he says, “once you were down there, the Sullivan girl was no longer so stubborn or withdrawn. It was like the act of taking care of someone”—he pauses, appears puzzled—“superseded all else. And soon, she ate because she wanted you to eat, drank because…”
His eyes fog over. “It was fascinating,” he adds, his voice quieting. “I’d never seen such a thing.”
In the silence that follows, I think of Saul Brierley. Ted’s bruises and welts. His messy blueprint for parenting.
Clearing his throat, Ted continues, “Having you there turned out to be the perfect move. I could keep studying the other girl, I could note how her interest in your well-being muted her fear response, and in the end, I could interview you in ways I’d never be able to interview her. Imagine trying to conduct an interview from behind a mask?”
He laughs—three explosive bursts of sound—then quickly sobers.
“Except you screamed your head off the day you realized it was me, and even though I let you go, let you run on home, you wouldn’t stop your hysterics. And then you just”—he lifts his hands and shoulders, an annoyed, exaggerated shrug—“forgot the whole thing.”
As his eyes glaze, I see him remembering how I failed him.
“Which was fine,” he adds. “It was… fine. I was disappointed at first, but as I told you earlier, your repression opened up possibilities for more compelling research. I didn’t even care about the other girl anymore. I returned her a couple days later. That way, I could watch you around the clock.”
Returned. It’s the word the media has always used—Astrid Sullivan was returned onto a curb, blindfolded and drugged, in her own neighborhood—but it’s only now that I hear how cold it is. Ted returned her. Like a shirt that didn’t fit.
“But a lot of good that did,” he scoffs. “You turned out to be useless. And that brilliant Experiment… it was all for nothing, in the end.” He licks his lips. “Until now.”
I still can’t believe it. I’m trying to tread through this unbearable truth. Keep my head above its surface. But my body is exhausted, and I see that there isn’t a bottom to the pool of Ted’s cruelty and greed. All this time, I’ve been swimming in such toxic waters.
Ted indulges my silence for a moment. Then he stands. “Okay, get up,” he says. “Now that you know everything, let’s do this right. I’ll ask the questions, you get in your chair.”
When I don’t budge, he grabs me by the arm—not hard exactly, but it brings me back to that basement. How, as I screamed, he hooked his fingers around my bicep, squeezed as if to wring the sound right out of me. I remember that now. Not as Astrid’s words on the page, but as marks he left on my skin. I can feel them, all these years later, throbbing.
“Come on, Fern. We’ve wasted so much time already. Don’t you want to be a good girl and help?”
It’s the wrong word: girl. The wrong adjective: good. I do not want to be good—not Ted’s kind, at least. Because when Ted says good, he means pliant. When Ted says good, he means docile.
He means scared.
“No,” I say.
Ted grunts and drops my arm. Nudges the chair with his hip, sends its wheels skittering a few inches backward. Standing between me and the desk, he faces his typewriter, and as soon as his fingers move, I hear the first clack.
I refuse to hear a second.
“Stop it!” I scream. I jump from the chair and push him aside. I grab the typewriter and raise it over my head. I’m strong enough to hold it high as I stare at his bewildered face, and I’m strong enough to drop it. Hurl it onto the floor so hard that when it hits the wood, several keys break free.
We stare at the ruin. For a long while, neither of us moves.
A screech sounds from downstairs—the screen door opening. In a second, it thwacks shut, and a voice calls out to us. “Hello?”
“We’re up here, Mara,” Ted says, but his eyes are still on the broken machine at our feet.
Mara talks as she climbs the stairs, her words reaching us before we can see her. “Great job picking me up at the airport, Ted.”
I had no idea she was getting home today, but it’s just like Ted to know it and forget. Or know it and not care.
“I had to take a cab,” she continues, “all the way from Logan! I