"What's your plan?" I asked, sidestepping the original question.
"I'll take Garret and Tess to my mother's," she said.
I nodded.
"I want you to come with us," she said. "Just until I feel safe." She shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe we'll both end up feeling safer together."
Looking back, I heard those words with a part of myself injured in childhood and unhealed as an adult, despite the good work of Dr. James in trying to piece my psyche back together. Because the pull toward rescuing an unhappy woman-a wife and mother-who would simultaneously rescue me was nearly overpowering. It was a dream I had stored away in my unconscious for forty years. And it was all I could do to remind myself that Julia had had equal access to Tess-and to the nortriptyline-as Darwin. "I promise not to leave you in danger," I said, leaving the door open for any and every possibility.
I called North Anderson and told him about Julia's suspicions. He said he would have a detective from the Boston police force take her statement. "I got to tell you I'm being shoved toward the sidelines," he said. "I guess you got to be careful what you ask for. The state's pulling out all the stops to find Billy, but the resources come along with a State Police captain named Brian O'Donnell. He's hot to run the whole show."
"What sort of guy is he?"
"Nobody we'd want to have a beer…" Anderson said, stopping himself.
"It's okay," I said. "I can take a joke, without taking a drink."
"Let's just say he's by the book. Very focused. Very serious." He paused. "Megalomania is probably the right diagnosis, if that's a diagnosis at all."
"It's been replaced with Narcissistic Personality Disorder," I said.
"Sounds about right," Anderson said. "When are you back?"
"Early tomorrow. I'll check in with Claire and Garret, like you suggested."
"I'd do it as soon as you can. O'Donnell has the Governor's ear. He could pull the plug on both of us."
"Understood."
"Call me when you hit the island."
I headed to Lilly Cuningham's room and was surprised to find her sitting up in bed, reading the BostonHerald. Her leg was still packed with gauze, but it was out of traction. I walked closer and saw that the Bishop story had made it onto the front page of the late edition, under a massive headline that read: "twin terror." A photograph accompanying the story showed Julia and Darwin at a black-tie event. A smaller inset showed the Bishop estate. I tried to focus on Lilly. "You seem to be on the mend," I said.
She lowered the paper and smiled at me. "They finally found the right antibiotic," she said.
I glanced at the IV pole. It had been pruned down to one hanging plastic bag. "I guess so."
"I'm glad you came back," she said.
"I told you I would." I sat down.
"I've been thinking about my grandfather."
The way those words rolled off Lily's tongue made me wonder whether the antibiotics had done all the good work on her leg, or whether her mind had opened up enough to let some of the toxins drain. "What about him?"
"These thoughts I have," she said. "I don't think they're flashbacks-or some sort of delayed recall. I don't think Grandpa ever touched me."
"Okay," I encouraged her, "where do you think the thoughts are coming from?"
"My imagination," she said. "They're things I've dreamt up-nightmares during the day. Don't all little girls have funny feelings for their dads?"
Freud did believe that all young girls have unconscious sexual feelings toward the men in their families. But those feelings generally evaporate by adulthood and never fuel serious psychiatric symptoms. I wondered why Lilly's impulses had survived childhood and adolescence intact. Why did they surface on her honeymoon? And why were they so threatening that she had to resist them by doing something as distracting and destructive as injecting herself with dirt?
"Because she couldn't count on anyone else to resist them" the voice at the back of my mind said.
That seemed like the right path to journey down. "How would your grandfather have responded," I asked her, "if you had made the first move?"
"The first move?" she said.
"If you asked him for sex," I said.
A hint of a smile played across her lips. "I don't want to think about it," she said.
"That's always up to you," I said. "But if you choose to confront the thoughts, they may not sneak up on you anymore. You may find you can turn them on and off, without using a needle."
She looked as if she was on the fence about trying.
"Try it for ten seconds. No more," I said.
She looked at me to see if I was serious, then rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"Would he have been angry with you?" I led.
"No," she said. "He was an understanding man."
"Embarrassed?"
She shook her head.
"Shocked?"
She blushed, giggled. "God, I honestly don't know how he would have responded."
Those words, taken literally, sounded like they came directly from the heart of the problem. Lilly couldn't predict whether her grandfather would have taken her as a lover, had she asked him.
Healthy psychosexual development unfolds in an atmosphere in which children know the adults around them would never take them up on their sexual feelings. When a little girl asks her father whether he will marry her, a good answer is, "I'm married to your mother. I love her. Someday I know you'll meet someone who loves you that way." The father (or grandfather) should not respond with a suggestive wink or a playful pat on the backside-or with silence.
Unconsciously fearing that an offer of romance would be accepted by her grandfather, Lilly reacted by burying her sexuality. When it emerged on her honeymoon, it emerged with all the guilt and anxiety of a little girl trying to steal away the man of the house. Her sexual impulses were taboo. Worthy of punishment. Dirty.
"Did he have other women?" I asked.
"Oh, I would think so," she said. "Almost certainly."
"Why do you say that?"
"They argued about it-he and my grandmother. He worked late a lot. Some nights he didn't come home at all. There was a real scene over a woman he had hired as his secretary."
"Did he ever mention these women to you?" I asked.
"I don't think so," she said. "At least not directly. But I knew he was unhappy with my grandmother."
"How did you know that?"
"He used to talk about old girlfriends he dated before he got married. One, in particular. A woman named Hazel. She was Jewish, and my grandfather was Irish Catholic, and that ended that. The times were different. But he told me she was the one he was meant for."
"How old were you when he shared that with you?" I asked.
"Probably eight. Maybe nine." She paused. "Weird, how I remember that."
People often cling to single, vivid childhood memories as symbols of larger psychological issues. By age nine, after all, Lilly knew plenty of toxic facts about Grandpa. He wasn't completely in love with his wife. He was available to other women. Most important, he was willing to share intensely personal, very adult information with her. Perhaps, nine-year-old Lilly might have reasoned, she could one day replace her grandmother and make her grandfather complete. Keeping him content was important, after all, since she had already lost her father.
"It sounds like you don't know what your grandfather would have done, had you offered yourself to him," I told Lilly. "That means he seduced you, without ever laying a hand on you."
"That's so hard for me to believe," she said. "He wasn't mean or predatory. He was… loving."