kept him in the loop. Considering…”

“That parole officer of his is a stone-cold b-word. But you didn’t hear that from me,” she said, zipping her lips, then turning to walk away.

Lorna’s room was somehow even more depressing than the lobby had been.

The bed itself was a solid platform made of some sort of hard rubber material. There was even a rocking chair made of that same material. Nothing, I figured, she could break off to use to harm herself or someone else.

Lorna herself was on the bed, her back to me as she stared out the window.

I was struck by how small she was, how frail. If Rook was on the thin side, this woman was almost gaunt. Her reddish-brown hair was liberally streaked with gray, but it looked clean and brushed.

“Hey, Lorna,” I said, feeling strange talking to a woman who didn’t know me as if we were acquaintances. “I know you don’t know me,” I added, moving around to the other side of the bed.

She looked a lot like Rook. The same face shape, the same eyes. Even if hers lacked some of the light I so often found in her son’s.

“My name is Tessa,” I went on as she continued to stare out the window. “I’m, uh, I’m Rook’s wife.”

At the sound of her son’s name, her gaze flicked to me, something passing there for just a second before it disappeared again.

Rook had told me what method he thought would be best when it came to talking about him. Blunt and honest was what he felt would be the best approach.

“He wanted me to tell you how sorry he is that he hasn’t been allowed to visit. He’s been trying so hard to get his parole officer to let him come see you. But she’s, well, between me and you, she’s a raging bitch.”

To that, I saw just a hint of a spark again.

“So, as a get-around to her, Rook decided to send me here to check on you, see how you’re doing. He knows you’ve had a hard couple of years. But the nurse told me she thinks you’re on the road to recovery now.”

Was that the right thing to say? I mean, she would never actually recover from her bipolar. I’d never had to try to navigate a conversation about someone’s mental health before. I felt like there were so many landmines you could potentially step on without intending to.

“Rook spent the past few days online buying you some things to make you more comfortable,” I told her, setting my handle-less bag on the rocking chair, so I could pull items out. “We have fuzzy socks. Because who doesn’t like those? A new robe. A warm blanket. Rook said you’ve always run cold. Oh, and I snuck you in a sweet treat,” I told her, producing the little red and white wrapper with the pecan clusters.

That light came back to her eyes. This time, it seemed to stay.

“There’s a catch with these,” I told her, bringing them closer. “You have to eat them all while I’m here because I have to sneak the wrapper back out.”

When I held them out, she took them.

And I got to watch as she ripped the wrapper open and shoved a whole cluster in her mouth.

It should have been Rook getting to see his mother like this. Still a bit slow, distant, but functional. He should have been the one watching her close her eyes in pleasure as she chewed. He should have been the one grabbing the blanket and spreading it across her frail body.

“Rook said you love birds,” I said, looking at the blanket that was covered in all the different birds you could find in California.

Lorna absentmindedly traced her finger around the edge of a Stellar’s Jay as she pushed another cluster into her mouth.

“He said that’s where you came up with his name. Rook. Like a type of crow. He said that if you had more kids, you would have named them Wren, Lark, and Hawk.”

Lorna was actively looking at me then. I got the feeling that she was maybe trying to trudge through the heavy medication and depression that was holding her back. Like she wanted to engage with me, but just couldn’t seem to be able to.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions. About Rook. And me. And just… everything that has happened. I’m going to be visiting from now on. So I can work as a go-between with you and Rook. So when you’re ready to ask me things, I can get answers for you. Then come back and deliver them as soon as I ask your son.”

At the word ‘son,’ a strange little whimpering noise escaped her.

I turned back to my bag, pulling out the four pictures Rook had chosen to send, putting them all on one sheet of paper so no one could lose it.

There was one of her holding a little reddish-haired infant. Another with her arm around a slightly sullen-looking teenage Rook.

Then, on the bottom, a recent picture he had me take of him. Right beside it, he’d included one of our wedding pictures. The one where he’d pressed his forehead to mine when I’d been panicking.

We’d both decided that maybe, for the time being, it was best for her to think we were a legitimate married couple. We didn’t want to confuse her. Or have her slipping up and telling her doctors who might tell Nancy.

So the wedding picture was meant to legitimize us in her eyes.

I watched as her gaze moved slowly from picture to picture.

When she got to the most recent one of Rook, her finger moved out to trace his face.

And when she settled on the wedding photo, her eyes welled up.

“Oh, I didn’t want to make you cry,” I said, panicking that I might trigger… something.

Instinct had me trying to take the trigger—the pictures—away.

But Lorna snatched the sheet back, hugging it to her chest.

“Sorry. Of course you can keep it. I can bring you more pictures next visiting day, if you want. Rook had a hard time finding older ones, but he did get a few. I wanted him to include the one of him from the Christmas when he got his first little toy laptop. You can just see in his eyes how much he was going to grow to love computers…”

I went on like that, describing the pictures Rook had found, stories he’d told me from when he’d been growing up. I hoped it acted like a tether, like a rope she could use to pull herself back out of her mind and toward her life.

By the time the nurse came by to tell me that visiting hours were coming to an end, I was actually hoarse from speaking.

“Well, I have to get going,” I said, going over to tuck her blanket back up a little bit, then stealing the candy wrapper and stashing it in my pocket. “But I will be back in just a few days, okay? It’s been really nice talking to you, Lorna. I will bring Rook back your love.”

I was about to turn and leave.

But then a hand closed around my wrist, giving me a squeeze.

It was over in a blink.

But it felt like progress.

“He loves you too,” I told her, finding my eyes suddenly flooded as I gave her a smile before making my way out into the hall.

“I know, it’s hard,” the nurse said when she saw me, giving me a sympathetic smile.

“She’s in there,” I said, sniffling. “I saw signs of her trying to… come out, if you will.”

“I feel the same way. I really think she’s on the right meds now. We just need to get the dosage right. And I think the visits will help. Even if you snuck in contraband,” she said with a little wink.

“Rook said her favorite food in the world is fettuccine alfredo. I’m not above sneaking a plastic bag of it in there inside my shirt,” I told her, getting a tinkling little laugh as we walked back to the nurse’s station.

She told me the next visiting day, then we said our goodbyes.

I was in such a rush to get home to tell Rook the good news that I’d gotten myself pulled over for speeding.

I honestly didn’t even give the ticket a second thought.

Not until, a few weeks later, it would come back to bite me in the ass.

But at the moment, all I felt was joy as I ran into the clubhouse and threw myself into Rook’s arms, my words tripping over themselves to tumble out.

Rook’s head fell onto my shoulder to hide the glassiness in his eyes as I told him what I—and the nurse—thought.

That his mother was coming back.

That, eventually, he would have her again.

Finished, I turned to Detroit.

“How is your fettuccine alfredo?” I asked.