CHAPTER TWENTY
I’m Not Crazy
Theo
Tomorrow would make three weeks since Felicity had returned to Crossroads. I hoped to get back to Los Angeles by early tomorrow morning to see her. They had a rule that all new or returning patients had to wait three weeks before leaving or having a guest.
At first I’d tried not to think about it or her to stop myself from going crazy. I cared more now than I had before, which was why I found myself at the New York State Executive Mansion to meet Governor Daniel Ford. He was hosting a donors’ event while his daughter was suffering without him. He was trying to raise money since he was hoping to run for president next year. The fact I had to pay to listen to this guy answer questions from other wealthy people who hoped he shared common interests with was painful just to think about.
“Mr. Darcy.” A slim man with salt-and-pepper hair stepped forward, hands outstretched. Beside him was a woman with short blonde hair, dressed in pink with pearls around her neck. Similar to the two daughters beside her, both of them looked just like their father, dark hair and blue eyes. They were all picture perfect.
“Thank you for having me, Governor. I’m sorry I’m so late.” I forced a smile, shaking his hand.
“Nonsense. Everyone is just making small talk. The other guests are already in the parlor.” His wife smiled and pointed the way. Following them, I noticed there were no pictures of Felicity in the house. There were dozens of them displayed everywhere, on vacations, with celebrities, and even in Times Square at New Years. Felicity had been erased. It was even worse than if she were dead. It was like she’d never existed to them.
“Mr. Darcy?” The mayor shook my hand. “Welcome back to New York.”
“Thank you. It’s exactly how I remembered.” Filled with rats.
The mayor gave a loud, bogus, and annoying laugh, still holding on to my hand. “Last time you where here your company threw one of the biggest benefit concerts the city had ever seen. Tourists flew in from every corner of the globe. It was like New Years all over again.”
“I’m guessing you’re hoping it will happen again,” I said, taking a seat at the dining table.
“A mayor can dream.”
“Sorry, mayor, nothing is in the works yet. I’m here for the governor.”
There were quite a few people already here as well, but I didn’t care. My main focus was them, the happy-go-lucky, all-American Ford family.
“As you all know, I, with the support of my loving family, and hopefully your support as well, hope to be your president this time next year.” Daniel stood up in front of the fireplace, holding a glass of champagne. “
Not a chance in hell.
“I must thank my wife and daughters, who have filled me with so much pride—”
“Governor Ford, aren’t you missing a daughter?” I questioned, taking a glass of champagne from the server’s tray.
“I’m sorry—”
“You first daughter, Felicity.” I smiled before drinking. His eyes widened for a second, as did his wife’s.
“You have another daughter?” someone asked.
He nodded. “Yes, Felicity, with my first wife who, as you know, died sixteen years ago. She’s somewhere in Los Angeles now, trying to become an actress. She wants to do it all on her own—”
“Actually,” I cut through his bullshit, “she’s a dancer. One of my company’s dancers. She opened at my entertainment gala two weeks ago. It was amazing. In fact, she’s the talk of the west. I’m surprised you haven’t gone to see her yet.”
“Sadly, the governor has been busy, but we are all so proud of her.” His wife smiled brightly beside him. “Honestly, she has so much talent. We hope she eventually comes back home. Mr. Rogers, your son is also in California, right?”
I didn’t say anything as they quickly deflected. Governor Ford’s eyes met mine, and I drank the rest of the champagne, rising to my feet, knowing from how his nose flared and how tense his fists were that he would follow me out.
“Thank you,” I said to the maid, who opened the front door for me.
“Mr. Darcy, you only just arrived,” he said, standing at the doorway behind me.
“I came to see what type of man you are, and I saw. Why stay any longer?”
“I’m not sure what you think you know—”
“I know your daughter has spent eight years with no contact from you. I know you basically shipped her off the moment you realized she was sick. And I know you seem to have all but forgotten her for the new family you’ve built for yourself,” I said, facing him.
He clenched his jaw. “Felicity is a troubled young woman who needed—”
“Her father not to kick her across the country at sixteen and turn his back on her.”
“How dare you judge me!” he snapped. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to deal with people like them? I was married to her mother for fourteen years, and then three years after we were married, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I should have seen it. She was often depressed and her moods would randomly change. The worst was when she had no apathy for anything, not even her own child! Came home one day, and no one had fed or changed Felicity for hours! Where was her mother? Smoking in the backyard! You have no idea the hell that life was. The insomnia, lack of hygiene, lack of appetite—she was dying in front of me every goddamned day. When she died, I was relieved. Every day did not feel like a battle. Then Felicity started to act the same, and I could not do it again. I couldn’t!”
I couldn’t help but picture the life he had just painted and how Felicity lived it. She got a poor set of cards to deal with from the beginning.
“She’s your daughter. When it goes bad, when there is nothing left but her crying in a lonely apartment, you should be the one thing she can count on. Isn’t that what it means to be a parent? What is it with you people, thinking you matter more than your children? So it’s okay to abandon them because it’s hard? Everything you said sounds horrible, but not for you. For her mother, who couldn’t help it. And for Felicity to spend six years believing she had loving, caring friends and then for me to come along and rip that out of her hands.”
My driver opened the door for me, and Governor Ford called out to me.
“Don’t be all high and mighty. Now you have two choices: stay with her, since you obviously love her, and deal with everything I had to. Then you’ll understand what I mean when I say I couldn’t watch her like that. Or you’ll be like me and be another man who has to walk away. Either you suffer with her, or she suffers alone. Either way she still suffers.”
Saying nothing, I got into the car. When the door closed, I punched the front of my seat, “Goddamn it!”
At first I was in shock. Then I wanted to make sure Felicity got help. Now I was just so fucking pissed off and confused.
How did it get this bad so quickly?
Felicity
1:15 p.m.
I could deal with the horrible medicine that made me groggy. I could even handle all the healthy food. The no-wine part I was even starting to calm down over. But therapy was the worst.
“Felicity.” Dr. Butler, an old and large man, who only had hair on the sides of his head and wore the most annoying bow ties, called out to me. He had been my doctor when I was sixteen as well. I looked out the window, staring at the rose bushes. I really wanted to go back to fifteen days ago… when I’d thought I was just a normal girl with some baggage.
“Felicity?”
“I’m not crazy,” I said to him, still not giving him my attention. “I know Mark and Cleo aren’t real. I know I never killed anyone. I’m not crazy.”
“The meds are—”
“No—urgh!” Never yell was one of the many lessons I’d learned here. Taking a deep breath, I faced him. “I hate the medication. It makes me feel like I have no control over my body. But I take them anyway. The medication isn’t the reason I know I’m not crazy. I remember my mom. I’m not like her.”
“Schizophrenia is different for every person—”
“I’m not insane.”
“Felicity, having schizophrenia does not mean you are insane. It means you’re sick. Without the medication, you saw Mark and Cleo the minute you left this facility. Do you remember the last book you read while you were here? You brought it with you and always kept it by your side.”
“No, I can’t remember.” I just wanted to run away.
He put the book on the table. “Look.”
“William Shakespeare’s…” I paused before saying the next two names. “Antony and Cleopatra.”
“You took two characters from a Shakespearean tragedy and made them into your best friends. You don’t think it’s important to know why?”
“No, because they aren’t real,” I said, even as I watched Mark pull a book off the shelf behind Dr. Butler’s head.
“Marc Antony is a cool name. Besides, for all he knows, I could have easily been for Marco Antonio. Did you hear Vivir Mi Vida. It gives me chills,” Mark said, salsa dancing beside Dr. Butler.
“Can I be Jennifer Lopez, then?” Cleo laughed, joining him. “Elizabeth Taylor killed Cleopatra for me.”
“I thought so too.” Mark spun her around and into his arms.
“Felicity?”
“Huh?” I glanced away from them and back to him.
He turned around. “What was it you were concentrating on?”
“Nothing. I saw a book I thought Theo would like, and thinking of him kind of took me off to another head space.” I lied with a smile. When I first came here, I’d wanted to get better and fix myself, but no one listened to me, and I remembered why I’d hated this place so much when I was young. It made me feel as if I were less than a person. I followed their rules, took their medication, but I still saw Mark and Cleo, now more than ever. But if I told them that, they wouldn’t let me leave.
This was not the place for me. I wanted to go home.
“Why don’t we talk about Mr. Darcy?”
“I don’t want to talk to you about him.” I sighed, wrapping my arms around myself. I tried not to think about him because it just left me feeling horrible.
I had realized two important things in the last two weeks I had been here. I was in love with Theodore Darcy. I knew that because the only person I could think about was him. I didn’t want to undo anything I had been through because it had led me right to him. He knew how to make me laugh. He knew everything about me and accepted it. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe in someone else’s arms, even as my world crumbled. The second thing I had realized was now more than ever, I was no good for him, but I truly wanted to be. I was scared the more time I spent in here, the less he’d remember me, care about me.
“You don’t want to talk about Mark and Cleo, you don’t want to talk about Mr. Darcy. Or what you are writing about in you’re journals. Felicity, you do I know I want to help you, right?”
No he didn’t. None of them did. They wanted us to stay here forever. If we didn’t say something they thought was “right,” then we failed and would either have to be watched, have to take stronger medicine, or they would extend our say. The trick was there was no right answer.
“You have helped me, Dr. Butler. I’m on my meds. I don’t believe Mark and Cleo were ever real. I remember what actually happened. I’m in a much better place than where I was two weeks ago.”
“As long as you don’t tell him you still see us, you should be fine,” Cleo said to me, leaning on his chair.
“Felicity, you seem to have a hard time concentrating today.”
“I’m more bored today than other days.” I shrugged.
“You can’t keep running from your problems,” Dr. Butler said.
“I’m not running!”
“Don’t yell, Felicity,” Mark said sternly.
“I’m not yelling!”
“No one said you were,” Dr. Butler replied as Mark shook his head.
“You blew our cover already? Jeez, Felicity.”
Putting my head in my hands, I sighed. “I’m sorry. I meant I wasn’t trying to yell. I’m just tired, all right? And this therapy doesn’t help me. Maybe it could have a while ago, when I thought I’d killed someone, but now that I know I didn’t… I know I just need my medication and I’ll be fine.”
“Felicity, I’m going to advise we extend your stay—”
“No!” I stood up. “I want to go home.”
“You’re not ready—”
“Says who, you? I’m sure if you pull anyone off the street, they will have issues they won’t want to talk about—”
“You were the one who came back to us, Felicity.”
“Yeah, and that was a mistake.” I stomped to the door. However, there were two nurses already waiting for me. “I’m checking out.”
“You still have twenty-fours in the waiver you signed, Felicity. We can’t—”
“I want out!” I yelled again.
“Felicity, please calm down!”
“I am calm!”
They didn’t believe me. My hands were pinned, and someone injected only gods knows what into my veins.
“Stop—I’m not crazy.”
“We agree,” Mark and Cleo said as my eyelids started to droop.
Theo
When I got on the jet, the last people I expected to see, my foster parents, sat comfortably in the chairs as the air hostess handed them a glass of wine to drink.
“Theodore, sweetheart, you made it.”
“It’s kind of hard to miss a plane I asked to wait for me. The real question is why are you both here? I thought you were staying in the Hamptons for the Fourth of July weekend.” I took a seat across from them.
“We were, then thought it would be best to spend it as a family. Honestly, when was the last time we were all together for the holidays?” Lorelai grinned, pulling out her phone. “I called your secretary, and she said you wanted the weekend off, so—”
“Mother, I’m busy this weekend.”
She paused, staring at me in confusion. “With what?”
“More importantly, with whom?” Arthur asked. “And please do not tell me it is Felicity Ford. Word about her condition has spread all across the company.”
“I’m not a teenager. I’m not required to answer that question, nor are you allowed to tell me who I should or should not be spending my weekend with.”
My mother sighed, putting her drink down. “Theodore, we’re worried about you. You’re losing your head over some woman you barely know. It’s crazy—”
“From a practical standpoint, it is insane. Yes, this girl is a good dancer, and if it weren’t for illness, maybe, just maybe, it would be all right, but—” my father started to say, but I couldn’t listen to any more.
“But what? Because she’s sick she’s no longer worthy of my time or your respect?” I’d had it up to my neck with people today. Rising from my seat, I grabbed my things.
“Theodore, she’s not your reasonability. She is making you look like an idiot. I know it is not her fault, but she’s just a woman. People are talking, and it’s better you distance yourself now before—”
“Before what?” I hissed. “What? What are people going to say to me that is so horrible? They’ll speak behind my back? Throw short jabs at me? What, am I five? Why the fuck should I care?”
“Because you are the head of a multibillion dollar company! People look to you for leadership! You have no time to take care of a mentally ill person.”
I laughed bitterly. “Is that the same rationale you used on yourself when I was child?”
“What?” My mother—no, my aunt—asked, sitting straighter.
“My mother, my birth mother, died of Huntington's disease. It’s hereditary, and I remember a week after I came to live with you two, walking past your bedroom as you worried over what to do with me if I were like her. You wondered if you should start looking for a care provider or maybe send me to boarding school so Arty and Walt didn’t get too attached. You might not remember, but you all were pretty cold then… that was until the test came back negative. Suddenly, you guys bought me this suit and told me we were getting a new family painting done. You said something along the lines of, Thank god his Darcy blood was dominant. I remember thinking there couldn’t be one thing wrong with me because if there were, you’d blame my real mother. So I tried to be the good son. Tried to blend in and not gag every time I saw that damned painting hanging in your house. Yes, part of me loves both of you dearly, but I always wondered what would have happened had that test come back positive. Would you guys even care if I spent the weekend alone—”
“Theodore, sweetheart, I love you! Back then we were scared and shocked, but we have loved you like you were our own. You are my own.” Lorelai stood up and tried to touch me, but I wouldn’t let her.
“I know you do now. But it doesn’t change the fact you wouldn’t have been able to love me had I been sick. You telling me to walk away from her now proves that.”
“She isn’t family, Theo! It’s different,” my uncle yelled at me.
“No, but I want her to be. I’m in love with her. To you it’s crazy. To me it is the most common sense thing in the world, and I know we’re going to get over this. When we do, I’ll contact you both again.” I got off the plane.
I would take the next plane. Right now I just needed to be away from them. Everyone’s solution was to just throw money at the situation and hope it fixed itself. It’s what Felicity’s father had done to her, and it’s what my aunt and uncle would have done to me. The only thing none of them seemed to realize was replacing love with money only ever ends one way, in heartbreak.
It felt like the whole world was telling me to stay away from Felicity Harper, yet next to her was the one place I really wanted to be.