Page 33 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

Sage let go of the doorknob and gaped at her. “Rosemary used to . . . I mean, I used to come here?”

“Don’t try to trick me. You know you did.”

“No, I don’t. I told you, I can’t remember anything from before. Who used to bring me here? And why?”

“You know who.”

“Please. You have to tell me. Was it that janitor, Eddie?”

Norma shook her head.

“Then who?”

“If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone we came here, remember?” She held up her pinky to remind Sage of their deal. “Wayne made me promise. He said it’s our secret.”

Alarms went off in Sage’s head. “Wayneused to bring me here?”

Norma nodded and then said in a proud voice, “After you disappeared, he brought me here and saidIcould be his girlfriend instead.”

Nausea churned in Sage’s stomach. As if Willowbrook weren’t horrible enough. She braced herself to ask another question, despite being fairly sure what Norma’s answer would be. “Was Ro . . . was I his girlfriend before I left?”

Norma made a face, confused by the question. “That’s why I brought you here. So you’d know you’re not his girlfriend anymore. You left without telling me, so I wanted to hurt you back. And now I did.”

Sage pressed her lips together, her heart crushed by the knowledge of everything Rosemary had suffered.

“Did I hurt your feelings?” Norma said.

Sage started to tell her it was okay, that she hadn’t hurt her feelings, but she didn’t want to upset Norma, not now, when she was finally getting somewhere. She took a deep breath and struggled to remind herself that Norma was in Willowbrook for a reason. And it was easy to understand why she’d cling to even the tiniest fragment of affection in such a terrible place, no matter how depraved and inappropriate. She probably had no idea it was wrong. “Does Wayne . . . does he hurt you when he brings you here?”

Bewilderment crumpled Norma’s face. “What do you mean? He would never hurt his girlfriend.”

Feeling sicker by the minute, Sage thought about explaining what she meant but decided against it. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why Wayne would take a female resident into a hidden room. No wonder Nurse Vic and Leonard thought he knew something about Rosemary’s disappearance. But if they knew what he was doing, why hadn’t they put a stop to it? And did they know about this room? She needed the answers to those questions—but right now, she had to get all the information she could out of Norma. “Does Wayne know why I left? Did he tell you where I went?”

“No, but he knew I was sad when you tried running away without me.”

“Is that what he told you? That I tried to run away?”

“No,youtold me. You said you were going to escape. But you promised to take me with you. And then you didn’t.”

Sage felt dizzy. A thousand thoughts and questions and feelings spun around in her head. “Did I tell you how I was going to escape?”

“No. You wouldn’t, no matter how many times I asked. You just kept saying I’d find out when the time came. Then you left me here alone.”

“How did you find out I was gone?”

“I woke up in the morning and you weren’t there anymore.”

“What did Marla and Nurse Vic say?”

“They didn’t say anything. They never tell us what’s going on. And you know people disappear here all the time. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t. But everyone was looking for you.”

“And Wayne didn’t know anything about it?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Are you sure?”

Norma nodded.

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