“Like you said,” Edward answers finally, a hitch in his voice like he’s finding it difficult to breathe, “it’s complicated.”
“Consider this part of my complication,” I explain, gesturing to the file cabinets. I open up the drawer markedA–C.
“Are you working for someone?”
“Working for who?” I don’t look at him, keep my gaze focused on one name after another.
“Whom,” Edward says reflexively, like the habit was drilled into him as a child, then adds, “My girlfriend hated when I did that. Corrected her grammar.” He pauses. “My ex-girlfriend, I mean.” He sounds, for a moment, confused, as though he’s forgotten that I asked him a question.
“Whomdo you think I might be working for?” I prompt him, ticking through the files with icy fingertips.
“A tabloid. TheStar, theSun, theEnquirer.” Now there’s suspicion in his voice. “Did they pay you to fake an eating disorder or something, like one of those actors who loses weight for a role, so you could dig up some celebrity’s file?”
“Who said I had an eating disorder?” I ask defensively. “Did you google me?”
“We promised not to.”
“Then did you get your care manager to tell you why I’m here?”
I run my fingers over the files, reading each name a second time, in case I missed the one I’m looking for.
“Of course not,” Edward snaps. “It’s just a guess. Anyway, my doctor wouldn’t tell me even if I asked.”
I slam the drawer shut.
“Since when do you have so much respect for the people who work here?”
“I don’t! But you have no right to look through other people’s files.”
“I’m not looking for just anyone’s file. I’m looking for my mother’s.”
I open the drawer markedH–J.
“Why?”
“Because this was the last place anyone ever saw her alive.”
Edward’s hand lands on my wrist, stopping my search. “Amelia, I had no idea.”
“I thought you knew.” This place may think it’s protecting itself by forgoing a website and relying on word of mouth for referrals, but it’s not exactly a well-kept secret. How can it be, when half the people who stay here are regularly stalked by the press? “Anyway, like I said, it’s complicated.”
“I get that, I really do.” Edward’s tone is gentle, like he doesn’t want to startle me. “But imagine how you’d feel if your family read the notes your doctor wrote about you.”
“My mother can’t feel anything.” I twist away from Edward’s grip. “She’s dead.”
Edward can’t understand what it’s like to discover something entirely new about a person after they’ve died, simultaneously getting to know them and coming up against the impossibility of knowing them any better than you did before.
Unless, that is, they spent the end of their life being observed by experts.
Maybe someone misfiled her. I go back to theD-Gdrawer that I skipped, then move on toK–M, and then the next, and the next. I look for her stage name, the name she was born with, her married name. I pass names I recognize—celebrities and politicians and the like. Apparently, this place doesn’t conceal their patients’ identities with fake names, like when Georgia used to check in to hotels under the name Janis Cobain.
“Shit!” I shout, slamming the final drawer shut. “It’s not here.”
“Then let’s get out of here.” Edward doesn’t wait for me before he turns toward the door, like he thinks just being in here, in proximity to other people’s confidential information, is a violation. I lag behind, shining my flashlight into corners and on top of the cabinets like Georgia’s file will magically appear. My light lands on a bulletin board beside the door. It’s mostly covered with mundane information:Lock Door Behind You;Turn Off Lights;Used Car for Sale!But I notice a piece of newsprint with a headline that reads,Rush’s Recovery Opening Soon.
I pull the article off the wall. It’s from a local paper, theShelter Island Reporter, dated December 2014, just over ten years ago. It mentions the Manhattan decorator who designed the interiors of the cottages, the landscape architects who planned the gardens. Whoever hung it here must not have noticed the subtle criticisms, like the suggestion that the Rushes paid off the local town council so they could convert property that had been a nature preserve into a rehab facility for the rich and famous. Below the headline is a grainy picture of three people standing in front of one of the glass cottages. The caption reads,The doctors Rush with their son on the property.
I suck on a papercut on my left pointer finger, my hands so cold that it doesn’t even hurt.
