“Who left first?”
“I did. I was discharged just before Labor Day, so I could start classes up here.”
“When did Gwen”-the name was still a wonderful novelty in her mouth-“leave the clinic?”
Unconsciously, Devon combed her blond hair toward her face, as if to cover it. She bore a superficial resemblance to Whitney, with her thin body and pale hair. But where everything about Whitney was sharp and bright, this girl seemed soft and dull.
“They didn’t tell you?”
“They wouldn’t tell me anything. I met Sarah…by accident.” True enough. “She sent me to you.”
Devon stood up abruptly, paced toward the kitchen and back, almost as if she were lost. “The thing is, you just have to make it to your eighteenth birthday. I kept telling Gwen that. Four months. Four months, and she’d have been able to check herself out, no matter what her dad and stepmother said.”
“How’s that?”
“When you’re eighteen, and you’ve been involuntarily committed-and almost everyone at Persephone’s is there involuntarily-you can petition the court, argue you’re healthy enough to leave, no longer a threat to yourself. The people at the clinic let you go if you even threaten to do it, as long as you can get up and walk around. They don’t like to go into court, and they have a waiting list, so the beds never go empty. Gwen was going to be eighteen on January thirty-first. But she couldn’t wait, so she bolted.”
“Ran away.”
“Yes, a few weeks after I left. Persephone’s kept it quiet, I guess. It wouldn’t do much for their reputation if it were known that the daughter of one of their richest, best-known clients had run away. Where is Gwen now, faking amnesia in some hospital, hoping her father will interrupt his round-the-world honeymoon and pay some attention to her?”
Tess walked over to the window, which overlooked the park where she had sat staring at the cheesesteak vendor and his stand. She had a name; Jane Doe would become Gwen Schiller within hours of her return to Baltimore. Her remains could be exhumed from the pauper’s grave in Crownsville, her case could be truly closed. But knowing who she was only made it more unfathomable that she could have gone unidentified for so long.
“Devon, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Gwen Schiller is dead. She was murdered in Baltimore last November sixteenth, probably not long after she ran away from Persephone’s. The man who killed her confessed to the crime, but she didn’t have any identification on her.”
“Gwen’s dead?” Devon’s reactions seemed a beat off. As thin as her face was, emotions took a long time reaching it. “You said last month, though?”
“No, November sixteenth a year ago.”
“It couldn’t be…it can’t.” Devon began pacing again, as if lost in her own apartment. “Gwen was so strong, so defiant. She was going to get well out of spite. She could take care of herself. She’s the last person I’d imagine dying.”
The implication was that there were so many other girls Devon could imagine dying.
“What else can you tell me about her?”
“Gwen?” Devon hesitated. “The first word you think of is beautiful. That sketch doesn’t capture it. Even sick, she was beautiful. Strong-willed, too. We all were, but she was the toughest by far. She didn’t like what money had done to her family. And it didn’t help that her mother was dead, and her dad had this trophy wife who hated her guts.”
“An evil stepmother.” Tess was remembering that it was a stepmother who left Hansel and Gretel in the woods, where they stumbled on their own version of the Sugar House. Some girls call it the cake, but to me, it’s the gingerbread house, and I just can’t get that witch in the oven, Gwen had told Sukey.
“Are there other girls who might remember her, who she might have tried to contact once she ran away?”
“Not really. Faye Maffley was there that year, and nowhere close to going home when I left. She was still telling doctors she had rearranged her DNA by spending two hours a day on the NordicTrack. Patrice Lewison was at the other end of the range, she’s probably been out almost as long as I have. But it’s not boarding school. You don’t go there to make friends. You go there to get out.”
“By getting better.”
“Or worse. If you get sick enough, if you get so thin your health is compromised, they’ll take you out by helicopter to one of the Baltimore hospitals. Didn’t you see the helicopter landing pad when you were there?”
No, Tess had missed that.
A key scraped the lock, and the door opened. A tall, broad-shouldered woman who looked vaguely Scandinavian crossed the threshold. She carried a bag of groceries in her sturdy arms.
“Devon-you have a friend?” It was a cautious question, deferential, asked in slightly stilted English.
“A friend of a friend.” Devon replied swiftly. Tess didn’t mind letting this woman know who she was, but she realized secrecy was a natural impulse for Devon. There was a furtiveness about the girl, an inevitable by-product of eating disorders.
“Is she staying for lunch?”
“No,” Devon said firmly.
“I just came to ask Devon if she knew where I could find an old friend. She helped me out quite a bit.”
“I see.” The woman went into the kitchen and began putting away the groceries. “What do you wish for lunch today, Devon?”
Devon put her fingers to her mouth, began chewing on her nails. “I ate on campus,” she began.
“Devon.” The woman’s voice was sharp, but friendly, as if this were all a great joke, a daily ritual.
“Soup?” Devon spoke as if this were a quiz and she might provide the right answer. “With crackers.”
“A soup with things in it, I think,” her roommate said. “Not tomato or broth, but chicken with noodles or beef with vegetables.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “Okay. Let me walk Miss Monaghan to the door, and I’ll come back and eat my soup.”
She accompanied Tess not just to the front door, but to the apartment’s entrance, and out to the sidewalk. “I’m sorry about Gwen. I really am. I probably should have cried or something, but nothing in my body works right anymore, not even my emotions. I’m too shocked to cry.”
“You didn’t know her that well,” Tess offered.
“No, but-I can’t believe she’s been dead so long, and I didn’t know it. That the world didn’t know it. You’d think it would be national news, Dick Schiller’s daughter being killed. You sure it was November sixteenth last year?”
“Positive,” Tess said.
“It seems like such a long time ago. Hilde upstairs, that woman you just met, she moved in with me a year ago. She’s another one of my conditions, you see. My parents didn’t want me to live on campus because college girls get so weird about food. But they didn’t trust me to be on my own. So they pay that Valkyrie to live with me, watch my food intake. Nineteen, with a governess. It’s quite a way to live, isn’t it?”
She sniffed the breeze, which carried the smell of frying onions and greasy meat and cheese. A wonderful smell in Tess’s opinion, but Devon recoiled a little bit, as if the aroma alone might enter her body somehow, sneak a calorie or two into her system.
“Devon, are you…better?”
“That’s a relative term, isn’t it? But yes, I’m better.”
“Are you well?”
She smiled, shook her head. “No, I’ve pretty much destroyed myself. I’ll never have children, I’ve shortened my lifespan, my organs are all fucked up. When I wake up in the morning, I can barely find my pulse. Sometimes, I think I’m dead. Then again, I all but died several times before I went to Persephone’s.”
“Did Persephone’s help you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was in a lot of places, five in all. My cousin Sarah will beat that record before long. I liked some more than others, but they were pretty much all the same. A little therapy, a little medication, all kinds of behavior modification. None of it worked for me. At some point, I decided to get well. I happened to be at Persephone’s when that happened. Sometimes, I think the intersection of desire and treatment can’t be faked, or orchestrated. It’s a decision. You decide to live. Then you spend the rest of your life second-guessing that decision.”