Page 23 of The Same Backward as Forward
Of everything I learned visiting the burn unit that day, the information that hit me the hardest was that the most painful time for most burn patients was when their dressings were being changed. I thought about Harry telling me he felt like he was being flayed alive, and then I thought about all the other times I’d changed his dressings, the times when his eyes had locked on to mine while I’d worked and he hadn’t said a word.
That night, I stayed at Jackson’s and did what I could. Instead of sleeping, I stayed up for hours, working to unfold that damn paper cube. I wondered how often Harry had seenmefolding. It was like the sugar castles all over again, like he wanted me to know that there was no such thing as me fading into the background with him.
Finally, I did it, managing to undo each and every fold without tearing the paper at all. In the very center of the page, Harry had written four words in oversized, uneven scrawl:
EVERYTHING HURTS. DOESN’T IT?
I left for the hospital early the next day.This is a mistake.It didn’t matter. I was committed.
Near the end of my shift, I managed to catch the door to the third-floor pharmacy with my foot before it locked. Morphine wasn’t accessible, but I took the antibiotics and the IV solution.I’m going to get caught. And even if I don’t—neither of these will do a thing about the pain.
As I tucked the stolen goods into my bag, I thought about “A Poison Tree.” I thought about that tiny, intricate paper cube. I thought about the way my patient tossed and turned in his sleep, his agony obviously getting worse.
And then, on the way out to my car, once it had become clear that I wasn’t going to get caught—not that night, at any rate—I thought about theotherplace I could go to get drugs. Not morphine but an opioid all the same.
Oxy.
Chapter 19
A man approached me,” I told my mother. That was my excuse for coming. “At the grocery store near the hospital.”
She chewed on that for a second or two, her eyes hard. “Describe him.”
I did.
“Sounds like one of Tobias Hawthorne’s men. The fix is in, but they’re not letting up. What did the bastard want with you?”
That was a good question.Do they know—or even suspect—that something is off?At some point, would investigators realize they were one body short on Hawthorne Island?
“I don’t know,” I told my mother. “I didn’t stick around to find out.” I threw out a question before she could ask me another one. “What are they still doing here?”
My mother had ways of reminding people that she didn’t exist to answertheirquestions. She grabbed my chin, lifting my face toward hers, even though I was already meeting her eyes.
“What areyoudoing here, Hannah?” she asked.
Say something true, and say it calmly.“Kaylie. Is her room still…” I let just a hint of weakness peek through—not enough for her to exploit, just enough for her to be certain thatshewas stronger. “Did you…”
“Go on up.” Whatever else my mother was and wasn’t, therewas very little senseless cruelty in her. Her cruelty always served a purpose, usually more than one. Her mercies did, too.
I knew that. I’d known that before coming here tonight, but there was no use in second-guessing myself now.
I walked up the stairs, my pace as measured as the breaths I took, and made it all the way to the end of the hall. I listened for footsteps, but no one was following me.
I let myself into Kaylie’s room, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Her closet door was still open. Her clothes were still on the hangers, except for the haphazard piles of items she’d worn or discarded on the floor.
I walked slowly forward, then sank down, touching the shirt my sister had been wearing the last time I’d seen her.Dance with me, you beautiful bitch.The leather wasn’t soft against my fingers, but the oversized sleepshirt I touched nextwas. I lifted it to my face, breathing in the smell of her.Citrus and rose.The scents didn’t go together, but Kaylie had never cared.
Her chaos had been a beautiful kind of chaos—and remarkably consistent. Her room looked like it had been tossed, but it had always looked like that, so I just had to hope that no one else had gotten there first.
That no one else in the family would dare to steal from Eden Rooney’s dead daughter.
It’s not stealing when you’re sisters, I could hear Kaylie saying.It’s borrowing with the intention not to return.
For once, I didn’t push away the memories. I couldn’t—not here. I could almost feel her with me as I went through the pockets of the clothes she’d left on the floor and found two pills. That was something—but not enough. I tried her closet next, then inside her pillowcase, then under her sheets and between the box spring and the mattress.
The expectation in the family business was that wares were not sampled without permission. Business was business. Pleasure was pleasure. But Iknewmy sister.
Eventually, I found a loose floorboard under the bed. Beneath it, there was a hollowed-out compartment. Inside, there was a plastic baggie. Dozens of small white pills stared back at me. Beneath the baggie, I found a wallet.
