As Bright as Heaven(91)

“Wait, Jamie!” I call out.

I cross the sitting room to the sofa and lift the rucksack up off the floor. Some of the contents start to spill out the opening and I pause to coax a pair of socks and a shaving brush back inside.

It’s when I do this that I see them inside the rucksack, tied loosely together with a piece of twine—all the letters I ever wrote to Jamie, from the very first one to the last.





CHAPTER 57



Evelyn


The contents of Ursula’s pencil box are spread out before me. The photograph. The list. The train ticket. Rita’s letter. The key. The coins. Perhaps I ought not to have brought them home with me, but I don’t have the time at the hospital to ponder them like I want to. Like I need to. Downstairs, Willa and Alex are playing some kind of game where she plays a song on the piano and Alex must run around the room tagging things. Maggie is out with Palmer planning her wedding and Papa is at a businessmen’s meeting.

Another week has gone by, and while I’m now sure I know why Ursula tried to hang herself, I am no closer to having her tell me the reason for it herself. When I brought the pencil box to the hospital from the Prinsens’ and shared with Dr. Bellfield what Rita Dabney had said about Ursula’s baby brother, I asked him what he thought we should do with this information. He, of course, turned the question back on me.

“What do you advise?” he said.

“I want her to trust me with her past,” I said, thinking out loud, “so that she will trust me to help her with her future. So I don’t think I should tell her yet that I went into her private space and took her things.”

“Continue,” he said, giving me no indication if he agreed with me. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe Dr. Bellfield is the type to produce the pencil box at a session and see what kind of reaction he gets.

“I’m thinking I should start with where she last was—at the Prinsens’—and go backward one step at a time, rather than yanking her all the way to the beginning of her troubles and trying to move her forward from there.”

“And how do you plan to sustain this protracted backward momentum?”

He asked it nicely enough, but I could see what he was getting at. To keep Ursula taking backward steps to the moment she stood at the river’s edge with her baby brother, I would have to have compelling reasons for her to keep moving.

“I need to ask the right questions,” I said.

“And if she does not answer them? What is your plan then?”

“I . . . I don’t know yet.”

“I am intrigued by what you have uncovered, Miss Bright. And I will allow you to move ahead as you have suggested—for the time being, anyway. Let’s see how the patient is in two weeks.”

I knew two weeks would not be enough time. I needed more information to ask better questions. I needed to talk to Rita Dabney myself instead of guessing at what her letter meant. “May I travel to Camden to speak with Ursula’s family?” I’d asked.

“You told me they did not wish to be contacted.”

“Yes, that message was passed on to me by Agnes Prinsen, but I did not agree to that request.”

“I am guessing they will decline to speak to you.”

“They might.”

Dr. Bellfield had crinkled his brow. “You have other patients, Miss Bright. You will always have other patients. You cannot become involved to this depth with each one. You will exhaust yourself.”

“But this is one I think I can help.”

He had said I could go. I finished with my other duties and then grabbed my coat and umbrella to walk up to the station and catch the next train across the river into New Jersey. A steady rain was falling and I knew despite my umbrella I would likely be soaking wet when I got to the platform, but I didn’t want to wait until a drier day to go to Camden. Dr. Bellfield had given me only fourteen days.

As I stepped through the front doors, Conrad Reese was coming inside to visit Sybil, and he was shaking the water off his own umbrella.

“Good afternoon, Miss Bright.” Raindrops glistened on his black wool coat like tiny shards of glass. “You have to go out in this?”

“I’m afraid so. Not far, though. Just to the train station.”

“That’s six blocks!”

I only have two weeks! I wanted to say. “I’ve got an umbrella,” I said instead.

“Please allow me to drive you to the station. You can’t walk in this. You’ll be drenched before you get to the cross street.”

His kind offer was so unexpected I fumbled for a response. “That’s . . . that’s too much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all. My car’s right here and I’ve only just arrived.”

“But you’ve come to see Sybil.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and I could read the unspoken words in that look. Sybil didn’t know he was coming, and she wouldn’t be put out that he’d been detained. She wouldn’t recognize him when he did finally get inside the hospital. And she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Please,” he finally said. “It’s the least I can do. You’ve been so kind to my wife. I see the extra care you give her. It would be a mere token of my gratitude.”

A minute later I was inside his Buick touring car and we were headed to the station.