Page 75 of The Locked Ward
Patty lied about almost everything, but she told you the truth when she spoke of the joy in simple moments.
That first inhalation of fresh air, misty from a recent rain shower, when you step outside the hospital.
The symphony of noises filling your ears—a car’s radio playing reggae music, two women laughing together, a crow squawking up on a telephone line.
The alternately distracted, happy, and worried expressions of passersby.
Every moment is so beautifully rich and real. It conjures in you a sense of radiance.
You soak it all in and think about how often the tales we tell ourselves are fictions. We’re both the unreliable narrator and the gullible listener in our own life stories.
Annabelle learned that lesson when you and she forged a new relationship before Honey killed her in a flash of rage and panic. But you were every bit as guilty of seeing things through a warped lens as Annabelle.
You now know the senator rushed to her side on the night of his wedding anniversary because she texted him, hysterical, in the back of a police car on the way to a holding cell.
She’d been pulled over and gotten a DUI after making the bad decision to drink a third glass of rosé at happy hour.
She knew Senator Dawson was the only one who could get her out of it.
He met her at the police station and got the charges to disappear, then drove her home.
Tony Wagner’s men captured the video of him leaving her apartment after he’d gotten her settled.
You saw something different about that night because you expected to.
Senator Dawson told you the truth himself after he finished giving his statement to the police. He personally came to the locked ward to secure your immediate release.
At first you thought it was a publicity stunt: the senator heroically helping the wrongly accused woman. But no paparazzi were hovering around to document your release, which means he didn’t tip them off. And when he apologized, it sounded sincere.
“I’m sorry you went through this. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“It still isn’t,” you reply as you inhale another breath of precious, free air. You haven’t even begun to mourn Annabelle, or try to reassemble your life.
“Can I offer you a ride home?” he asks as you stand in front of the hospital together.
You shake your head. “No thanks.”
The hollowness around his eyes ages him a decade since you last saw him. He’ll be in mourning for the rest of his life.
But he won’t mourn losing his relationship with Honey. He turned on her in an instant when he learned what she’d done.
It all makes sense now. The powerful love and longing on the senator’s face when he watched Annabelle was that of a father for his only daughter, one he could never publicly acknowledge.
The puppy he brought her, his murmured words of adoration that night in the antechamber, him checking out the men she dated—none of it was salacious.
Had you peered into the antechamber for a few moments more on Christmas Eve, you would have seen him kiss her forehead or cheek, not her lips.
And to her, he was like a much-beloved uncle.
He starts to walk away. Then he turns back. “I vowed to get justice for Annabelle. And I will.”
His steely gaze tells you Honey has no chance.
“Good,” you reply.
The media is feasting on the scandal again, but this time there’s a new angle: Honey confessing to the murder of her beloved daughter.
The details are so juicy they’re bursting all over the internet: Annabelle was the result of a tryst between the senator and Honey.
She was the secret that bound them together.
What surprised you was that the senator did the right thing by turning Honey in to the police and confessing to the affair.
Whether the senator rises above this political and personal stain and claims the presidency has yet to be seen.
But you wouldn’t discount him. Now that Annabelle is gone, the only thing in life he adores is power.
Which means Patty, the senator’s fixer, will be more dangerous than ever. But you decide not to think about that today. You’ve been suffused with terror about the future ever since Annabelle died. Right now, you want to live in the moment.
You stand on the curb by the hospital’s main entrance, watching a minivan pull into the parking lot and a man run around to open the door for his very pregnant wife.
They both pause halfway to the entrance, huffing out breaths together, the man encouraging her through the contraction.
You look in the other direction and see a burly guy with tattoo sleeves walking a tiny, fluffy dog down the street.
You feel laughter bubbling up inside of you for the first time in far too long.
You take another long look at the messy, beautiful life surging around you, drinking in every last drop. Then you turn and walk back into the hospital.
The first floor feels so different from the fifth, where the locked ward exists: The patients here are in light blue gowns, visitors and staff roam around freely, and you see only one security guard, a bored-looking woman.
You approach the desk and wait until the guard looks up.
You speak the words aloud for the first time: “I’m here to visit my sister Amanda Ravenel.”