The Boarding House (26 page)

Ellie blinked. It was the word
hell
that made her focus.

“Sophie says you shouldn’t curse, but hell is real, Daddy showed me.”

Ellie began to cry again, huge silent tears. “Do you hear that? Listen. The ghost baby’s crying.”

Corbett’s head was swimming again. Had to be the cold medicine.

“Ma’am, if you would just—”

“My name is Elizabeth Ann, but you can call me Ellie. I’m tired. I need to go lay down now. Cinnamon, what did you do with my pills?”

“I flushed them down the toilet.”

Ellie leaned against the porch post. “I just want to sleep and never wake up.” She looked up at the officer. “Make her give me my pills.”

Doris had enough. They would never make sense of this unless she said what she knew.

“Officer Corbett, I can help straighten all this out.”

At that point, Fredericks and Stanton emerged from the house. Both of them were pale. One glanced at Ellie, then quickly looked away.

“We found the body,” Fredericks said. “And videos. A lot of videos.”

“That does it,” Corbett muttered. “Paul, get the captain over here ASAP.”

“Please, you have to listen to me,” Doris said. “Ellie can’t help it. She’s always been this way.”

Corbett squatted down in front of Ellie. “Miss, what’s your name?”

“Who are you talking to?” Cinnamon asked.

“I think he means Ellie,” Sophie said. “Officer, did you want to talk to Ellie? If you do, we’ll have to get her. She doesn’t know how this works, but we do.”

Doris patted her shoulder. “I’ve got this Sophie. Let me explain.”

Ellie put her hands over her ears and began to rock back and forth. “I still hear that baby. Somebody needs to make it stop.”

Doris took a deep breath. “The only person who’s real is Ellie. The others are people she’s made up in her mind. I read up on it once. They call it multiple personality disorder.”

“I’m as real as I need to be,” Cinnamon snapped.

Corbett stood abruptly and took a step back as Doris continued to explain.

“That’s Cinnamon. She’s a friend who’s Ellie’s age. Wyatt is her twin and Sophie Crawford is her nanny. Ellie got the nanny after her mother committed suicide when she was twelve.”

“It doesn’t freakin’ matter,” Wyatt said. “All he needs to know is that Daddy’s dead and I’m the one who killed him.”

Stifling the urge to curse, Corbett grabbed Ellie’s arm.

“Stand up, miss. You’re going to the police station.”

Wyatt did as he’d been told and started walking toward the cruiser when all of a sudden he stumbled. By the time he caught himself, Ellie was back and trembling violently.

“Keep moving, kid.”

“My name is Ellie.”

Even though he was sympathetic to what she’d been through, he still hadn’t bought into this multiple personality crap.

“Keep moving, Ellie.”

But Ellie wouldn’t budge. “Wait. What are they going to do with Daddy?”

“You don’t need to worry about that. You’ve got enough trouble of your own.”

Panic spread so fast Ellie could barely breathe.

“No! You don’t understand. Tell them. Tell them Doris. Tell the people at the funeral home. Tell the police. Tell whoever needs to know that they can’t bury him by Momma. She does not deserve to spend eternity beside the man who murdered her.” She began talking louder and louder until her words were a scream. “Does anybody hear me? Do not bury him. I am his daughter. I am telling you. I do not want him to be buried.”

Corbett flinched. He got her point. “Look, Ellie, I’ll pass your message along. I promise.”

“Tell them to cremate him and keep the ashes.”

“Yes, I’ll pass that along, too. Now get in the squad car.”

“Come on Ellie. We have to go,” Wyatt said.

Corbett put Ellie in the back of the squad car and then shut the door.

Ellie flinched when the door slammed shut. “Where are they taking us?”

“To jail.”

“Oh Wyatt
 . . .
what have you done?”

“Something I should have done a long time ago.”

“Is he really dead?”

“Yes, he’s really dead.”

Ellie exhaled slowly, then leaned against the seat and closed her eyes.

“Maybe that ghost baby won’t follow us to the jail. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep and never wake up.”

Ultimately, it was Doris’s statement
to the police, confirming her knowledge of the number of years Ellie had lived with alternate personalities, that was the turning point in keeping charges from being filed, and the fact that she’d personally witnessed Garrett Wayne’s deathbed confession of killing his wife.

The District Attorney sat down with Ellie Wayne and her court-appointed attorney, thinking he was going to see a young girl who’d had a fight with her father playing the insanity defense. But her mental condition was fairly obvious and after reviewing the tapes confiscated from Garrett Wayne’s bedroom, he knew there wouldn’t be a jury in the nation that would find her guilty. The only obvious issue at this point was that she was a danger to herself. After refusing to prosecute, the court ordered her to Mind and Body, a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Memphis.

Ellie was finally safe from prosecution
—safe from the abuse that she’d endured all her life—but she was still broken, still hearing her ghost baby and still wishing she was dead. She didn’t know it yet, but her future was now in the hands of Doctor Aaron Tyler, the Chief of Psychiatry at Mind and Body.

Ellie’s arrival at the hospital was all a blur. By the time she was taken to her new living quarters, she was numb. It was nothing like her room at home. No soft carpeting. No television. Nothing personal. Just a bed, a dresser and a bathroom with a shower. Ellie noted the changes without comment. The only thing she wanted in life was for the baby to stop crying.

As soon as the aide left her alone, she sat down on the side of the bed, testing the mattress, and realized it lacked comfort as well as style. Her head throbbed from the noise and she put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes, willing the room to silence, but the baby still cried.

She got up and poked around the bathroom, then flushed the toilet to see if it worked. The water ran slowly and sluiced around and around in the bowl for a very long time before it finally went down, which didn’t bode well for future visits.

Ellie couldn’t imagine what she was supposed to do in this place. She heard Cin and Sophie talking, saying it was like jail for crazy people.

What had Wyatt gotten them into?

The aide who’d brought Ellie to her room had left her suitcase by the door. When she dragged it to the bed to unpack, she was surprised to find a note from Doris.

Dear Ellie,

Don’t worry about anything here. I’ll take care of the house for you until you come home. The executor of your estate has taken your Momma’s jewelry into safekeeping for you, especially your ring. Your Daddy was cremated according to your wishes, and his ashes are being held at the funeral home until you come to claim them.

I want you to know how dear you are to me, and how sorry I am that I never knew what was happening. I wish you had told me. I would have helped.

You are a good girl, Ellie. Never doubt that.

Do what the doctors tell you to do and get well soon. I sent some of your favorite clothes. If you need more, send word.

Love, Doris

Doris was Ellie’s last link to her past, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to retain that connection. She laid the letter aside and began putting her clothes in the dresser.

“It’s too bad there’s not a rug,” Sophie said.

Ellie glanced at the gray and white tiles. “I guess.”

Sophie wasn’t through with her critique as she eyed the walls and the curtainless windows with obvious disdain. “I had no idea there was a shade of green this color. What would you call it
 . . .
puce
?”

“Don’t you mean
puke
?” Cinnamon asked.

Sophie frowned. “I don’t particularly like the word
puke
. It’s so common. The proper term is vomit, you know. And I swear I don’t know where they think we’re supposed to sleep. There’s only one bed.”

Cinnamon laughed. “Get real, Sophie. You know we don’t need separate rooms.” She fell backward onto the bed with her arms outstretched and then noticed a water stain on the ceiling that looked a little like a giraffe.

Sophie frowned. “I’ve always had my own room.”

Wyatt felt Ellie’s panic welling. “Shut up, both of you.”

They both looked at Ellie and quickly apologized. She was trembling again.

“We’re sorry honey. It doesn’t matter. Wyatt and I are still here for you,” Sophie said.

“Absolutely,” Cinnamon said.

Ellie put her hands over her ears, crawled onto the bed and rolled up into a ball. She didn’t care where she was or where she slept. She just wanted it to be quiet.

Wyatt sat down beside her. “You have an appointment with a shrink named Tyler in a couple of days.”

Ellie rolled over onto her back. Wyatt was always the voice of reason.

“You go, Wyatt. You’re the one who shot Daddy.”

Wyatt sighed. “That’s not how they’re going to see it.”

Sophie patted Ellie’s leg. “He’s right. We love you, but they don’t know us.”

Ellie persisted. “But they will if you go with me to the appointment.”

“So we’ll all go with you at first. If we’re lucky, he’ll be cute,” Cin said.

Sophie frowned. “Seriously, Cinnamon, you need your head examined.”

Cin burst into laughter. “Then we’re in the right place.”

“I can’t believe I’m stuck in here with three women,” Wyatt muttered. He felt Ellie’s shock, and quickly added. “. . . with the exception of Ellie.”

Aaron Tyler had read Elizabeth Wayne’s
file and was ready to begin therapy, but he liked to give patients a couple of days to settle in before he began. A part of him felt guilty that he was looking forward to meeting this patient. He’d never met a multiple before, although he’d certainly studied them. He’d requested the videos the police had confiscated, to understand what she had been enduring for the past eighteen years. It would be necessary in order for him to be able to help her heal. But when the tapes arrived, it didn’t take long for him to see that no amount of studying could have prepared him for this.

Viewing the abuse and degradation she had suffered from such an early age made him considerably empathetic. He was going to have to keep himself focused on the issues and not be swayed by the trauma of her life.