Page 83 of Spades

“No, angel, not at all. She’s not sick in her body.” He taps his finger on the side of his head. “She’s sick in her mind.”

“Huh?”

“People can get sick in their brain the same way they can get sick in the rest of their body. It’s called a mental illness.”

“Are there doctors for mental illness?” I ask.

Daddy nods. “Yes, and your mum sees one once a week. He’s called a psychiatrist, and she’s been going to see him for a few months now. Mum has learned that she suffers from something called obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a disease that makes your brain focus really hard on keeping things clean. That’s why Mum gets so intense sometimes. The disease in her head rears its ugly head now and then. And she has another issue as well. It’s called Anti-Social Personality Disorder. It makes her act aggressive sometimes.” He runs his hands through my hair. “Did it seem like Mum became another person when she started breaking the dishes?”

I swallow and then nod.

Daddy sighs. “Your mum is getting medicine to help her with the OCD—the disease that makes her need everything to be clean. There isn’t medicine for her personality disorder, but she’s learning how to manage it, to live alongside it. But there will be good days and bad days. Today was clearly a bad day.”

My lip quivers. “There isn’t medicine to keep Mum from becoming the scary smiling person?”

“No, but she sees her psychiatrist once a week. He talks to her, helps her learn to deal with things. She fell short today, but I think in time your mum might start to get a little better.”

I furrow my eyebrows. “How can talking make her less sick?”

Daddy smiles. “He helps her see things in a different way. The other day, he told her that even the most clean, pristine kitchen you can imagine could still have one tiny flaw. A wayward crumb, a singular grain of rice, or a teeny-tiny germ just waiting to get in your body and make you sick. You can’t tell just looking at the kitchen that it’s not perfectly clean. It still looks good.” He places his hands on my shoulders. “But nothing is truly clean, Lissy. Whenever something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

* * *

Nothing is truly clean,Lissy. Whenever something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Dad is the only person who ever called me “Lissy.” Mum always called me by some pet name. Pumpkin, angel, sweetheart.

Mum got better over the years. She still had bad days, but it was never as bad as the day she broke every dish in the kitchen.

At least…it wasn’t until the bitter end.

Dad helped me clean everything up that night, and when Mum came down the stairs, she acted as if nothing had happened. We went to a department store the next day and bought new dishes and glassware. White with red stripes. My dad still uses them to this day. Before Mum died, I would check to see if any dishes were missing every time I came home. They were always all accounted for.

The kitchen was still in immaculate shape, but every so often I would go hunting for the wayward crumb my dad talked about that day. There was always something, usually tucked away under the fridge or under a counter. The kitchen was never perfectly clean. It wasn’t the day it was built, and it wasn’t now.

Just like Aces Underground isn’t perfectly clean. The lights hide the tiny flaws that I saw this morning.

And they’re hiding something even more sinister than scratches and dings. I feel it in my bones, pulsing like a dark secret just waiting to be exposed.

Rouge may have Maddox and every other patron in this club fooled with her “making the world a better place” rhetoric, but there’s something underneath her perceived benevolence. It’s gnawing at the edges of my mind, crawling under my skin.

The reserved, risk-averse Alissa that abandoned a promising career as a flautist would just sit down and shut up. Take the path of least resistance, the straightest line, the rightest angle. God knows I learned that the hard way, growing up with my mother. I walked on eggshells, always fearing something would set her off.

But this club, and the man sitting across from me, have chipped that façade away to reveal someone willing to jump into the world with both feet. I don’t know how long this new personality of mine will last, so I’ve got to act now.

I’m not sure how deep the rabbit hole goes, but someone has to figure it out.

I sear my gaze into Maddox’s, repeating my father’s words. “Nothing is truly clean. Whenever something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

Maddox squints at me, his mouth hanging open. “What?”

“Something my father said. He was talking about my mother, but his words bear repeating.” I get to my feet. “Something weird is going on here at Aces, Maddox. I’m not sure exactly what, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

I turn and leave the club, not looking back at the stupefied expression on Maddox’s face.

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