Page 40 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

“Why don’t the staff report each other? Would they report Wayne if they found out he was doing something to Rosemary?”

He hesitated. “Do you want the truth, or do you want me to make you feel better?”

“The truth.”

“No one’s going to report Wayne for doing drugs, or anything else for that matter. A lot of them party together. They buy and sell drugs at work. They screw around with each other too. They might fight once in a while, but they don’t snitch and they don’t rat each other out. Some of them find that out the hard way when their tires get slashed or their cars get set on fire, they get beat up in the parking lot, or worse. To report something, an employee would have to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is almost impossible. And everybody’s afraid of guys like Wayne.And, besides all that, it’s really hard to fire a state employee because the union backs them. I don’t know everything because like I said, I try to stay out of trouble, but I hear things. And I know things.”

His words ricocheted like pinballs inside her head. She could hardly keep up or believe what she was hearing. If the employees were getting away with doing drugs and having sex with each other at work, what else were they getting away with? Kidnapping? Murder? And who was going to listen to her if no one cared about what they alreadyknewwas happening in Willowbrook? She started to tremble, the grating edge of anxiety fraying her nerves.

“Then why do you think Wayne let you talk to Rosemary, and now me, in private?”

He shrugged. “Because I don’t give him any shit?”

“And because he wouldn’t care if you were having sex with a resident?”

“That too. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he thinks is going on in here.”

“He must not be worried that you’ll believe me either. What about Dr. Baldwin? Do you think you can convince him I’m not Rosemary?”

A frown line deepened between his brows. “He won’t listen to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because he blames me for her running away. Or whatever she did. I honestly don’t know what she was thinking. Or where she could have gone.”

She hesitated, confused. “But Wayne said Dr. Baldwin blamedhim. That he almost got fired because of it.”

“That’s because Baldwin has no idea what happened, and he’s trying to figure it out.”

“So why would he blame you?”

“I don’t know.”

Sage studied him, then said, “Yes, you do. Please, you have to tell me.”

A hardness tightened his jaw that wasn’t there before. “He thought we were . . . doing things we weren’t supposed to be doing. Just like you thought it, and Wayne thought it.”

“Well, if she liked you, I don’t care,” she said gently. “Honestly, it’d make me feel better to think she’d found a little happiness in this shithole. So please . . . tell me the truth.”

“She kissed me in the hallway once, that was it. I pushed her away, but it was too late. Everyone saw it. That’s why Dr. Baldwin thinks she left, so we could be together. He thinks I’m hiding her somewhere.”

“Are you?”

“Of course not.”

“And you’re sure you don’t have any idea where she might be?”

“I told you, I don’t,” he said. “I really wish I did. She asked me to come into her ward one night so we could talk, but I told her no, that we’d get in trouble if we got caught and then I’d never see her again. But she insisted. She said she’d do something drastic if I didn’t show up. She said someone was sneaking into the ward and hurting her, and she thought it would stop if they saw me there.”

“Hurtingher?” Sage said. She felt sick. “Do you think it was Wayne?”

“I don’t know. She never got the chance to tell me, because that was the night she went missing. Now I can’t help thinking the worst, and it’s killing me.” His eyes grew glassy and his voice caught. “She had problems for sure, but she just wanted to be loved.”

A lump lodged in Sage’s throat. If the one person in this horrible place who cared about Rosemary was thinking the worst, what wasshesupposed to think? “If Dr. Baldwin thinks you were messing around with Rosemary,” she said, “why didn’t he fire you?”

“Because he’s grasping at straws. And because my mother donates a lot of money to this place, and my uncle is Willowbrook’s program director and the head of the physical therapy department. He warned me to stay away from Rosemary because she’s psychotic and paranoid and she’ll be afraid of everything and everyone for the rest of her life, but I didn’t listen. But I think the biggest reason Baldwin didn’t fire me was because my uncle said he’d go to the press.”

“Go to the press? About what?”

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