Page 5 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

“What about her room? You know how she used to get up and walk around in the middle of the night. Did you make sure it was comfortable and safe?”

He shook his head. “They wouldn’t let us in her room. They brought her out to the lobby to see us. And the place smelled like shit.”

Tears filled Sage’s eyes. Poor Rosemary. “Are you going to Willowbrook to find out what happened to her?”

“No, there’s nothing we can do. She won’t remember me anyway. They said they’ll call as soon as they find her.”

“But we could help with the search,” Sage said. “We could help look for her.”

“I can’t. I gotta work.”

“You can call in.”

“I said I can’t,” he said. “And the doc on the phone said it’s best to let the professionals handle it anyway.”

She could see the anger building up inside him again, in the way his nostrils flared, in the way his jaw tensed. She didn’t care. “Yeah, right,” she sneered. “God forbid you can’t play cards and drink with your buddies on your lunch break. God forbid you care about anyone but yourself.”

He came toward her again, ready to explode. “You watch your mouth, young lady. As long as you live under my roof, you’ll show me respect.”

“I’ll never respect you,” she spat. “Especially after what you did to Rosemary! Especially after you lied to me about her for years!”

He bared his teeth and raised his hand but before he could hit her again, she spun around and stormed out of the living room. She ran down the hall and out of the apartment, tears of fury and frustration stinging her eyes. She needed a drink. And she needed to tell Heather and Dawn what had happened, so they could help her figure out what to do.

Except her friends had been no help at all. Instead, they’d gotten drunk and asked if she thought Cropsey had kidnapped her sister, and what she would do if, this time, Rosemary really was dead.

CHAPTER 2

Standing on the sidewalk at the bus station, Sage took another long drag of her cigarette, resentment knotting in her stomach. How could her mother have lied to her all those years ago? How could she have said Rosemary was cremated because they couldn’t afford a funeral? How could she have watched Sage suffer with a grief so deep it left her unable to eat or sleep for weeks, when all along she had the power to ease her pain by telling the truth? Of course it would have upset Sage to know Rosemary had been sent away, but it would have been better than thinking she was dead; better than thinking she’d died alone and unable to breathe, attached to tubes in a cold hospital room. If Sage had known Rosemary was alive all this time, she could have gone to Willowbrook to visit her, to bring her flowers and cards and toys. To see her and hold hands, to tell her she loved her no matter what.

And how could a mother lock her own daughter away, anyway? Didn’t loving someone mean taking the good with the bad, helping each other through the hard things? A mother, especially, was supposed to love and protect her children to the end of her days. Sage would never forget meeting Heather’s mother the first time she’d stayed overnight—how she’d asked if the girls wanted to order pizza and joked about them staying up all night to talk about boys, how she’d buzzed around the kitchen the next morning making eggs and pancakes, asking if they wanted orange juice or Ovaltine. Was that what mothers did—ask you what you wanted for breakfast? Sage’s mother used to forget to buy bread and milk.

Over the years, Sage had convinced herself that her mother’s distance started after Rosemary died. That was the story she told herself anyway, the one that allowed her to keep her heart safe. But she no longer believed it—especially now that she knew Rosemary was alive.

She looked across the bus station parking lot, down the slow incline of the road, along the gray tarmac cutting through the sprawl of buildings and telephone poles and electric wires. Her eyes were naturally drawn across Upper New York Bay toward the Manhattan skyline, where a jumble of skyscrapers floated above the ocean, like the Emerald City inThe Wizard of Oz. When she and Rosemary were little—still small enough to be under the innocent spell of a world they thought was safe and secure—their father had told them the city would never sink because it was held up by magic, and the millions of sparkling lights in and around the buildings were powered by fairy dust. When he left a few years later, Sage wondered if she could use magic to bring him back. She used to stare at the distant city from her bedroom window every night, begging the fairies and whoever who was in charge of magic to bring him home. It never worked.

What would her father do if he knew what her mother and Alan had done? Would he care? Would he understand? Would he be outraged? If only she could tell him, maybe he’d help with the search. Maybe, once Rosemary was found, they could be a family again. She bit down hard on her lip. It was too late for fairy dust and magic wishes. Her father had left for a reason; he had chosen not to be part of their lives. There was no changing that fact, whatever the cause behind it. All she could do now was look for her sister. What might happen after that was anyone’s guess.

The growl of an engine brought her out of her trance. A graffiti-covered bus crawled around the corner of the station, its diesel fumes cutting through the cold air. The graffiti reminded her of the tunnels below the crumbling tuberculosis hospital, the names and gang logos and pentagrams scrawled on the walls where high school kids gathered to drink, do drugs, and scare the shit out of each other with stories about Cropsey. Even without the horror stories, she’d always hated going into the tunnels, where the ceilings and walls could collapse at any second and bury her alive. But everyone hung out there, so that’s where she and her friends went too. Maybe the graffiti-covered bus was a bad sign. No. She had to stop thinking like that. She couldn’t let her friends’ crazy theories get under her skin.

As the bus pulled to a lumbering stop next to the sidewalk, air brakes hissing. Sage dropped her cigarette, crushed it out beneath her wooden clog, and headed toward it. If no one else was going to find out what happened to Rosemary, she would do it herself. She climbed the bus steps, handed the overweight driver her token, and made her way toward the back, shoulders hunched to avoid bumping into the other passengers, hands clasped in front of her to avoid touching the grimy, duct-taped seats. Old food wrappers and the remnants of snacks crunched beneath her feet, and the pungent odors of stale cigarette smoke, diesel fuel, and urine filled the air.

Halfway down the aisle, a guy with a dark mustache and leather jacket gave her the once-over, shooting her a flirtatious grin. She scowled at him, fighting the urge to give him the finger or accidentally-on-purpose smack him in the face with her elbow. Attention from the opposite sex was nothing new to her; she was used to boys and men staring at her body before scrutinizing her face and strawberry-blond hair to see if she was the entire package. And normally she didn’t mind, as long they weren’t old enough to be her father and didn’t look like a health risk. But today the scrutiny made her feel like prey. Maybe she was sick of people who thought others could be lured in with a smile then thrown away like garbage. Like her mother threw her father away. Like Noah threw her away. Like her mother and Alan threw Rosemary away. When she reached the back of the bus, she slumped into a seat near the window, trying not to cry. She hated feeling like this, hating everyone and everything.

While the other passengers boarded the bus and found their seats, she gazed out the window at the fat, lazy snowflakes hitting the cracked pavement. By the time everyone was seated and the driver pulled away from the curb, the wind had picked up and the snow was coming down hard and fast, covering the sidewalks and buildings. Wherever her sister was, hopefully she was out of the storm.

Again, she berated herself for not wearing the proper clothes. How could she help with the search in this weather wearing a mini skirt and clogs? At least she was wearing a long-sleeved peasant blouse and a crocheted vest, but they wouldn’t help much. That’s what she got for being so hung over. If she hadn’t been feeling so sick and anxious, she would have remembered it was winter and put on bell-bottoms and boots instead of throwing on the clothes she’d worn the night before. And she would have brought a snack and a drink. Of course the rocking of the bus didn’t help her stomach, and neither did sitting in the back, where turning corners felt like swinging on the end of a giant pendulum. Thankfully Willowbrook was only thirty minutes away. The last thing she needed was to throw up.

Outside the grimy bus windows, apartment buildings and storefronts rushed by, tucked behind car after car parked end to end to end. Trucks and other vehicles whooshed past, throwing up sheets of dirty slush. Then came a strip mall with a beauty salon, a carpet retailer, a bakery, and a hardware store. A group of boys in matching jackets stood under the awning outside a grocery market, watching traffic and looking bored. They looked like the Bay Boys, a gang that wasn’t much of a gang; they didn’t have a turf and never fought with any of the other gangs, but they attacked prostitutes in the West Village. Some people said Cropsey attacked prostitutes too.

People still search the woods for the remains of lost children.

Her stomach twisted in on itself. She had to stop thinking about Cropsey. It was a waste of time and energy. Setting her purse on the empty seat beside her, she leaned against the window and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the sway of the vehicle and the awful smells. What she wouldn’t give to be at the mall hanging out with Heather and Dawn, laughing and making fun of people and being bored. Instead, she was alone and scared, thanks to the thoughts they’d planted in her head. But there was no time for pity parties. She needed to figure out what to say to the people at Willowbrook so they’d let her help with the search. Convincing them that she was Rosemary’s sister would be the easy part—they were identical twins, with matching strawberry-blond hair, high cheekbones, and silver-blue eyes flecked with touches of violet. Unless Rosemary had changed. Unless six years locked in an institution had washed her out and used her up.

Every time the bus stopped to let off a passenger or pick someone up, Sage startled upright and looked out the window to see where they were, her heart racing. Watching the people get off the bus and walk along the snowy sidewalks, all of them ready to begin another normal day—shopping or meeting friends for brunch and mimosas, going home after pulling an all-nighter, checking in on a sick aunt—filled her with envy. Even if they lived alone with an old cat, she longed to be one of them instead of who she was: a grieving, unloved girl on her way to a mental institution to look for her lost sister.

She closed her eyes again so she wouldn’t see anything or anyone, and tried not to think too far ahead. The best way to deal with whatever was going to happen next was by taking it minute by minute instead of imagining all the things that could go wrong. But the more often the bus stopped and the closer they got to Willowbrook, the deeper her unease grew. Maybe she should have waited until she’d found someone to come with her. Maybe she should have asked Noah to come, even though he’d cheated with Yvette. No, he would have talked her out of it—and she couldn’t trust him anyway. She didn’t trust herself not to take him back either, especially now when she was feeling so vulnerable. She would do this on her own; she had no other choice. It was too late to turn back anyway.

After several more stops, the only people left on the bus were the driver and an Asian couple, both husband and wife staring sullenly out the window. Before pulling away from the last stop before Willowbrook, the driver closed the door and glanced in the long mirror above his head.

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