Page 77 of The Locked Ward

In a little while, you need to pick up Mandy from the hospital and bring her to your apartment. But these moments, right now, are for your other sister.

You sit beside Annabelle’s grave, staring at her headstone and aching for the woman you barely had the chance to know.

When she was killed by Honey, you and Annabelle were in that first, heady rush of discovering each other.

The truth is, you probably would have had a complex relationship, like many sisters.

Both of you could be hotheaded and defensive.

And even though you said you didn’t hold anything against her, you stored a bit of lingering resentment.

She probably did, too. In the years ahead you would’ve fought and made up.

Been each other’s support system and driven each other crazy. Like sisters do.

There would have been so much history for you two to unpack. Honey prized Annabelle, but hadn’t truly loved her, either. Annabelle was the thing that tied her to the senator, and Honey was willing to sacrifice her daughter in an instant to preserve her decades-long affair.

It explains why Honey was so determined to eliminate the young widow the senator was falling for. It wasn’t to help Dee Dee. That bit of vindictive revenge was for Honey alone.

Now she has no one left. And in the sweetest of ironies, Honey is reportedly planning to launch a temporary-insanity plea. She may be the one to live out her years in a locked ward.

Maybe you should feel sorry for Honey, but you don’t. Your heart sewed itself closed to her long ago.

You stand up and brush off your jeans, sliding the handles of your tote bag over your shoulder. You walk away in the dappled sunlight, beneath birch and hickory trees, knowing you’ll be back before long.

Inside your bag is the formal letter you’ve written detailing Opal’s treatment of you and your suspicion that she planted the piece of wire in your room to make you look dangerous.

It should be enough to get her fired, and you’re going to insist the letter be part of her permanent file.

Many of the patients in the locked ward are truly sick.

They need help, not the machinations of a deviant health aide.

At the entrance of the cemetery, you turn and look back at Annabelle’s grave, remembering your final moments together. Just before she died, Annabelle opened the gift you gave her. Then she gave you one in return, with her whispered words in your ear.

“I think you should call Mandy,” Annabelle had said.

“I’m going to,” you promised.

“She’s going to love you, Georgia. How could she not?”

Your family used to make you cry all the time as a little girl. You’d promised yourself they never would again. But that night, you couldn’t hold back your tears. Could it be possible after so long without even one sister, you could have two?

You’d hurried to the bathroom, leaving Annabelle staring at her phone. You now know she’d just received an email from the DNA lab confirming the samples she’d sent in of the senator’s cigar butt and her own cheek swab proved he was her biological father.

You didn’t hear a thing from inside the bathroom, but when you stepped back out, the world had tilted on its axis.

As you walk down the path toward the parking lot, a man slowly approaches, his spine curved by grief. Then he lifts his head and you realize it’s your father, Stephen. The surprise dawning on his face reveals he didn’t expect to discover you here, either. You both stop short.

At the same moment, you resume walking, meeting in the middle.

“Georgia.” His voice is hoarse, like he’s ill. He appears fundamentally changed. It’s as if all the emotions he repressed through the years are finally seeping out, dragging down the corners of his eyes and his mouth, staining his hair and eyebrows an ashen gray, and pulling weight off his frame.

“I called you,” he begins. “And I stopped by your apartment yesterday, but they said you weren’t home. I left a message with the doorman…”

His voice trails off. You received his messages, but you ignored them. Just as he ignored you when you needed him as a child.

Then, like a contagion, it spreads to you. Your suppressed emotions come pouring out: Anger at the father who should have protected you. Disgust at him for being too weak to defy Honey. And beneath is a bottomless crevasse of hurt.

“How nice you tried to visit,” you say, your voice icy. “Where were you the rest of my life?”

He bows his head, and you struggle against the lump rising in your throat. He looks completely broken.

“I know I made mistakes,” he says haltingly, as if openness is a foreign language to him. “I thought if I provided for my family, I was being a good husband and father. I was taught that’s what a man did. But you deserved more.”

You feel your anger pop like an overfilled balloon, allowing pain to rush in and fill the void.

“Honey made it seem like I was evil!” Your voice sounds childlike to your own ears. It’s as if you’re aging in reverse, while your father is speeding ahead. “You loved Annabelle best because you thought she was your real daughter!”

Stephen shakes his head. “No.”

You don’t want to admit it, but you hear the ring of truth in his simple, powerful denial.

“You are my daughter, too, Georgia. You have always been my daughter.”

You close your eyes, and his words wash over you like a balm, soothing the ragged surface of your wound.

Then Stephen says the last thing you’d ever expect.

“I knew Annabelle wasn’t my biological daughter, either. But I loved her just the same.”

Your eyes fly open. “You knew ?”

“From early on. I saw how Honey acted around Dawson, and I know the way he is with women… Plus, Annabelle looked a little bit like him as a baby. It’s easy to test these things to prove them.”

Words fail you as you stare at the father you never truly knew.

You finally find your voice. “But why didn’t you divorce her? And why are you still friends with him?”

Stephen shrugs. “Because deep down, I didn’t care. I never truly loved Honey. Our marriage has been over for a long, long time. I’m not sure we ever actually had one to begin with.”

Your mind swims as you realize what this means. Honey killed Annabelle to stop her from telling Stephen. But Stephen knew all along. So Annabelle died for no reason.

A hoarse cry escapes your throat. You see an echo of your pain wash across Stephen’s face. He takes a step closer to you.

You grow dizzy. This is all too much to take in. “I should go.”

“Maybe we can talk more sometime?” Stephen asks. “Or I can give you space… But I’ll be here for you from now on. I promise.”

The two of you stand there, the only remaining shards left from a shattered family.

“We could have lunch sometime,” you say haltingly. Then you remember Stephen doesn’t eat lunch—he prides himself on working straight through.

“Any day you like,” he replies.

When he dropped you at boarding school, you left him reaching his arms out into empty air. But now you step forward and lean into him while he wraps his arms around you. You hear him take in a deep, shuddering breath.

Then your father says, “I have loved you since the day you were born. I didn’t know how to show it. But I promise I’ll learn. And I’ll never stop trying to make it up to you.”