Shanna nodded slowly.
Clare rose and went to the bathroom to get a drink of water. Looking at her image in the mirror, she thought, I should be checking in here tonight. Except the doctors in the white coats are the wrong kind. I need the ones who specialize in people who see pink elephants and feel bugs crawling under their skin. Or impossible stairways and coins that disappear along with voices on telephones saying things they shouldn’t know.
She braced herself on the sink and poured the rest of the water down the drain before returning to the room. Shanna was gazing out the window, which was nearly a perfect pane of darkness framed in the wall. “You think we might both be sick like him?” she asked.
Clare returned to the chair and sighed. “I don’t know. You’ve never had any other hallucinations? Heard voices, anything like that?”
“No. The only other voice besides my own was Rainier’s. And he didn’t speak to me often.” Something in her voice caught Clare’s attention, a fluttery lilt that hadn’t been there before. She’d heard it before when certain women denied any existence of abuse within the cults they’d joined. Shanna looked away from the window and focused on Clare again. “How are we going to find my son?”
For now she allowed the change of subject without objection. “I followed up a lead today with the sheriff. I’m not sure if it’s what we’re looking for, but it might be.” She recounted the visit to the Parson camp, mentioning the hopscotch pattern last. “It’s a child’s game,” she said, explaining the concept when Shanna’s eyebrows drew together in confusion.
“So you think maybe they have my son? That they’re hiding Rainier?”
“I don’t know.” She lowered her voice, thinking of Wilt directly outside the door. “The sheriff isn’t convinced, but I feel like there’s some connection. There are too many coincidences. The good news is a friend of mine is coming here. Someone who’s worked on lots of cases like this. He’s very good at what he does.”
Shanna nodded, seeming to absorb everything. “The doctors said I could be released tomorrow. All of my wounds are healing. But . . .” Clare waited, watching the conflict go on behind her sister’s eyes. “But I’m afraid of leaving here. I’m afraid he’ll find me.”
“You’ll be under protection the whole time.” An idea came to her then fully formed. “We can even fly to Oregon and stay at my house until everything is—”
“No.” The inflection in Shanna’s voice made Clare stop cold. “No, I won’t leave until I find my son. Or until I know he’s—” She faltered and looked down to where her right hand was rubbing at the scars on her left wrist. “I can’t go.”
“Okay. No, you’re right, I’m sorry.”
They were both quiet for a time before Shanna said, “You’ll stay with me?”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll be safe?” All at once it was as if the years had melted away. She was at Shanna’s bedside again, telling her she would take care of her. And this time she meant to, no matter what.
“Yes. I promise.” She smiled. “I’m thinking Deputy Wilt will volunteer to guard us.”
Shanna returned her smile. It was tentative, but beautiful all the same. “He’s been very kind.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Are most people like him? Are they kind or are they . . .”
How to answer such a question? Was the world essentially a good place or one where evil squirmed in the cracks of a thin mask covering up the worst of humanity? Was there enough light to make the struggle worthwhile, or was it perpetually twilight, full-dark only moments away?
“Most people are good,” Clare finally said. “But even good people can hurt you. You always have to be careful of who you trust.”
Shanna seemed to absorb this, and in that second Clare could see the little girl who had known only the darkest half of existence for most her life. “I trust you,” Shanna said.
A nurse ended up bringing in a cot at the close of visiting hours, and it was only after she’d left Clare realized how much she’d been dreading returning to her hotel room. There was nothing there, the voice in her head told her. It was all in your mind. If you see something right now, where will you run to? She didn’t know. If these were the initial symptoms of schizophrenia, she needed help. Needed to seek treatment as soon as possible. The longer she waited, the worse it would get. But a niggling thought kept resurfacing no matter how many times she pushed it away. All this had started early Saturday morning after her nightmare—almost at the exact minute Shanna had been found. Could everything be explained away through an inherited mental disorder? One laying in wait until the moment her sister had been returned to her life? Or was there something bigger happening beyond the scope of her viewpoint?
An idea struck her, and she stiffened. What if Shanna’s escape hadn’t been a coincidence? What if it had been timed perfectly? Had Rainier and whoever else he was working with orchestrated Shanna’s escape, possibly in an effort to bring her back into striking range? How long had they known where she was? She guessed it had taken them quite some time to track her down since her last name had changed, along with her address at least a half dozen times in the last eighteen years. What exactly had they been planning when Shanna got away? She felt like gears had been put into motion behind a veil concealing their movements, and to glimpse their parts was to understand the machinations as a whole.
Clare rolled over in the narrow cot and dismissed the idea. It was something a paranoid schizophrenic would think. Conspiracies existed, and there were multitudes of nefarious people floating in the flotsam of the world, but she was pondering something much different than anything so mundane. What her mind kept edging up against was the equivalent of heresy in the academic world.
The supernatural.
There, she’d acknowledged it, like being on your way to work and glancing at the corner where some poor person had been stabbed or shot the week before. Her belief in something beyond the realms of fact and science had ended shortly after the Refuge had burned down. The faith her father tried instilling in her was already thin as tissue paper. Since then she’d relied upon psychology and understanding the processing of events anchored deeply in emotional levels. She’d never given the mystical any credence. And she still didn’t. Everything she’d experienced could be explained by faulty genes handed down by her father. The rest could be synchronicity, which she did adhere to. If she woke up a thousand miles away at the same moment Shanna was being found by the authorities, then so be it. She woke up most nights, and sometimes several times. A coincidence was the greater likelihood, nothing more.
She shifted on the cot again, unable to get comfortable. Shanna slept on in the bed, a soft snore issuing from her every so often. There was always a logical explanation, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. Belief in something that wasn’t there was for people who couldn’t deal with that fact.
A nurse stepped into the room, silently checking Shanna’s vitals before slipping away again. The hospital had lost its daytime bustle and the relative quiet punctuated by the sounds of people nearby gave her a sense of reassurance. Her sister’s placid features were another layer of comfort, and she closed her eyes, finally dropping into sleep. Clare’s last thought as she drifted away was that it must’ve clouded over in the evening because she couldn’t see any stars outside the window.