Barbie pushed Sophia into a back bedroom and jerked open the window. She reached beneath the bed and grabbed a green duffel bag.
“It’s an emergency bag. Kent was always prepared,” she whispered.
Sophia climbed out the window and Barbie handed her the bag.
“Straight through,” Barbie told her pointing at the woods. “You’ll reach a lake and follow it east. On the other side, you’ll come to a country road.”
Outside car doors slammed and voices rose in the night. Sophia didn’t wait to hear more, she slipped the bag over her shoulder and ran.
Chapter 23
September 1965
Jude
Jude arrived at Hattie’s apartment unannounced, and Hattie opened the door with sleepy eyes and tousled hair. She wore a frilly pink nightgown that Gram Ruth bought her when she was ten that somehow still fit.
Jude sighed.
“Hattie you realize you’re nineteen, right? And have your own apartment? It might be time to buy some new threads.”
Hattie wrinkled her baby-smooth forehead and looked down, backing into the apartment to let Jude in. Hattie rarely took her snide comments, or advice for that matter, seriously if she heard them at all.
Jude sputtered at the state of the apartment. One corner of the small living room was coated in newspaper and splattered with paint. Hattie’s easel leaned against the wall.
The kitchen counter and table held bowls of paint water, dirty dishes, and a jumble of Hattie’s stuff she’d likely started to unpack and then forgot about midway through.
Jude marveled at Hattie’s desperation to control her chaos. Hattie was not an organized person by nature, but their grandmother had spent years reinforcing that cleanliness was next to godliness, which Hattie seemed to take literally in her endless quest to keep her disorganization in check, and wake up on time for Sunday services.
Jude picked up a coffee mug and sniffed.
“Tomato soup?”
Hattie shrugged and plopped into a kitchen chair, yawning.
Jude set about making coffee, a challenge since most of the kitchen boxes were sealed in the corner.
“Where’s your percolator?” Jude asked, pawing through a box crammed with baking sheets and hand-knit kitchen rags. “Please do not tell me you’ve been living here for a month and haven’t unpacked your percolator?”
Hattie watched Jude and blinked several times as if still caught in the world of dreaming. Her eyes popped opened, and she looked up.
“It’s in that box.” She pointed to a box splotched with blue paint. “I remember Camille said she was putting it in the blue box.” Hattie laughed and shook her head. Jude did not understand why it was funny, but ripped the box open and hauled out a can of coffee, the percolator, and a box of sugar.
“Why are you so tired today?” Jude asked after she’d delivered Hattie a coffee with more milk and sugar than caffeine and poured her own piping hot and black. “Painting last night?”
Hattie nodded.
“I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing… things.”
“Your ghosts?” Jude asked careful to keep the teasing edge from her voice. Despite Jude and Peter’s years of ribbing Hattie over the voices and visions, Jude no longer found the idea funny. If their mother experienced the same thing, maybe the stories weren’t stories at all.
Hattie stared into her coffee but didn’t speak. After several minutes Jude pulled out her notebook.
“I’ve been looking into mom’s past,” Jude announced. “Yesterday I drove down to Mason, the town where Mom grew up. I met our uncle Grimmel.”
“Our uncle?” Hattie looked up, confused.
“Yes. Mom had two brothers, Grimmel and Tim. Grimmel still lives in Mason. He’s a TV salesman.”
Hattie stared at Jude, unblinking.
“Mama had brothers?”
“That’s what I said, yes. And yesterday I met Grimmel.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Hattie sounded hurt. “I would have gone with you.”
Jude had come prepared for the question.
“Because I wasn’t sure what I’d find, Hattie. Simple as that. Mom’s family might have been long gone, or dead. I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
Hattie picked up a cup of dirty paint water and lifted it to her lips.
“Hattie, you’re about to drink paint.”
Hattie looked at the cup, grimaced and set it back on the table. She shrugged and picked up her coffee.
“Does he know where Mama is? Can I meet him too?”
“He doesn’t know where she is, and he doesn’t know who we are yet either. I posed as a reporter, but yes, soon. I’ve got a few more things to do and then we’ll go visit him together.”
Jude parked at the address Clayton had found. She walked up the driveway pausing when she spotted the woman with wild black hair standing in her garden.
“Barbie?” Jude said
The woman pulled tomatoes off a vine and jumped a foot in the air at the sound of Jude’s voice. She dropped the tomato, and it splattered on her tennis shoes.
Jude flinched and held up her hands.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Barbie didn’t speak, but stared at Jude suspiciously, looking her up and down as if she might carry a weapon.
“My name’s Jude. I…” the words “work for the Wexford County Gazette died on her lips. This woman had rescued her mother from the asylum. She would not lie to her.
“I’m trying to find my mother,” she started again. “Sophia Gray.”
It felt strange to call her mother by her true name when she’d only ever known her as Mom or Anne.
Barbie narrowed her eyes but didn’t move from the garden as if the wall of tomato plants would protect her.
“My sister and I have been searching for her. I just found out she was in the asylum. We thought she had died.” Jude searched for any recognition in the woman’s face. Could she have the wrong Barbie?
Jude stepped closer and reached into her back pocket pulling out the faded Polaroid she’d found in Gram Ruth’s barn. Jude and Peter stood with their parents. Sophia, or Anne, hugely pregnant with Hattie, held Jude’s hand. The four of them posed in front of Gram’s house, their arms intertwined.
Barbie didn’t take the picture, but she stared at it for several seconds looking between the small girl in the photo and Jude as if trying to discern a lie in the image.
Barbie looked about Jude’s age or younger. Her thick black curls were piled on top of her head and she wore a dirty white apron over her clothes.
Biting her lip, Barbie wiped her hands on her apron and glanced toward the sky as if searching for a sign of what she should do.
“Please,” Jude said. “I’ve thought she was dead for ten years.”
Barbie sighed and stepped from the garden.
“Come inside,” she said, leading Jude back to the little cape cod that badly needed a coat of paint.
Despite the rundown exterior, the interior of Barbie’s home looked bright and clean. Sunflowers burst from a vase on the kitchen counter.
“Can I get you a glass of tea, or something stronger?” Barbie asked tilting her head toward a half-empty bottle of gin near the sink
“Tea’s fine,” Jude told her though she would have preferred the gin.
Too much wine the night before had left her fuzzy with a dull headache that morning, and the fog of hangover still lingered.
Barbie poured Jude a tea and herself a short tumbler of gin and water with a squeeze of lime. She sat down at her table and folded her hands in front of her, clasping her fingers together and staring at them before looking at Jude.