“Yeah, okay.” I pull my phone out and punch in her number, but it goes straight to voice mail. “She turned it off,” I tell him, my heart sinking.

“Try texting,” he suggests. “When she decides to turn it back on, your message will be waiting.”

I nod and look at my screen, ready to open my messages, when I see the alert across the top of my phone that I have a voice mail. I’d forgotten I turned my ringer off at Sabrina’s. Everything in me stops, like gears grinding to a halt. Time slows to a drip. With shaky hands, I press the screen to play the voice mail and lift the phone to my ear.

You have one new message. BEEP.

At first, I think she is laughing at me.

My mind whirls, connecting random dots—the late nights, the space-outs during readings, the belated and failed attempt at organizing, the shopping spree. She’s manic, maybe even having a psychotic break.

It takes a heartbeat before I realize she is sobbing.

The blinking lights in my head all go out at once. I short-circuit. I don’t know what to do with Sad Mary. My heart plummets. I want to reach through the phone and comfort her, but I can’t. So I sit and listen to her cry, and then she finally speaks.

My baby girl, I’m so sorry.

There is a moment of hushed tears that follow. And then a click.

I drop my phone, barely registering the clatter as it hits the floor. My eyes meet Daniel’s.

“Cat? What is it?”

But I can’t answer him. I can’t get the lights in my mind to come back on, can’t get the stars to align. There is a pattern to the dark… Why can’t I see it?

I shake in place, my mouth hanging open, before one blinding light finally switches on. The medicine cabinet.

I race to the bathroom and throw it open, but all the bottles are gone.

I haven’t seen her in just two days. Could she have dropped that low that fast?

Rapid cycling is the term they give to bipolar patients who swing wildly between mania and depression many times in a year. In my hunt for answers, I wasn’t just unearthing her past on the internet or in some boxes under her bed; I’d been excavating it in her own mind. She’s not in a manic episode right now, but a depressive one.

“This cabinet was full,” I whisper to Daniel. Slowly, the lights begin to wink back into being in my head, first one and then another and another until I can follow them like the bread crumbs through a storybook forest. But there is no candy house or daring escape at the end. Instead, there is a hanging tree, and a long red rope, and my mother’s body twisting in the wind.