Page 79 of The Locked Ward

I slip out of bed early the next morning while Georgia is still sleeping.

I gaze at her for a long moment before I leave, finding it hard to tear my eyes away from her face.

She’s utterly familiar and an enigma all at once.

She’s endured so much throughout her life, yet you’d never know it to look at her.

But our surfaces are mirages. They project lies. Everyone has hidden layers, including me.

Especially me.

A few paparazzi are clustered around the entrance of her building, but no one knows who I am.

My identity has been kept out of the news so far.

A guy with long dreadlocks yawns and stretches out his arms as I walk past him and his colleagues.

They’re waiting for Georgia, so they miss the bigger story as I move down the block and climb into the back of an Uber.

“You live in that building?” the driver asks me, indicating the paparazzi. He turns down the radio as I reply.

“No, just visiting a friend,” I tell him.

In the rearview mirror, I see his eyes flick to me. “Not her, though? That woman who killed her sister?”

I frown. “She didn’t do it, you know. Her mother did—Honey Cartwright.”

The driver pulls away, heading in the direction of the strip mall parking lot where I left my car. I hope it hasn’t been towed.

“Yeah, but I was just listening to the radio, and this guy says he thinks the mother sacrificed herself to save Georgia. That’s why she confessed even though she didn’t do anything,” the driver tells me.

“That’s quite a spin,” I say.

“I mean, I could totally see that. A mother’s love is fierce, right?”

“It should be.” Then I hear the name Dawson on the radio, and the driver turns it up as we both fall silent.

“Thirty-two years ago, I committed an indiscretion.” The senator’s deep, warm voice is confiding. “My terrible moment of weakness resulted in something good and beautiful: Annabelle Cartwright.”

The driver shakes his head. “Are any politicians faithful these days?”

“My beloved wife, Dee Dee, forgave me long ago, as did my dear friend Stephen Cartwright,” the senator continues. I muffle a snort. “And now I ask for the public’s forgiveness, too.”

The senator talks for another minute or so, announcing a new tax cut he’s pushing on Capitol Hill, clearly trying to give the press something else to write about now that he’s delivered his mea culpa.

The driver pulls into the lot, and I see my Honda waiting for me. I exit the Uber and slide into my front seat. Before I drive off, I do the thing I’ve been dreading. I send Scott a text: Talk tonight?

I don’t know what—if anything—might happen between us.

I don’t think I’m cut out for a serious relationship, let alone marriage and kids.

The truth is, there’s a hollowness inside me I’ve hidden from everyone I’ve ever known.

I felt like it filled up with a missing piece when I met Georgia.

But I think that was only part of the reason.

The other was because of the location. The secret part of me that has always felt wild and ferocious somehow fit in the locked ward.

I’m so lost in thought it doesn’t seem to take long at all to drive to my bank.

A teller gives me access to my safe-deposit box.

As I open it, he steps away, allowing me privacy.

I remove the silver thumb drive sent by Tony Wagner and tuck it in my purse.

I’ll destroy it with a hammer as soon as I get home, like I promised Georgia.

Then I reach for the second item in my hiding place: the envelope of Polaroid photos I took more than a decade ago at college.

I took Polaroids that night so they couldn’t be traced to me through my phone.

It was one of many details I considered while I waited to execute revenge on Beth’s attacker.

Like I told Georgia, it’s important for your mind to be clear, past the first red-hot flush of rage, to enact a solid plan.

I’ve already begun to consider one for Patty. She needs to be discredited in the mind of the senator. I can’t have her working with him, not when she may decide at some point that Georgia and I are threats to her. Depending on the cause of Tony’s death, Patty may require more punishment.

I look down at the first picture, staring into the intoxicated face of Bradley, the guy who raped Beth, shattering her life and leaving me bereft and alone.

He had no idea what was coming when I put myself in his path at a campus bar one weekend night.

Bradley was pretty clueless; he hadn’t noticed me following him for days, seeking out for the right opportunity.

I don’t know if he knew I was friends with Beth, but if he did, he didn’t care.

Maybe he didn’t believe he’d done anything wrong.

It was easy to lean forward and stare into his eyes, giggling at his dumb jokes.

I ordered rounds of shots, making sure he drank many more of them than I did.

When he went to the bathroom, I took the strong dose of sleeping pills I’d ground up and stirred it into his beer.

I needed him compliant so I could strip off his clothes and make him pose in humiliating ways.

I planned to photocopy the pictures and spread them all over campus.

I was burning up for the way he’d abused Beth when she was helpless. For the way he’d taken my friend away from me.

When he finished his beer, I suggested we take a dip in the big fountain on campus before going back to his room. It was a tradition for students to dunk themselves in the fountain, but I pretended I hadn’t yet.

“You know you want to see me in a wet T-shirt,” I giggled, lacing my arm through his as we left the bar.

I was practically dragging him by the time we reached the fountain with its high spray of water providing both noise and a visual shield against anyone approaching.

I propped him up against the base while I wrestled him out of his clothes.

I made him pose several different ways, positioning his limp limbs to reveal everything, and documenting it all with my camera.

When I was done with him, I heaved him up over the side of the fountain. I figured the shock of water would wake him up and I’d get one last picture of him naked and vulnerable and afraid. Just the way he’d left Beth when he was done abusing her.

But he didn’t wake up.

A feeling of deep peace swept over me as I watched him float face down. I thought about turning him over, but I didn’t. I just watched the man who’d raped my roommate die.

No one ever discovered what I did to him.

Now I stare at the photos, including the last one I took of his lifeless body in the water, then tuck them back into the envelope and lock them up.

“Got everything you needed?” the bank employee asks as I walk through the main lobby.

I smile at him. “I sure did.”

I pass a round table and chairs in the waiting area by the front door and notice a copy of today’s paper on the table.

The headline is about the Cartwright murder.

Pictures of Honey, Annabelle, and Georgia are splashed above the fold—including one of Honey with both girls when they were babies, looking sweet and loving.

The picture of Georgia is far less flattering; she’s caught off guard, frowning.

It seems like the paper is deliberately stoking speculation about who was Annabelle’s real killer.

Some people will always believe Honey sacrificed herself to save Georgia in a heroic act of maternal devotion. They’ll look at Georgia and think, She’s a killer.

One of us got away with murder, but it isn’t Georgia.

They have the right idea, but the wrong twin.

Sisters share so many things in common. But deep down, in a hidden place no one can ever see, they’re often exact opposites.