JUDITH BOEHLER WAS always surrounded by the finest money could buy—houses, vacations, clothes, schooling… always the finest, only the best would do where her family was concerned. So as she stared at the bars traveling vertically up her window, she smiled.
The bars were rusted steel. The cream paint was chipping on the inside of the windowsill, and her gown was fraying along the ties. She released a long breath, relieved. The air she was breathing was stale and she wondered if the vent was blocked. It was too high for her to reach, so she remained flat on her back on the bare mattress with the springs poking into her. Jude had a knack for lying very still for hours on end. This was how she stayed sane. This was how she survived.
Don’t give them anything.
Don’t give into them.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
She rolled over and looked down the space between the metal bed anchored to the floor and the dirty wall. Chewed up, dried pills were piling up. She took what she needed. She took the white one. The pink ones—she didn’t like. The recovery after the pink pills was tougher. They made the details harder to decipher. They were only about the big picture, the moments lost under the influence.
One more day. Hold on. One more day.
Friday finally arrived. January seventeenth.
Jude entered the foyer and waited, too weak to conquer the journey upstairs alone. Like every other time, she was returned worse for wear. Roman took her arm and helped her up the large staircase. She could have taken the elevator, but he knew she liked to walk, to regain her strength, to regain herself as soon as possible.
The door to her bedroom was open, the bed perfectly made. The damn posies mocked her return, taunting her. Roman released her and set her bag on the dresser. It contained her meds and a toothbrush. She wasn’t allowed anything else.
She stood there.
They had found her pile of pills in her room the night before and had watched her, forced her to take the pink one that morning. She struggled inside her own body, scratching at the shell that restrained her sanity. She screamed as loud as she could, but her mouth refused to open.
Feeling came back slowly, entering her pinky first and she wiggled it. Her feet were shoed in lead, but she pushed against the tidal wave of stagnant air of superiority that engulfed her. On her bed, she rolled to the side, every limb thick with her transgressions. Her thoughts were heavy with hazel eyes and kisses down her neck and lower, lower, and lower until she was sweating and breathless.
He had thanked her for giving herself to him—the first person she had given herself to willingly—and she missed him. Jude knew she had been reckless with his emotions. She knew it would end in tragedy. He was her very own Romeo, a tragedy to match his impossible eyes.
She closed hers to the daylight that shone through the open, sheer pink curtains. She closed her mind to the crazy thoughts. She closed her heart to the dangerous emotions Hazel had made her feel. She tried to block out the twelve thousand, three hundred, eighty-six pink posies. Smothering herself with her pillow, she was finally able to scream, her voice loud despite the down feathers.
Tears pricked while she went hoarse. She threw the pillow, her capacities working again. The frame on her vanity went crashing to the ground and she stilled until she realized what made that sound. Scrambling to her feet, she ran, dropping down into the broken glass, blood from her knees spotting the carpet.
The paper was scratched, the photo ripped at the corner. Holding it to her chest, she rocked, apologizing. Her brother deserved better than this, better than to be a ripped picture in his lost cause of a sister’s room. If Ryan were still here, they wouldn’t be here any longer. They’d be long gone. He’d promised. He’d promised her California and sunshine. He’d promised her so much… and broken all of them.
Standing up, she took the photo and the frame to the vanity and sat. Carefully she placed the photo back into the frame, knocking out any remaining glass before she closed the back and set it down. Seeing his smiling face, she felt conned and almost knocked it over again.
Catching her reflection, she stared into the large mirror. Standard issue results from her “stay” at Bleekman’s Recovery Center: Dark circles with a side of heavy bags, dirty hair, and cream-colored paint under her nails.
She simply stared, her mind flitting between the things she loved. Her stepfather came. He went. Her mother visited, sitting on the end of her bed, talking to her. Jude heard nothing. Ghosts that came in and out, mere reflections in the mirror. When it was dark, Nadia came in, stood behind her, resting her hands on her shoulders.
Jude was put in the shower, stripped of her clothes. Her dignity had been stripped away long ago, stolen during her first “stay” at Bleekman’s. Nadia scrubbed her clean of the recovery center, but failed to scrub deep enough to take away the scars beneath the pretty façade. Those were permanent. She would live with those as instructed through hushed tones as she floated away to happier times.
She emerged at dinner, sat politely, dressed up, her hair styled by Nadia, her nails with a clear coat of polish, her lips a pale pink. No dark circles. No bags. All as they liked her, loved her, in fact, reminding them of happier times. Their happier times.
Her appetite had been suppressed by the drugs running through her system. For her parents’ peace of mind, for show, she ate her soup and tried her best to stomach the roasted chicken. She was stuffed before finishing half. They didn’t complain. They knew the routine by now.
When she was excused from the table, she retreated back to her room. The shattered glass swept away before anyone would notice, much like her broken insides.
She took her pearl earrings off and set them on the jewelry tray. Sitting down at the vanity again, she took the makeup removal wipes, took two out, and dragged them slowly over her face, pulling her skin until she started to recognize more of herself, the distorted happy person she once was. Two days. She would feel better in two days. The countdown began…
JANUARY EIGHTEENTH.
The snow had turned to rain, ruining the carefully orchestrated arrangements Mrs. Stevens had planned. Dinner was moved from the conservatory to the formal dining room. The acoustics would suit polite dinner conversation better in the wood-paneled room.
The Barretts were the first to arrive. Betsy Barrett’s timeliness was better than Big Ben. Harold Barrett had just hung up the phone after telling his only son to hurry. Taylor Barrett reached the landing and shook Mr. Stevens’s hand and kissed Mrs. Stevens’s cheek, then her daughter, Clara, on the cheek, but Clara angled her head and his lips nearly landed on her mouth. They had known each other since they were four. They slept together at seventeen, on a drunken night in The Hamptons. And Clara had never forgotten the handsome Barrett boy.
The Barretts were ushered into the library and had drinks in their hands before their coats were taken away.
At twenty-five, Taylor didn’t feel like he fit in with the “adults” at the party. He smiled when he was supposed to, nodded whether he agreed or not. Except when his illness came up. He hated being discussed, dissected. He hated being their poster boy for charity, their platform for social climbing, the subject of idle chatter. Tonight he didn’t argue. He didn’t have the strength. The last week had worn him down. There were no Jude Boehlers in New York. He was angry: at himself, at her, at their perfect week. He hated the memories of her in his T-shirt. He hated the smell of smoke that lingered everywhere. He hated his kitchen where she cooked in the nude. He hated his bed where they fucked and made love, slept, and where he’d held her. He hated her. He wanted that week washed away so he never had to think of the frivolous girl again.