Ellie waited. The sentence remained a fragment, swallowed by the stillness in the room. “But what?”
Julia finally looked up at her. “Maybe . . . I’m not good enough.”
Ellie saw how vulnerable her sister was right now and knew she needed to say just the right thing; it was a talent she’d rarely possessed. “Dad used to tell me all the time how brilliant you were, how you were going to light up the world with your brightness. We all saw it. Of course you’re good enough.”
Julia made a funny sound, almost a snort. “Dad? You must be joking. All he ever thought about was himself.”
Ellie was so stunned by that observation that it took her a moment to marshal a response. “Dad? He had huge dreams for us. Well, me, he gave up on by the second failed marriage, but you—you were his pride and joy.”
“Are we talking about Big Tom Cates, who used up all the air in the room and squashed his wife’s personality?”
Ellie laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of that. “Are you kidding? He adored Mom. He couldn’t breathe without her.”
“And she couldn’t breathe beside him. She left him once, for two days. Did you know that? When I was fourteen.”
Ellie frowned. “That time she went to Grandma Dotty’s? She came right back.” Ellie made an impatient gesture with her hand. “The point is, they both believed in you, and it would break their hearts to see you questioning yourself. What would you do right now if you were your old self and that girl upstairs needed your help?”
Julia shrugged. “I’d go up and try something radical. See if a little shaking up would help.”
“So, do it.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then you try something else. It’s not like she’ll kill herself if you’re wrong.” Ellie realized a second too late what she’d said. When she looked at Julia, saw her sister’s pale face and watery eyes, it all finally fell into place. “That’s it, isn’t it? This is about what happened in Silverwood. I should have figured it out.”
“Some things . . . scar you.”
Ellie couldn’t imagine how heavy that weight was, how her sister could bear it. But there was still only one thing to say. “You’ve got to keep trying.”
“And what if I’m not helping her enough? The doctors at the care facility—”
“Are assholes.” She leaned forward, made eye contact. “Remember when you came home for Dad’s funeral? You were in the middle of your surgical rotation. I asked you how you could stand it . . . knowing that if you screwed up, people could die.”
“Yeah.”
“You said, and I quote: ‘That’s part of being a doctor.’ You said that sometimes you just kept going because you had to.”
Julia closed her eyes and sighed. “I remember.”
“Well, now is the time to keep going. That little girl upstairs needs you to believe in yourself.”
Julia glanced up the stairs. It was a long moment before she said, “If I were going to do something radical, I’d need your help.”
“What can I do?”
Julia’s frown was there and gone so quickly Ellie thought she’d imagined it. Then Julia stood. “Find a place in the shadows, park your butt, and sit quietly.”
“And?”
“And wait.”
JULIA FELT A SURPRISING BUOYANCY IN HER STEP AS SHE WENT UP THE stairs. Until the conversation downstairs, she hadn’t even realized that she’d been quietly giving up. Not on Alice; never that. On herself. More and more often, in the deepest, darkest hours of the night, she’d been questioning her abilities, wondering if she was helping Alice or hurting her, wondering about Amber and the other victims. The more she wondered about it all, the weaker she became, and the weaker she became, the more she wondered. It was a vicious cycle that could destroy her.
She squared her shoulders and tilted her chin up, adopting a winner’s stance. Combined with this fledging hope of Maybe I’m still okay, it gave her the strength to open her old bedroom door.
Alice lay in her bed, curled up like a little cinnamon roll. As always, she was on top of the covers. No matter how cold the room got, she never pulled the blankets over her.
Julia glanced at the clock. It was nearing six o’clock. Any minute, Alice would wake from her nap. The child was like a Japanese train in the adherence to her routine. She woke at five-thirty every morning, took a nap from four-thirty to six, and fell asleep at 10:45 each night. Julia could have set her watch by it; that schedule had allowed them to conduct the press conferences.