“They have a two-year waiting list,” Marion told her. “It’s a happening place. Very expensive. Lots of prizes for this and that. Harley’s son had to pull in a favor from one of Harley’s old board members in Charlotte, who felt he still owed him, to get you accepted.”

“Damn,” Rose says. “I hate hearing that. That leaves the logical person thinking I am—or was—mentally ill. With every cell in my body I believe I was maliciously drugged, and was kept there against my will. And I know how crazy that sounds.”

Rose is relieved Marion doesn’t add the words that stick like a chicken bone in Rose’s throat: She was bonkers before Flynn put her in Longwood. “Could stress, depression—all the things we listed—unhinge a person so much, she’d wander around in a coma, lose weeks?” Rose asks hopefully.

“In the seventeenth century fugues were popular,” Marion muses. “Young men from London would go missing. Weeks later they’d turn up in Paris or Prague or Moscow remembering nothing.”

“Sounds convenient.”

“People used to lose weeks to ‘brain fever’ in old books,” Marion suggests.

“Amnesia, repressed memories, the vapors, being beamed up by aliens,” Rose adds. “Maybe ways to describe phenomena science can’t explain.”

“Nervous breakdown, psychotic break—the same thing,” Marion adds.

“They sound scarier,” Rose says.

“Things will look better in the morning,” Marion replies in the voice Rose knows means she needs to get off the phone. With Marion, a headache isn’t a two-aspirin event. It is a screaming red crawl-in-the closet event.

Feeling more needy than considerate, Rose asks, “Why will things look better in the morning?”

“Because I’m going to FedEx you a credit card and an ATM card tomorrow.”

“I have—”

“I canceled them.”

“Oh.”

“So tomorrow, you get a pedicure, a haircut, a massage, whatever. When you feel up to it, you go to Longwood and turn yourself in. Call Flynn first. I’ll call to check on you a couple times a day. They will get you back on the antidepressants, get your record cleared up—”

“I don’t have a record.”

“The nurse. There will be legal issues with that. Better to get them settled while you are officially ‘under a doctor’s care’ than get picked up by a local rednecked cop and stuck in the police station’s holding cell bleating, ‘I’m sane, I’m sane,’ while the hookers and drunks roll their eyes. Think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Marion was right. Tomorrow, Rose will deal with things like a rational person. I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow. Rose smiles at Scarlett.

“I love you,” she blurts out.

“Well … you should,” Marion says and hangs up.

CHAPTER 10