Chapter 6 - The Part Ava Had Wanted Not to Know
Dr. Patel's office was in a modern medical building in Brookline with gray carpet, bad coffee, and no family portraits.
Ava found the plainness comforting.
Lily met with the psychiatrist alone for nearly an hour.
Ava sat in the waiting room pretending to read a magazine while Charles texted her twice.
Is she all right?
Then:
Did she ask for me?
Ava did not answer either question.
It was not cruelty.
It was practice.
For twelve days of marriage, she had automatically translated Charles's anxiety into something she needed to soothe. Now she was beginning to see how quickly care could become unpaid obedience.
When Lily emerged, she looked exhausted.
"She says I'm not manic."
Ava stood.
"How do you feel about that?"
"Suspiciously pleased."
Dr. Patel invited Ava in only after Lily asked her to stay.
The psychiatrist explained that Lily was currently stable and capable of making decisions about residence and treatment.
"Stable doesn't mean symptom-free forever," she said. "It means she participates in a plan that belongs to her."
Lily leaned back.
"Can you put that on a billboard outside my mother's house?"
Dr. Patel smiled.
"I can put it in writing for your advocate."
The advocate, a woman named Priya Desai, arrived forty minutes later.
She did not know the Harringtons.
That fact alone seemed to relax Lily.
Priya explained that the old temporary guardianship had expired years ago. Charles had no active court authority to confine Lily or control her communications.
"If you want to report the confinement, you can," Priya said. "You can also choose not to make that decision today."
Lily looked at Ava.
"Everybody keeps telling me I can choose. It's getting annoying."
"Good annoying?"
"Terrifying annoying."
Ava nodded.
She understood that too.
Priya asked whether Lily wanted to return to the mansion that evening.
Lily's face changed.
"I don't know where else to go."
"There are short-term supported apartments connected with your treatment program," Dr. Patel said. "Not inpatient. Your own room, staff on call, voluntary."
Lily stared at her hands.
"Can I leave whenever I want?"
"Yes."
"Even if I make a bad choice?"
"Adults are allowed to make bad choices. We intervene when there is an immediate safety issue, not because someone might disappoint us."
Lily began crying again.
Ava looked away to give her privacy.
Afterward, they sat in Ava's car in the parking garage.
Lily held a paper cup of tea between both hands.
"I need to tell you something before you decide Charles is a monster."
Ava looked at her.
"I haven't decided what he is."
"I did terrible things when I was sick."
"Illness isn't a moral verdict."
"Don't make me into a saint either."
Ava stayed quiet.
Lily took a breath.
"Four years ago, after my father died, I stopped medication. I stole Charles's car because I thought I had to drive to Montreal to meet a conductor who wasn't there. I crashed it into a barrier on Route 2. Nobody was hurt, but I could have killed someone."
She looked straight ahead.
"Two weeks later, I cut my arm in a hotel bathroom because I believed blood would prove whether I was real. Charles found me."
Ava's stomach tightened.
"I'm sorry."
"He held pressure on the wound until the ambulance came. My mother wouldn't ride with me because there were photographers outside the hotel. Charles did."
Lily's mouth trembled.
"When I say he saved my life, I mean it."
"And when you say he locked you in a room?"
"I mean that too."
The two truths sat beside each other without canceling out.
Ava had spent her childhood wishing the adults around her would become easier categories. Good parent. Bad parent. Safe person. Dangerous person.
Life had refused.
"Why did the door get locked?" Ava asked.
Lily looked down.
"I tried to leave one night in October."
"Why?"
"Because I had been stable for three months and Charles still wouldn't give me my phone. I packed a bag. Mrs. Donnelly told him."
"What happened?"
"We fought. I said I hated him. He said I sounded exactly like I did before the hospital."
Lily swallowed.
"I threw a lamp. It nearly hit him."
Ava waited.
"He locked the door that night."
"And kept it locked for six months."
"Yes."
"Did you ever threaten him again?"
"No."
"Did you ask him to unlock it?"
Lily laughed bitterly.
"Every day for the first month. Then every week. Then I stopped because begging was making me hate myself."
Ava looked toward the concrete wall of the garage.
"I'm going to ask you something ugly."
"Go ahead."
"If Charles had unlocked it after twenty-four hours, would you have left?"
Lily thought for a long time.
"I don't know."
That answer mattered.
Not because it excused Charles.
Because it made the story human enough to be dangerous.
Ava drove Lily to the supported apartment that evening.
The room was small. One bed, one desk, one window overlooking a grocery store parking lot.
Lily walked to the window and touched the latch.
"It opens."
"Most windows do," Ava said.
Lily smiled weakly.
"You'd be surprised what feels miraculous after Beacon Hill."
A staff member brought extra towels.
Ava helped Lily unpack the few clothes Charles had sent over.
At the bottom of the bag was a framed photograph.
Charles and Lily, both much younger, standing backstage with a violin between them.
Lily touched the glass.
"He used to sit in the front row even when I was terrible."
"Do you still love him?"
Lily gave her a tired look.
"That's the most inconvenient part."
Ava drove back to Beacon Hill alone.
Charles was waiting in the kitchen.
He had not changed out of his suit.
"Where is she?"
"Somewhere she can open her own door."
He closed his eyes.
Relief and pain crossed his face together.
"Is she safe?"
Ava put her keys on the counter.
"That's not a question either of us gets to answer forever."
Charles looked at her.
"Are you leaving too?"
Ava had not decided until he asked.
May you like
Then she realized she had.
"Tonight," she said, "yes."
