How did he know? Then, to answer my question, he told me, gave me the final punch to the gut. “Izzy told me everything.”
“Wha…” I felt all the air go out of me, scrambled for words as my daughter’s betrayal reverberated through my entire body. “What did she tell you? She must have misunderstood—”
“She showed me the video she made, Alison.”
“Video?” I said weakly, remembering the way Izzy had held the phone as she talked. Was the camera on me the whole time?
“She recorded it,” Mark said. “When you went into her room and told her about your mother being possessed. How you believe the demon is after Olivia. Izzy recorded it because she was worried about you.” He looked at me, the anger and hurt from earlier replaced by something far worse: pity. “Is this really what you think, Alison? And even if youdobelieve it—you’re going to pull Izzy into this? Ask her to help you? She’s a child, for God’s sake.”
“I thought—”I thought I could trust her. I thought she’d understand. “I know it sounds crazy. It sounds made-up. But if you’d look at the facts. If you’d just listen, then I think—”
“No. I’m not going to listen to this. I can’t. I won’t. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re not yourself.”
“My thinking is perfectly clear.”
“Is it?”
He looked again at the jumbled mess on my worktable: the drawings, books, and frantically scribbled notes on demons and binding spells.
“Alison, your mother told me about your hospitalization in high school. About your dissociative episodes. Your suicide attempt.”
I forced my words out through a clenched jaw. “I bet she did.”
“Your mother isn’t the enemy here. She’s worried about you. We’re all worried about you.”
“So you keep saying.”
“Tell me I don’t need to be worried. Tell me that these thoughts you’re having make sense to you. That you haven’t had any periods of missing time, that you remember each minute of each day, that you’re clear and present and here with us all the time.”
“Of course I am,” I said.
But it was a lie, wasn’t it? Did he see it in my face, the shadow of the truth?
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to be around your mother or the girls right now,” he said.
His words knocked the breath out of me. “Wha—at? You’re kidding, right?”
Not safe? What did he think I was capable of? And couldn’t he see that I was the only oneprotectingthe girls?
“I’ve made some calls. The clinic in New Hampshire I was telling you about—the Rabbit Hill Inn—they specialize in trauma, in dissociation.” He spoke clearly and calmly, in his taking-control-of-things teacher voice. “I talked to the director—Dr. Hinesburg. He thinks you’ll really benefit from their program and he’s got an opening. It’s a beautiful place in the mountains, they do art, there’s even an indoor swimming pool. We’ll have a nice Christmas here, then the next day, the twenty-sixth, they’ll have a bed waiting for you.”
I barked out a bitter laugh. “This isn’t the turn of the century, Mark. You can’t just decide I’m a madwoman and ship me off to the asylum.”
He frowned. “I don’t want to ship you off anywhere. I was hoping you’d see that this is a way to help you. That you need a break. Some space. Some time to deal with things. I’m hoping you’ll go willingly: if not for yourself or me, then for the girls.”
His words pierced me, twisted their way in like a corkscrew.
“You know I would do anything for our girls,” I said.
He nodded at me curtly. “It’s decided, then. I’ll drive you over the day after Christmas. Penny and Louise will come stay with the girls and your mother. I’ve already spoken to them.”
It was all planned, decided. Even Penny and Louise were in on it.
I was backed into a corner with no way out. If I refused, it would only be more evidence that I “needed a break”—and I suspected that between Izzy’s recording, my drawings and notes, and the invented therapist, it wouldn’t be difficult to convince a doctor that I was a danger to myself or others, and I’d end up admitted to a psych hospital with or without my consent.
I took a deep breath and blew it out.
“Okay,” I said. I even managed a smile, though I felt my eyes filling with tears.
