Page 76 of Mirror Image

“You really are out of your mind!” I spat, palm pressed to my stinging cheek.

“Go ahead, Mary, Mary, quite contrary!” she taunted. “How does your garden grow?”

She also knew exactly which buttons to push. I felt my resolve to remain calm crumble to dust at my feet as I shoved her shoulders hard enough to send her stumbling back several feet across the tile floor.

“You bitch!” she screeched, lunging for me.

But I ducked out of the way just in time, and she hit the counter with a grunt before rounding to find me already back in the living room, coffee table between us and phone in hand.

“Come near me again, and I’m going to call the police,” I threatened, thumb poised over the big green button that would connect me to a 911 operator.

That was when she dove at me across the table, dragging me forward by the collar of my shirt and sending the phone flying under the couch. We hit the floor, rolling around, pulling hair and throwing punches, scratching, and cursing. All around us lamps, books, and assorted crap rained down from the tables and shelves above whenever we crashed, tumbled, stumbled, or fell. Neither of us paid any attention to the pounding on the door, and I remember thinking vaguely that someone had probably called the police. I didn’t care. At least, not until the moment the door flew open with so much force that it banged against the opposite wall with a cracking noise that stopped us both in our tracks.

Sweaty and panting, I found myself staring across the room at two pairs of shoes. As my eyes traveled upward slowly from feet to shins, shins to thighs, thighs to waist, I grew more certain of what—or rather, who—I was going to find when I finally ran out of body parts.

“Hello, Mary,” my mother said stiffly. Then she nodded at Sam, who lay flat on her back, chest heaving. “Samantha.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jenn

Sunday morning

After Jess died, everything in my life spun loose for a long time. I know what it looks like when someone’s coming apart. And I won’t stand by and watch that happen to Mary Langston. Not if I can change the trajectory.

As I stroll through the hospital parking lot toward the entrance to the building, I walk right past several journalists. They clock me, give me the once-over, decide I’m not someone who can offer them any intel, and return to their phones and their conversations. Which was the whole idea of dressing down this Sunday morning. I’m not very doctorly in well-worn jeans and Sketchers, hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Mission accomplished.

I smile, amused by the idea that they have no clue who I am and that I’m the one person—outside of Mary herself—who could give them the scoop they’re all so desperately looking for.

Up on the VIP floor, I find Mary sitting up in bed, reading. And while the scabs and abrasions on her face are healing nicely, her big icy eyes are ringed with deep, dark circles.

“Good morning,” I greet her softly and hold up a white bakery bag, shaking it. “Up for a little sugar/carb infusion? I’ve got fresh pastry from the Cuban bakery down the street.”

“Oh God, yes,” she agrees, and I set it on the tray table that hovers over her bed. She peers inside and pulls out a flaky morsel filled with sweet cheese and guava paste. She nibbles on the point of it, closing her eyes. “Mmm. Thank you. I needed this. I slept like shit last night.”

“How come?” I ask, pulling up a chair so I can sit at her side.

“Ugh. Nightmares. All night long. At one point I got so twisted up in the sheets, I had to call for a nurse to help me get untangled.”

“Do you remember what they were about?”

She pauses with the cup poised halfway to her chapped lips. “I dreamed about her,” she tells me after a beat of silence has passed between us.

“About Sam?”

She nods. “It was really upsetting. And . . . it made me remember some of what happened. Not all of it‚ but a lot more than I knew before.”

I have to be careful here, not wanting to spook her by seeming too interested. Or dissuade her by being not interested enough. But inside I’m doing a fist pump in the air. I knew it was in there somewhere; it was just a matter of time before it came floating up out of her subconscious.

“Okay. Can you tell me about that?”

“Well, I don’t remember all of it,” she tells me again quickly.

I hold up a reassuring palm.

“That’s totally fine. Anything is good. Sometimes things like this come back to you in flashes, like little pieces of a puzzle. You just keep collecting and sorting them until you have enough to put it all together.”