“I don’t know what to say, ma’am. I honestly don’t.”

“Look, I’m not trying to be difficult, but come on here. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that I’m supposed to be here. She’s expecting me, okay? I don’t understand how a mistake like this even happens!”

“Can you tell me who you spoke to earlier? Perhaps that would help us figure this out better?”

Although Finnley’s adrenaline was pumping through her body, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the girl working the front desk of the institution. She was flushed, beyond flustered, and although she didn’t know it, she hadn’t done a single thing wrong. Nobody had called and asked for Finnley to gain admittance into the institution. Of course, they hadn’t. Both Clara and Elsie thought her going there at all was a terrible idea, and she hadn’t bothered to tell Garrett that she was paying his mom a little visit. She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Elsie that she didn’t know where she and Garrett stood. With that being said, it didn’t seem like the time to ask for an invitation to visit his mentally ill mother. Clara had brought up the question about what Garrett would do once he found out (because there was no doubting that he would know, and probably pretty soon) but Finnley had shrugged it off. It was a good question, exactly the question that needed to be answered, but Finnley had a feeling that if she stopped to try to answer it, she would talk herself out of her plan. She couldn’t allow that. She needed a direction to take and this was the first time she’d felt like she had one in a while. None of which took her guilt away for ruining this poor girl’s job.

“Look, maybe I should just call Garrett. I’ve been trying to avoid that because he’s going to be super-pissed off about all of this, but if I need to—”

“You know Garrett Wallace?”

“You could say that. We’re sort of together. It’s only been going on for a couple of months, but I know he wouldn’t be pleased to find how this institution has treated me, his personal guest.”

“No, please, don’t do that. We really love Garrett here. We wouldn’t want to cause any trouble for him, nor do we want to create and trouble with him. I’ll show you to his mother’s room. I must warn you, though, she’s not expecting a visitor again so soon, and she may be difficult to talk to. It appears she hasn’t been taking her medication quite the way she was supposed to, and it’s brought out her manic side.”

“But she’s not like, dangerous, is she?” Finnley was practically biting her tongue to keep from asking when Mrs. Wallace was last visited and by whom. If it turned out that the visitor had been Garrett, which she suspected it might have been, her not knowing that would alert the nurse to the fact that there was something not quite on the up and up going on here. So she kept her mouth shut and followed her down well-lit, cheery hallways that gave no hint to what this building was actually meant for. By the time they arrived at the door to Mrs. Wallace’s room, Finnley was half ready to turn around and walk back out again. She had never liked hospitals and this place was reminding her more and more of one of those. Never mind the fact that there was a good chance that Garrett’s mother would oust her, telling the nurses that as far as she knew, her son had no girlfriend at all. Finnley wasn’t stupid enough to think that Garrett would have talked about her. The relationship she’d alluded to was only fiction, after all, or at least enough fiction that whatever truth it contained didn’t much matter.

“Dear?” the nurse called pleasantly, rapping on the door with a loose fist. “I’m so sorry to trouble you again, but you’ve got a visitor.”

“No, I don’t! It’s not visiting hours!”

“Nevertheless, you’ve got one. I’ve decided to make an exception, if you’d like to see her, that is.”

“Her? So it’s not my son, then?”

“No, it’s his girlfriend. She says Garrett knew she was coming. Is that not the case?”

Finnley did her best to contain her nerves, but she couldn’t help her sharp intake of breath. She should have known that this question was going to get asked, but she still felt panic rising inside of her hearing it out loud. This was it. This was where Garrett’s mom would say there was no girlfriend, and she would be led back out, probably right before this friendly nurse called Garrett and told him all about the unscheduled, unsanctioned visit. Instead, after a moment of silence that might as well have gone on for a century as far as Finnley was concerned, Mrs. Wallace spoke up again, her response so surprising to Finnley she almost laughed out loud.

“Of course, it’s the case! Don’t leave her standing in the hallway though, okay? I don’t want it getting back to my son that I was anything other than perfectly hospitable to his lovely lady. I’ll just never hear the end of it, you know? You know how children are. It doesn’t matter how much they grow, how old they get, they never stop acting like teenagers when it comes to their mothers.”

“Alright,” the nurse answered with a smile, nodding to Finnley as if this were the last test for entry and she’d just managed to pass, “you may go in. But please, I must insist that you not stay for too long, okay? She would never say it, but she gets tired very easily these days. If she gets too worn out tonight, she won’t sleep, and her day tomorrow will be very hard.”

“No, I won’t stay long. I wouldn’t want to do that. I don’t want to make any waves, just to pay her a visit.”

It was with a pang of guilt that she entered Mrs. Wallace’s room after hearing the nurse’s warning. Was there really anything she was going to learn from the woman that was worth making her life harder? Was there really? Half of her was already convinced that this was a lost cause, and yet she couldn’t let it go. She had already come too far and the allure of discovering something that would help her with Garrett and with Cubed was too strong for her to resist.

“Mrs. Wallace?”

“Shut the door, will ya? I don’t like to talk with the door open. I don’t like the nurses listening in on me, at least not when I can help it. For all I know, they’ve got my whole damned room bugged so they can listen in any old time they want to, but I guess there’s not much I can do about that, is there? What’s wrong with you, anyway? You’ve got a look on your face.”

“No, nothing. I’m sorry,” Finnley stammered, very much feeling that she was out of her depth in this meeting, “it’s just that this is the second time today somebody has told me they think a place is bugged.”

“Is that right?” Garrett’s mom asked happily, apparently thrilled by the notion. “And who else did you hear it from? Were they a resident of this fine establishment?”

“No, they weren’t. You’re the only one I’m visiting.”

“Did whoever you’re speaking of happen to live in a similar place?”

“Nope, not even close. He’s my boss, actually. Or I guess my manager, now that Garrett and his dad own the company. It’s the offices that he thinks have been bugged. Or at least his office. I guess I didn’t think to ask if he thought it was all of the rooms in the building.”

“Well, then do the guy a favor, will you? Don’t tell anyone else that he thinks the place is bugged. There’s not a lot of tolerance for people with odd theories in this world, darling, and paranoid theories fall directly into that category. Believe me, I should know. I’ve been living in places like this one for a very long time now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” She looked sharply at Finnley, her face both scrutinizing and beautiful at the same time. “You didn’t put me here. And by the way, do you mind telling me what you’re doing here? My son told me earlier about two different women. Are you the crazy bitch who just showed up on his doorstep and made him all pissy, or are you the other one?”

“Um, the other one? At least I hope I am.”

“The crazy bitch came from Colorado. You come from Colorado?”

“Nope, never even been there. Guess I’m the other one.”

“Excellent! I’m glad to hear it. You look like a lovely girl. I can see why Garrett is so taken by you.”

“Is he?”

“From what I could tell. Is that why you came to see me? To try to get the inside scoop? Because I’ve gotta warn you, I don’t know that I’ll be able to offer you a desirable amount of intel. Garrett’s only recently started coming to see me again. He’s mentioned you, and I can see that he likes you very much, but that’s about all I’ve got.”

“No, thank you, but that’s not why I came.”

“Why did you come?” she asked, her pretty eyes narrowing so that Finnley couldn’t help fidgeting. This lady had the whole mom look thing down perfectly, there was no denying that. There was something about it that made it much harder to articulate her purpose in coming. She wasn’t even sure what that was anymore. What had she thought she was going to learn here? What did she think she was going to find, a woman who had been wrongfully committed all of these years? If that was the case, she had been a total fool.

“Darling, there’s no point in being embarrassed at this point. You’ve come to see me this way, so you must have had a reason. Stop beating around the bush and tell me what it is.”

“That’s the problem. I’m not really sure. I guess I came for information.”

“About what? About my boy?”

“No, actually. About his family. About his dad’s family, I guess. About his dad.”

“What would you want to know about that son of a bitch for? He’s not a good man, darling. He’s not even close to a good man.”

“I kind of got that vibe. That’s actually why I’m here.”

“Is it now? Well then, we might get along well after all. I bet we’ll be best friends if that’s the case. Please, elaborate.”

“It’s just some stuff I’ve found about him. I’ve been digging into his past, or trying to. It’s not an easy past to look into.”

“No, I would assume it wasn’t.”

“But why?” Finnley asked excitedly, unable to contain herself. “That’s not the case for most people. I can tell you that for sure. I’ve had to look into people before, for my job, and it’s never been as difficult as this time. Garrett’s dad really required some digging.”

“Garrett’s dad isn’t an average man, and he doesn’t have an average past. He’s done things, dear, things he wouldn’t want people finding out about.”

“Things with the mob?”

“Of course, with the mob. He’s been running around with those guys since he was a boy. By the time we met, I was eighteen, I think, he was well placed already. He was in the process of making his first real money, which is when his parents ‘betrayed’ him. His words, not mine. They disappeared after that. Not really, mind you, but as far as the world at large is concerned.”

“Right, we noticed that. But how is something like that even possible?”

“It’s easier to go off the grid than you think. All you need is a whole lot of money and men who are able to get their way. Persuasive men, you got me?”

“But why? That’s what I don’t get. Even if he is a bad man—”

“He is. Believe me, he is.”

“Even so, how could he just make his own parents disappear?”

“Because, darling, that’s what he does. Garrett’s father makes anyone disappear who gets in his way. He has a variety of methods, but if you’re in his way he’ll make sure to remove you.”

“Is that what he did to you?”

“Please. You can see that I’m not your average citizen, right?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

“That’s sweet of you. You don’t have to answer it. It’s true that I’m sick, and I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t want to leave this place. It’s been too long since I’ve been on the outside, and I don’t trust myself to navigate it anymore. Even when I went in, I needed treatment. But the way I went in? That was all him. He wanted to bury me alive, and he did it, too. Just like he did to them. Be careful around that man. I’m not sure what you’re really up to, and I don’t want to know. My son cares for you. I can see that. I don’t want him to have to deal with you disappearing, too. You should consider convincing him to pick up and go, just get away from his father completely. Whatever that man touches is dirty, dangerous.”

Finnley thanked this woman, who was a total stranger, for giving her the same warning her friends had already delivered. It was tempting not to listen to her, far more tempting than it had been to listen to Clara and Elsie. She had expected to have a weight taken off of her shoulders, but instead she found that the opposite was true. Without realizing it, she had allowed the mystery of Garrett’s family to utterly consume her, and even this new warning couldn’t dissuade her. She was gripped by almost total tunnel vision, so much so that she never saw the man in the black car taking her picture as she climbed into her car.