He uncrossed his arms and stared at the table, and Judy knew she had touched the right nerve. She had come to understand that the other personalities had a deep love and a sense of responsibility for the younger ones.

“All right,” he said reluctantly. “I promise.”

What Tommy did not tell her was that when he first heard that he might be transferred to Lima, he had bought a razor blade from a trusty. Right now it was taped to the sole of his left foot. There was no reason to tell because no one had asked him. He had learned long ago that when you are transferred from one institution to another, you always bring along a weapon. He might not be able to break his promise by escaping, but at least he could defend himself if someone tried to rape him. Or else he could give it to Billy and let him cut his own throat.

Four days before the scheduled transfer to Harding Hospital, Sergeant Willis came down to the cell. He wanted Tommy to show him how he managed to get out of the strait jacket.

Tommy looked at the lean, balding officer with the fringes erf* gray hair framing his dark complexion and said with a frown, “Why should I?”

“You’re leaving here anyway,” Willis said. “I figure I’m not too old to learn something new.”

“You been okay to me, Sergeant,” Tommy said, “but I don’t give up my secrets that easy.”

“Look at it this way. You could help save someone’s life.” Tommy had turned away, but now he looked up, curious. “How’s that?”

“You’re not sick, I know that. But we’ve got other people in here who are. We put them in straits to protect them. If they got out, they might kill themselves. If you show me how you do it, we could prevent other people from doing it. You’d be saving fives.”

Tommy shrugged to show that didn’t concern him.

But the next day he showed Sergeant Willis his trick of taking off the strait jacket. Then he taught him how to put it on a person in such a way that he could never get out of it.

Late that night, Judy got a call from Dorothy Turner. “There’s another one,” Turner said.

“Another what?”

“Another personality we didn’t know about. A nineteen-year-old girl named Adalana.”

“Oh my God!” Judy whispered. “That makes ten.”

Dorothy described her late-night visit to the jail, how she had seen him sitting on the floor and heard him talking in a soft voice about needing love and affection. Dorothy had sat beside him, comforting him, wiping away his tears. Then “Adalana” talked of writing poetry in secret. She explained, tearfully, that only she had the ability to wish any of the others off the spot. Only Arthur and Christene, up to now, had known of her existence.

Judy tried to imagine the scene: Dorothy sitting on the floor, hugging Milligan.

"Why did she choose to reveal herself now?” Judy asked. “Adalana blames herself for what happened to the boys,” Dorothy said. “She’s the one who stole the time from Ragen at the time of the rapes.”