Page 62 of The Locked Ward

My cell phone rings just as Colby is refilling my glass of wine over my protest that I don’t want another drink.

I glance down at caller ID and my heart skips a beat. It’s coming from the hospital.

It could be a nurse or doctor, but I know it’s my sister. The certainty swells within me, seeming to originate deep within my cells. I can feel the desperate pull of my twin.

“Will you excuse me?” I say to Colby. “It’s a friend calling, and she’s going through a rough time.”

He doesn’t look pleased. “I hope it doesn’t take too long.”

I stand up and answer the call, walking a few feet away from him.

“Mandy?”

Her voice is feather-light. I imagine her standing in the hospital with the phone cord stretched through the small window in the nurses’ station.

Her head is ducked down, and her body curled around the phone so no one can see her lips moving.

The vision is so real it’s almost as if she is here with me.

“Don’t talk to Colby. It’s too late. They got to him.”

I look over my shoulder. Colby is illuminated by the two candles that send shadows flickering across his face.

“I’m with him now.”

“Where are you?”

“In the middle of nowhere having a picnic.”

“Get out of there.” The urgency in her tone pulls me up.

“Why?”

“Look, Colby isn’t a bad guy—he just…”

“He what , Georgia?”

“He gets these fixations on women. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

I think about the barrage of messages and the bouquet of roses. “You may be a little late.”

She exhales. “The private investigator—did he corroborate the video? You can go to the press. Maybe we don’t need Colby. Come see me tomorrow, okay? We can make a plan.”

“Tony Wagner is dead.”

She falls silent and I repeat her name. There’s nothing but the faint sound of her quick, shallow breaths.

“Oh no,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.” Then the line goes dead.

I walk back to Colby. He’s taken advantage of my absence to shift even closer to my spot on the blanket. I’ve either got to sit practically on his lap or on the grass.

“Round two coming up.” Colby pulls another platter from the picnic basket, this one filled with a sandwich on a baguette, deviled eggs, and sliced heirloom tomatoes.

I notice there’s a second bottle of wine in the basket. I can’t sit here for another hour or two, dodging his attempts at intimacy. If Colby’s going to be a dead end, I need to spend my time following other leads.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I ate so much already… I don’t have much of an appetite left.”

“We can just sit awhile. You’ll get hungry again.”

Then a thought occurs to me. I don’t have to follow Georgia’s directives. I can ask questions of my own.

“I have to confess something,” I tell him. “I was reading an article about that terrible crime, the Cartwright murder?”

“What about it?”

“The sister who was charged with it… the article said you’d dated her.”

He reaches into the basket and pulls out a serrated knife and small cutting board. He lays the baguette on the board and saws off a small piece.

“We didn’t date,” he finally says. “Our families were close. You probably read that. We were friends since childhood, though we went years without spending much time together because she was always at boarding school.”

“Still, it must be so strange to have someone you know accused of murder.”

“I’m used to being around screwed-up people. I have been all my life.”

I lean close to him and rest my hand on his forearm. “Do you think she did it?”

He shrugs and starts to move his hand to cover mine. A split second before my hand is trapped, I pull it out, pretending I was reaching for the piece of sandwich he just cut.

“The evidence seems pretty clear. A few of us saw Annabelle when they loaded her onto the stretcher…”

He swallows hard. His face grows pale.

“The right side of her face—that’s clearly where she was hit. Only someone who’s left-handed would swing a heavy weapon from that direction.”

I nod, thinking about how I always lead with my left, whether I’m dragging a big suitcase by its handle or plucking a tissue out of a box.

“Georgia’s great, but she always had a cold streak,” Colby continues.

“What do you mean?”

“Once, when we were little kids, we were playing hide-and-seek in the basement of my parents’ house. My brother Kyle was the seeker, and the three of us were trying to find a place to hide. Georgia told Annabelle to hide in the clothes dryer.”

I take a bite of my sandwich and nod encouragingly at him.

“Annabelle gets in and Georgia closes the door. Then she turns the dryer on .”

I envision Annabelle tumbling around in the tiny, hot space. A child would have to be deeply disturbed to do something like that to a younger sibling.

“What happened?”

“Luckily Annabelle kicked the door open. She was scared but not hurt.”

“Her parents must’ve been furious.”

Colby reaches for the knife and cuts another section of sandwich.

“They would’ve been if they’d known. But Georgia told Annabelle she’d put her in the dryer again and duct-tape it shut if she told.”