“What did it look like?” Jude asked, not ready to trust the woman before them.
“It was gold, a little heart locket. A rose or some other flower was carved into the surface though I think your mama had rubbed on that necklace so much the image was about gone.”
Jude sighed, unable to deny the woman’s description.
“Satisfied?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Jude.
Jude nodded, drinking her coffee and regarding the woman thoughtfully.
She realized she’d make a terrible reporter. She was too suspicious of people. With good reason considering again that Damien had not called. And why did she care? Perhaps that was the most frustrating realization of all - that he had hurt her.
“Fuck him,” she grumbled, and Lucy widened her eyes in surprise. Hattie spurted tea onto the table.
“Jude!” she exclaimed.
“Sorry, my thoughts carried me away,” she apologized. “Please, tell us what happened to our mom.”
Lucy leaned back and rested her hands on the table, satisfied.
“Dr. Kaiser is what happened to your mother. A mean, sick man with a fascination for certain kinds of patients.”
“He’s a doctor at the asylum?”
Lucy nodded.
“He took a special interest in your mom, which isn’t good. He hurt her, tortured her. Your mama wasn’t kooky. Some of em’ in there are, that’s to be sure, but not your mama. She’s special. You know what she told me? She told me my firstborn, a still-born mind you, visits me all the time.”
Jude pursed her lips.
“How could she have contact with a baby that never learned to talk?” Jude asked, reverting to her earlier skepticism.
Lucy shook her head sadly.
“I feel sorry for you. You’ve got no faith. Not even in your own mama.”
Jude glowered at her and fought the urge to stand up and leave the diner. How dare the woman pass judgment on her for not believing in such silly nonsense?
“She told me his name, Phillip. How could she know that? I never told another soul. I chose the name Phillip and then he was born dead and I kept the name a secret, I couldn’t bear to share it with anyone in the whole world. Not even my husband. Your mama knew his name. He lives. He didn’t get to live as my baby, but he lives.”
Jude dropped her hands in her lap and focused on channelling her frustration into her fists. She squeezed them together as hard as she could.
“I feel him,” Hattie whispered, leaning over the table. “Phillip. He was born early. Seven weeks premature.”
Lucy looked at her in surprise, her mouth falling open.
“You have it too? The gift?”
Hattie nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
“Oh Jesus Christ!” Jude exclaimed. “Listen if you guys want to talk mumbo jumbo you can do it after we get the facts. Where is our mom?”
Lucy sighed and squeezed Hattie’s hands as if apologizing for Jude’s outburst, which only made Jude angrier.
She reminded herself again not to take Hattie when investigating their mother’s whereabouts. She only complicated things.
“Kent helped her escape. He was an orderly at the asylum. He took extra care of your mama, looked out for her. The night she disappeared, he wound up dead.”
A horrible pressure seemed to invade Jude’s skull, and she closed her eyes, pressing her fingers hard into her temples.
“An orderly died and my mom disappeared. What makes you think she escaped? Maybe she died too?”
Lucy shook her head. “Everyone was whispering about it. A few of the patients saw Kent escort your mother out of Hall Five in the middle of the night. He returned a short while later alone. The next morning another orderly found him hanged in Sophia’s bedroom.”
Hattie let out a strangled gasp and clutched her throat.
Jude ignored her.
“Did he kill himself? Or do they think someone killed him?”
“They told the patients it was an accident. Course Lord knows how somebody can strangle their own selves with a bed sheet while making up a bed. They glossed it over real nice. Not to mention the orderlies don’t make the beds.”
“What happened to Mama?” Hattie asked, pulling on her hair.
“Well,” Lucy leaned in conspiratorially. “One of the orderlies was having a smoke outside and saw a woman in men’s clothes with long blond hair running through the woods on the morning your mama disappeared. She got into a little red car and drove off. Another orderly said the car belonged to Barbie, Kent’s girlfriend who lives over in Buckley.”
“Has anyone spoken with Barbie?” Jude asked.
Lucy shrugged.
“Don’t know. They released me from my position a few days after it all went down. I’m out of the loop now.”
Jude took a deep breath, trying not to allow hope to overwhelm her. Until that moment, she had expected to find out her mother had died in the asylum. When Lucy began her story, she thought perhaps it would all be a big misunderstanding, their mother had died ten years ago and the last few days had been a fantasy.
“How can we find her?” Jude asked, wrapping her hands around her cup to steady them.
Hattie was fidgeting beside her, shifting back and forth in her seat, braiding her fingers again and again through her hair.
“She’s alive,” Hattie murmured. “I knew she was. I knew…”
Lucy beamed.
“She is.”
“Why didn’t she ever write to us?” Jude asked. “How could she have been alive for ten years and we never heard anything from her?”
Lucy frowned.
“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” Lucy admitted. “But the nurses opened and read all the mail. A downright injustice to some of the patients. Your ma talked about you kids to me and a select few others, but no one ever visited. Odd, it was odd. Why didn’t you ever visit?”
“We thought she was dead,” Hattie blurted before Jude could cut her off.
Lucy frowned, studying each of their faces.
“Why in heaven would you think that?”
Jude sighed, finishing her coffee.
“It’s a long story and we have to get going. Can you help us find Kent’s girlfriend?”
“Name of Barbie or Barbara, real curly black hair, lives in Buckley. I can’t give you no more than that but ask around. You’ll find her.”
After Jude paid, they left Lucy hovering at the counter asking the waitress for more coffee.
Hattie practically skipped to the car but grew quiet once inside.
“You okay?” Jude asked.
Hattie turned and offered a small smile.
“I’m worried about Mama. If someone killed that Kent man, maybe they found out where Mama went and….”
Jude feared the same thing but had not intended to say it out loud to her sensitive sister.
It was going on ten at night - too late to start picking around Buckley looking for Barbie. They’d have to wait.
“Maybe I should talk to Gram Ruth,” Hattie started.
Jude squeezed the wheel and bit back the stream of profanity that bubbled forth every time she thought of their grandmother. It had become increasingly clear that the woman had participated in faking their mother’s death and hiding her whereabouts in an asylum.
“Something went wrong,” Jude muttered.
“With Mama? You think she’s hurt?” Hattie asked, anxious.
“No, not now, back then, ten years ago. I remember thinking Dad was acting funny. He wasn’t in mourning. I was too wrapped up in my own feelings to realize it, but he was busy. He was packing stuff. I walked in once when he was packing up the house, humming a song he and mom used to dance to. I was crying, and he gave me a hug. He said something too, and I forgot it all these years. He said, “It will all be better very soon.” I figured he meant grief fades with time, but now I know… that’s not what he meant. They had a plan. He and mom had a plan.”