“And it has come to my attention recently—this not yet being on record—that she’s regularly hallucinated a woman playing the pianoforte who’s been dead for many years. A woman she never could have met. So you see, Dr. Turner, she is truly unwell and always has been. And even in her moments of lucidity, we must not lose sight of that. As I told her, broken vessels may be glued back together, but they will always be cracked and prone to break again.”

Turner shifted his weight. What was the truth?

Only one thing was certain. She was orphaned and alone. Struggling through grief. Turner glanced at the heavy door with the impossibly tiny window, caging her in. Yet she had lived caged before, he sensed. Suffering placed thick walls around a person that no one ever wanted, bars over a window that allowed them to merely look out at the sunshine so many others enjoyed every day. Many sat there in utter silence for years too—not because they were afraid to call for help, but because their voices were already hoarse for trying.

Perhaps that, in the end, was what broke them so completely.

Thornhill lowered his voice. “She isn’t Dahlia, Turner. You mustn’t fear everyone will come to the same end.”

Mitchell studied his superintendent, the swoop of saggy skin under his eyes, long white hair forced over thin spots on his head, and a wall of bitterness rose between Mitchell and this man. If only Thornhill wasn’t his superior. If only the man had any clue of what Mitchell had gone through—how very unclinical it was. “What happened to her does make me think twice about what should happen to Miss Fletcher. She has suffered a great loss and has long endured affliction over it. It’s time someone actually helped her.”

“A long affliction.” Thornhill stood with arms crossed over his chest. “You sound as though you’re making a case for her to move into long-stay. Is that your professional suggestion?”

Long-stay. She’d be in his care, and he’d be able to shield her. To help her. What was Greer’s research he’d come across about the effects of severe trauma on the brain? He could help her, perhaps ease some of the wounds she’d borne. She was worth saving. They all were.

But long-stay also meant exactly that—a stay so long it never ended. He looked up at his superior and weighed the two terrible options before him.

17

Imagination creates reality.

~Richard Wagner

I lay hurting and bruised on the floor of the solitary confinement cell where I’d been tossed. They had called this unknown Cora Fletcher erratic and violent, and everything I’d done recently only proved that. Even Dr. Turner himself, who had tried standing up for me, had witnessed my worst. No wonder they thought me mad.

Maybe I was.

Then I’d never leave.