The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(69)

His face instantly closed up, and a steel door came down.

“Don’t you dare put this on me,” he said.

“I’m not. Please.”

“Why are you fixated on Jim?” he asked. “What’s between the two of you?”

“He’s dangerous,” she said, and Carter’s shoulders slumped and he turned away from her bed. “I know you think he hangs the moon but he is a dangerous person, more dangerous than you know.”

And for a moment, she thought about telling him what she’d read all those weeks ago. After she’d read that passage in Dracula about him needing to be invited into a home, she’d sat down and read the entire book again and halfway through she’d come across a sentence that brought her up short and made her hands turn cold.

He can command all the meaner things, Van Helsing told the Harkers, explaining the powers of Dracula. The rat, and the owl, and the bat…

The rat.

In that moment, she knew who was responsible for Miss Mary’s death. Rarely had she known something with such certainty. Patricia thought about what Carter would say if he knew that his friend had put his mother into the hospital, one hand stripped of its skin, the soft tissues torn from her face. She also knew with certainty that if she said that to Carter he would never let her out of this room.

“I wish you were having an affair with him,” Carter said. “It would make your fixation easier to understand. But this is sick.”

“He’s not who you think he is,” she said.

“Do you know what is at stake here?” he asked. “Do you know the toll your obsession is taking on your family? If you continue down this path you will lose everything we have built together. Everything.”

She thought about Blue coming into the kitchen for a snack and seeing her convulsing on the yellow linoleum and all she wanted to do was hold on to her baby and reassure him she was all right. That everything would be all right. But it wasn’t all right, not as long as James Harris lived down the street.

Carter walked to the door. He stopped when he got there and made a big production out of talking to her without turning around.

“I don’t know if you care,” he said. “But they’ve put together a search committee to replace Haley.”

“Oh, Carter,” she croaked, genuinely upset for him.

“Everyone heard you were on a psychiatric hold,” he said. “Haley came down this morning to tell me I need to focus on my family right now and not my career. Your actions affect other people, Patricia. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you.”

He left her alone in the room, and she watched the sun creep across the Basic Sciences building and tried to imagine life ever being normal again. She had ruined everything. Everything anyone knew about her had been destroyed by what she had done. From now on she would be unstable no matter what she did. How would her children ever trust her again? The smell of meatballs made her feel sick.

A clatter at the door and she turned back to see Carter ushering in Korey and Blue. Korey slumped forward, hair hanging in her face, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and her white jeans with rips over the knees. Blue wore his navy shorts and a red Iraq-na-phobia T-shirt. He carried a thick library book called Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account. Korey dragged the only chair across the floor and dropped it as far away from Patricia as she could get. Blue leaned against the wall beside her.

Patricia wanted to hold her babies so badly and she reached out to them and something yanked her wrists. She looked down, confused, and saw that her wrists were tied to the bed with thick black Velcro straps.

“Carter?”

“They didn’t know if you were a flight risk,” he said. “I’ll ask to have them taken off when I see the doctor.”

But Patricia knew he had done this on purpose. When she was unconscious, he had told them she was a flight risk, because this was how he wanted the children to see her. Fine, he could play his games, but she was still their mother.

“Blue,” she said. “I’d like a hug if that’s okay with you.”

He opened his book and pretended to read, leaning against the wall.

“I’m sorry you saw me that way,” Patricia said to him in a low, calm voice. “I did a stupid thing and I took too many of my pills and they made me sick. I might have gotten brain damage if you hadn’t been brave enough to call 911. Thank you for doing that, Blue. I love you.”

He opened his book wider, and then wider, pressing its covers toward each other, and from across the room, Patricia heard its spine crack.

“Blue,” she said. “I know you’re angry at me, but that’s not how we treat books.”

He dropped his book on the floor with a thud, and when he bent over to pick it up, he lifted it by the pages and several of them tore off in his hand.

“You’re mad at me, son,” Patricia said. “Not at the book.”

Then he was screaming, face red, shaking the book by its pages, the covers flopping back and forth.

“Shut up!” he screamed, and Korey stuck her fingers in her ears and hunched lower. “I hate you! I hate you! You tried to kill yourself because you’re crazy and now you’re tied to the bed and you’re going to be sent to a mental hospital. You don’t love any of us! All you care about are your stupid books!”