Page 88

“I minored in music for my undergrad. I’ve been brushing up on my classical music so I can hold his interest.” Jude walked the rest of the way down to join Emmy on the landing.

“When you cage a psychopath, their personalities tend to flatten out. Prison is lonely. They’re bored most of the time.

You have to remember when they’re on the outside, every emotion they show, every action, is something that they’re mirroring.

They don’t know how to be good people, so they steal those traits from the people around them.

I’m going to mirror Dale into confessing. ”

“That description sounds familiar.”

“Virgil Ingram was definitely a psychopath.”

Emmy looked at the brace on her wrist, adjusted the Velcro strap.

Jude had learned to spot the physical manifestations of Emmy’s discomfort. The way she smoothed her lips together. The obvious attempt at breath control. The mind-scrambling changes in subject. The clearing of her throat or fiddling with her phone or, recently, adjusting her brace.

Emmy asked, “Did you get some peace with Myrna?”

Her sadness was so palpable that Jude could feel it in her chest. She said, “When people die, your relationship with them doesn’t end. You find new ways to connect with them.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop hearing Dad’s voice in my head, but with her—” Emmy’s gaze moved past Jude to the stairs.

“It’s hard to see her in bed all day. She was always in such a hurry.

Move forward. Make plans. Do something. But she eased into her sickness.

At first, it was manageable, and then it got a little bad, and then it got a lot bad, and then it hit worse, and looking back, it was years, but right now it feels like minutes. ”

These were the most difficult moments with Emmy, the back and forth where Jude didn’t know if silence would help or whether she should gently push.

Killing Virgil was a burden Emmy would always carry, but that act of self-preservation had only added weight to the heavier burdens of losing Gerald and the slow march alongside Myrna as she drew closer to her grave.

Jude tried, “I was living in San Francisco back in the late nineties when protease inhibitors came out. They were the first medications that could help stop the HIV virus from replicating into full blown AIDS. Suddenly, all these men and their caregivers who had been living in limbo, dealing with the daily uncertainty of waiting to get sick or waiting to die, had their lives back. They were happy, obviously, but depression levels and anxiety spiked. They had lived under the pressure of uncertainty for so long that they had trouble figuring out how to live. They called it Lazarus syndrome. Coming back from the dead.”

Emmy smoothed together her lips.

“You took care of Myrna and Gerald for a long time. It’s really okay to be happy. Lean on the people around you. Let yourself breathe.”

Emmy asked, “Why is it when Dad talked to me it sounded like advice, but when you talk to me it sounds like a fortune cookie?”

Jude shrugged. “At least I use adverbs.”

Emmy started down the next flight of stairs. She was quiet until she reached the exit door. She turned, telling Jude, “I know who Andy Taylor is. Myrna checked me out early from school one day because the pickle episode was on.”

Outside, the sun cut between the clouds like a razor.

Jude looked for her sunglasses as she followed Emmy down a winding walkway to the small garden overlooking a pond.

Birds chirped from the trees. Ducks waddled in the shallow part of the water.

All of the seating was empty because this wasn’t the kind of place where patients spent much time outdoors.

Jude sat down at one of the concrete picnic tables. She felt a slight chill from the breeze coming off the water. “How’s Paisley doing?”

“She’s doing.” Emmy sat across from her.

She pulled at her brace again. “The doctors think she’ll be able to walk with assistance.

They don’t know how much use she’ll get out of her hands.

The psychological is up in the air. I told Carol and Elijah I’d talk to her whenever she’s ready, but I don’t know how she’s gonna come back from what happened. ”

“Either you do, or you don’t.” Jude took off her sunglasses.

She couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get Emmy to open up about Virgil.

“Denial gets a bad rap, but it can be very helpful on a temporary basis. The problem starts when you stay in denial, because trauma doesn’t go away.

It stores itself in the body, particularly with children.

The more they try to force it down, the more ways the body finds to push it back out. ”

Emmy was paying close attention. “How?”

Jude tried not to sound like she was giving a lecture.

“People with trauma are more likely to struggle with mental health issues, to become addicted to substances, to self-harm. Then, there’s the physical component.

Over time, trauma can alter your brain chemistry, cause illnesses like immune deficiencies, heart disease, sometimes it can even shorten your life span. ”

Emmy smoothed her lips together again. “We’re not talking about Paisley anymore, are we?”

Jude clasped her hands in her lap so that she wouldn’t reach out for Emmy’s. The last twelve days had been filled with deflections about what had happened in Virgil’s basement. She silently prayed that Emmy was finally ready to talk it out.

Emmy took a deep breath. She turned her head toward the water. Jude thought she was going to shut down, but Emmy was nothing if not surprising.

“When Adam got out of prison, I started having these dreams about finding Madison and Cheyenne in the water. I was so relieved when they stopped, but now I’m having dreams about killing Virgil.”

Jude watched Emmy blink away more tears that she would never let fall.

“I saw him in that doorway, and I knew almost immediately that I was going to shoot him. That’s never happened before. I’m not saying that I can’t do my job, but usually, when shit starts to get real, I feel the stress of it. I get so damn jittery that I forget to breathe. But not with Virgil.”

Their eyes met when Emmy finally looked away from the water.

“I felt this stillness in my body. I was completely calm. I knew exactly what to do. My hands weren’t shaking.

My heart wasn’t racing. I could see so clearly that it was him or me.

And I did what Dad always told me to do.

I did my job. I pulled the trigger and killed a man who’s known me all my life, and I didn’t feel a goddam thing. ”

Jude asked, “What happened afterward?”

Emmy’s quick laugh was more from shock. “Jesus, I hate when you’re right about shit. I went outside and barfed up the lining of my stomach.”

Jude borrowed a page from Emmy and took a deep, calming breath.

“The stillness you’re talking about is a trauma response.

There are only three responses you can have: fight, flight, or freeze.

You know what flight is. You run away. Freezing is often described as disassociation.

You mentally go somewhere else so you don’t have to process what’s happening to your body.

With Virgil, your brain chose fight. Dopamine flooded the reward center to reinforce your behavior because it was good for your survival. ”

Again, Emmy was paying close attention.

“Feeling invincible can be a rush. The problem comes when you seek out those behaviors for the dopamine reward. You start pushing boundaries, putting yourself at risk, making bad decisions for the thrill of it, hurting yourself in the process.”

“That sounds like addiction.”

“That’s exactly like addiction. Both work on the same reward pathways. They can both alter the structure of the brain and change how it processes information.” Jude shrugged. “Why do you think I was so good at my job? It’s something that serial killers experience, too.”

Surprise flashed in Emmy’s eyes. “Tell me.”

“Some people think serial killers make mistakes because they want to get caught, but the real reason is they’re as desperate as any other addict.

The first time they kill, they experience a rush of euphoria.

The next time, it’s good, but it’s not like that first time.

Their brains have built up a tolerance. They chase the euphoria by pushing boundaries, becoming more sadistic, more craven, to trigger the reaction.

The desperation makes them sloppy. All they care about is feeling that rush. ”

“The same as alcoholics.”

“The same as me. I took stupid risks and put myself in bad situations. I lost things that mattered. Things that were cherished. Things that I still cherish.”

Emmy picked at the Velcro straps again. “What you asked about Jonah. He didn’t hit me.

He pushed me down the stairs when I was pregnant, and I felt so vulnerable.

Trapped, if you want to know the truth, because we had Cole between us.

After that, I just let him do whatever he wanted.

That’s the shameful part of it. He didn’t have to hit me because I always gave in. ”

The pain in Jude’s heart felt like glass shattering into millions of pieces. She should’ve been there. She could’ve protected her. “Emmy Lou, I’m sorry I missed so much of your life.”

Emmy’s eyebrows furrowed. “Less than two weeks ago, you didn’t even know I existed.”

Jude felt the danger of flying too close to the sun. She pulled herself back. “You should use fewer than when you’re talking about numbers.”

Emmy didn’t laugh this time. She took a deep breath and held it in her lungs for a very long time. “The night that Cheyenne and Madison went missing, Dad told me something, and I didn’t realize until later that he was talking about you.”