Help for the Haunted(105)

“Is that when you turned to my mother and father?” I asked.

Mrs. Sanino tilted her head, her mouth dropping open into an oval shape that made me think of a Christmas caroler. “Your parents?” she said after a moment. “We never took her to them. Although I read all about your mother and father, and saw them interviewed on TV, we did not meet.”

“But if you didn’t seek them out, then how—”

“My daughter came to know your sister when we sent her away to Saint Julia’s.”

This was not the story I’d been expecting after all. I needed a moment to adjust things in my mind, but Emily Sanino didn’t allow for that.

“As you no doubt have learned about me,” she pushed on, “I’m not afraid to take a road trip while my husband is away from the house. Nick is an officer three towns over, so he doesn’t get home certain days when he’s doing a double on patrol duty. I’d tell him I was going to see my sister over in Dover. Really, I snuck away to visit our daughter. During those trips, that’s when I met Rose. Did you ever go to see her there, Sylvie?”

“No. My father promised that we would, but he kept putting it off. He told us the staff prohibited visits, because it created setbacks in the behavior of the girls there.”

Emily scoffed. “Well, he wasn’t lying. That was their policy. No visitors. For the first thirty days anyway.”

“Ninety,” I said, remembering how endless that summer seemed without her.

“No,” she told me. “I’d remember if it was that long. But either way, they didn’t welcome the influence of the outside world at that place. Still, I didn’t care. I never wanted to send her there in the first place. Even if I couldn’t bring her home for good, I found a way to sneak her out for the day. And those times, well, they were the first in a great while that my daughter actually seemed happy to see me. Rose usually managed to sneak out too and join us.”

“Where did you go?”

“No place special. Hiking. Walking in the park. But it felt special. Those girls were like prisoners set free. Every little thing made them laugh. We’d stop for ice cream before heading back to Saint Julia’s, and it was as though I was giving them the treat of their lives. They were that grateful, that happy.”

I tried to place my sister in the scenario she described, laughing, eating ice cream. Instead, what I conjured was the memory of trips to the ice cream parlor with my parents during the months Rose was gone, the strange guilty peace I felt during that time. Those memories led me to say, “My sister didn’t last there more than that summer.”

“Neither did my daughter.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know exactly. She had agreed to stay there originally for a full six months. But then one morning, the psychiatrist from Saint Julia’s called to tell us they found her room empty. She left just like that. And, really, she was free to go all along since she was of age.”

“Did she come home?”

[page]“She knew better, I’m sure. Her father would have sent her right back. So instead, she just . . . disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

Emily Sanino stood and went to that side table and pulled back the curtain to look outside. I wanted to tell her that we’d hear the patrol car well before seeing it, but instead I simply repeated the word, “Disappeared?”

“We’ve not heard from her since,” she said in a stiff voice, letting go of the curtain and pressing her fingertips to the sides of her eyes, as though forcing back tears. After a moment, she took a breath and turned to me. “Now that you know everything you came to find out, we need to get you out of here. How will you get home if you—”

“Wait,” I said. “I still don’t understand why you’ve been coming to our house.”

That question gave her a long pause. She stared at me, blinking, before saying, “When I read about what happened to your mother and father, Sylvie, I thought of how special those days with Rose had been. The idea of that poor girl on her own raising you, well, it broke my heart. I remembered how she used to devour the food I brought on those trips, so I decided the least I could offer was more of that nourishment. It’s what the Bible teaches, after all: charity of the heart.”

“Well, thank you for remembering us. I only wish you’d left notes, so we knew who it was from. Didn’t you ever think to do that?”

“Yes. But I didn’t want to open old wounds. I’m sure Rose doesn’t exactly want reminders of her time at Saint Julia’s. My guess is she never speaks of it. Am I right?”

I nodded. My brain felt fuzzy with the events of the day. I tried to think of what more I could ask, but just then, Emily Sanino’s back stiffened. A moment later, I heard a car motoring down the street. “I need you to leave,” she said, peeking through the curtains as the flash of lights washed over her. “How will you get back to Dundalk?”

“I don’t know,” I told her, standing. We walked to the kitchen, and she pressed a hand on my back to get me there faster.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I didn’t plan things. I just came here without—”

Outside in the driveway, a door slammed. Emily grabbed her purse from the table and told me to hold out my hands. When I did she shook the contents of her wallet—coins, bills, stray coupons, shopping lists—into my palms. A few stray pennies fell to the floor and scattered at my feet, but I didn’t bother to pick them up. “I’m sorry,” she told me, her voice an urgent whisper. “But I can’t let my husband know about any of this. There’s a pay phone in front of the firehouse on West Shore Drive. You can call a taxi from there. You should have more than enough money to get home.”