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Chapter Seventeen
Grace
The next couple of weeks are spent nursing Elizabeth back to health.Not so much me doing the nursing so much as everyone else.Elizabeth refuses most of my offers, although that doesn’t stop me from trying.It seems I’ve burned a bridge, and though an invisible one, it’s a bridge nonetheless.
The strange thing is, I don’t even know what happened.What led to this?When I ask Dr.Branson, he tells me not to take it personally.It’s a part of her illness.I don’t ask him to explain further because I can tell by the set of his shoulders he isn’t going to.He wants to talk about what happened the night that Charles disappeared.I tell him that’s the thing, I can’t be sure that it was actually night.Just that it was sometime between nine p.m.and ten a.m.
It’s the same thing I told the police, so you would think he would know this.
When I think back to that night, it gives me chills.I try not to go there, even though I have to.Dr.Branson demands it.He’s threatening to take away my privileges.Any of them?All of them?I don’t know.If I get a choice, he doesn’t say.
At that moment, I think of Elizabeth.What would she say?How would she explain it?How would she put it, especially if no one listened the first five times she told the story?
“What are you thinking about, Grace?”Dr.Branson’s baritone voice catches me daydreaming.It's a powerful sound, his voice, like a sonic boom as loud as a jet plane taking off, the crash of waves on a distant shore, the tolling of a funeral bell.
“Elizabeth.”
I could see instantly why my roommate is so popular.She doesn’t see things the way the rest of us do.She has the uncanny ability to be here, in the moment, in this place, but also to see things the way she wants them, the way they could be.Elizabeth is a master storyteller.The life of the party.The kind of person we all wish we could be.This doesn’t make it easy to like her, or to hate her.Sometimes, for me, it’s a little of both.I’m sure we’ve all met someone like that.
“What about her?”
“Just that she’s sick.And I want her to get better.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t know how to help her.”
“Perhaps the best thing you could do for Elizabeth would be to help yourself.We can’t save people, Grace.Try as we might.”
It’s ironic, his statement.But also telling.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I desperately miss my family.Like I’d do anything to see them again.”
“You could start by telling me what you know about Charles’s disappearance.Maybe we can figure something out.”
He’s skirting around the truth.I can see it plain as day.I’m familiar with this method myself.He’s insinuating that I might get to see Phillip, if I give him the information he wants, without outright saying so, so as not to lie.He’s giving me false hope, and it almost works.
“What if I tell you something, and it puts them in more danger than they’re already in?”
“What if you don’t tell me and it puts them in danger?What then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mother-in-law told the FBI that you were going on vacation.You, Charles, and the children.”
“Yes.”
“Where were you going?”
“To a little cabin in the mountains.”
“Had you been there before?”
“No.”
“Was this vacation your idea?”
