Page 76 of Best Kept Secret
“I’m here for Beth Cullen.”
“Oh, yes.” The woman acknowledges me with a nod, taking a seat and tapping something into her computer. And honestly, I don’t think she could move any fucking slower.
I tap my fingers against the counter, looking around for what, I don’t even know.
“Can I just go in?” I press, glancing at the secure door.
“One minute,” the woman says, continuing to type.
I bite my tongue before I say something I know I shouldn’t.
The door behind the receptionist opens, and Kathleen Munro walks out, her eyes widening when her gaze lands on me. “Logan, you’re here,” she announces, looking at the woman at the desk and trying yet failing to hide her annoyance. “Logan’s fine to go straight through,” she tells her.
The receptionist looks from me to Kathleen and back again, reaching over and pressing the button to release the latch on the secure door and, with a muttered thanks, I hurry inside, meeting Kathleen around the corner in the white-washed corridor.
“She’s still sleeping,” Kathleen says over her shoulder as she leads the way. “But she should be waking soon.”
As I follow her up the stairs and into a similar corridor, I suddenly feel a like a piece of shit. I try to visit Mom as much as I can, but during the season my weekly visits tend to dwindle to every other week, sometimes even only once a month. But as Iglance through the open doors of the rooms we pass, catching glimpses of the residents inside, all of them alone and miserable looking, I realize it’s been more than a month since I was last here. And that’s just not fucking good enough.
Kathleen stops at the door at the end, poking her head inside. She offers me a sad smile, stepping aside, and I walk into my mother’s corner suite with the view of the gardens and the pine-covered hills in the background, my heart clutching painfully in my chest when I catch sight of her lying there in her bed.
She looks smaller, frailer than she did last time I was here. Her skin sallow, eyes sunken, lips chapped, even her hair looks thinner. The woman lying in that bed is a shadow of the woman I remember growing up who was so fun-loving and carefree, so full of life, the woman who used to dance around the kitchen in the morning as she cooked breakfast, the woman who snuggled on the sofa and watched cartoons with me all day when I had my tonsils out when I was nine. This woman is like a ghost, and it causes my heart to crack open, my eyes stinging with tears.
I take a seat on the chair next to her bed, quietly clearing the lump of emotion from my throat as I reach over and place my hand over hers while Kathleen checks Mom’s vitals before smiling at me and walking out, leaving us alone.
Despite her fragility, my mother looks so peaceful, and I can’t help but smile, reaching up and gently stroking her cheek. I lean in to press a tentative kiss to her temple, whispering, “I’m here.”
When my mom first started showing signs of mental illness, my father never took it seriously. He said she was just being dramatic. But I would leave the house in the morning and worry all day, terrified that by the time I’d get home, she’d be dead. She attempted to take her life twice, and it was on the third and final time that she almost succeeded. I was off at college when my dad called me to tell me he’d found her unresponsive in the bathtub but that she was alive. I remember he sounded almost disappointed that she’d survived. That’s when he sent her here, where she’s been ever since, slowly deteriorating. Her officialdiagnosis is schizophrenia with trauma-induced psychosis. The first few years, unless she was suffering a psychotic episode, she was okay when I would see her, but the last couple of years, she’s gotten so bad that most of the time I come here, she doesn’t even know who I am.
I love my mom with my whole heart, but sometimes I wish she would just go to sleep and never wake up because I know she’d fucking hate that this is what her life amounted to.
A soft murmur tears me from my thoughts and I turn, finding mom’s gray eyes watching me, a dazed, vacant look in her gaze. And no matter how far removed she is from the mom I remember, she’s still my mom, and there’s a familiarity in her face that I doubt will ever be taken away.
“Hey, Mom.” I smile, placing my hand on top of hers.
“Levi, what time is it?” Mom croaks, looking around. “You should be at school.”
I swallow around that painful lump in my throat. Wow. Today’s a bad day. “No school today, Mom.”
She relaxes some, sinking back against the pillows with a shaky breath.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “Do you need anything?”
She shakes her head, eyes flitting about the room, looking at everything and nothing at the same time.
“Is your father home from work?”
“Not yet, Mom.”
She looks at me again. “Did you feed Marshall?”
I press my lips together in a smile I hope appears genuine, but it’s hard; Marshall was our dog when we were kids, and he’s been dead more than ten years.
“Not yet, Mom,” I say again, my voice thick with emotion.
Mom’s lids droop and she starts to doze off again, but just before she falls asleep, she shocks me with her hushed, slightly slurred words. “I love you, Logi Bear.”
I stare at her for a long moment, taken aback. And it isn’t until she closes her eyes, and I see the steady rise and fall of herchest, when I know she’s asleep, that I release the breath I’ve been holding, allowing my tears to fall.
