The woman frowned. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you need an appointment.”
Just what I was afraid of. “I’m … Is there someone, one of the doctors maybe that I could talk to? Just for a minute?” She was already shaking her head. I decided to go for broke. “I’ve come a long way. I took a taxi all the way from Bering and—”
“You should have called first. I could have saved you the trouble.”
I nodded. “I know. I probably should have. It’s just … I just learned that my mother was here the last years of her life. She died when I was two. Well, that’s what I’d always thought, but then I learned today that she didn’t. She just … came here. I really need to learn her story. You can understand that, can’t you?”
She kept frowning, so I kept talking. “I know maybe I can’t see her records today, but maybe, if I could just talk to one of the doctors, understand the procedures …”
She held up a hand. “Okay. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll call Dr. Gordon.”
I recognized her as soon as she walked through the door, even without her boots and eyeliner. Her hair was dark brown, still not her natural color, I thought, but softer than black. She paused when she saw me, touched her finger to her mouth, then snapped and shook it speculatively at me as she approached.
“I know you.”
I nodded.
“Wait. Don’t tell me.” She smiled triumphantly. “The girl on the plane. Helen.”
“Cassandra,” I corrected.
“Riiight.” She turned back to the receptionist. “Thanks, Beth, I’ll take it from here.” She motioned me to the stairs behind the desk. “Come to my office.” I followed her up the curved staircase.
“So,” she said as we passed through a swinging door at the top, “I guess it worked out okay with your long-lost aunt?”
“Yeah, more or less.”
“That was, what, two months ago?”
“And change.”
“Wow.” She nodded. “Time flies, huh?”
She asked what I’d been doing and I told her about Cuppa and Lennox as we walked the long, carpeted hallway. Finally she unlocked a wooden door near the end, holding it open for me.
“Beth said you wanted access to some records,” she said as we sat on opposite sides of her desk. Behind her was a window, its blinds fully opened to let in as much sunlight as possible. The requisite diplomas were on the wall to her right.
“I do. My mother was a patient here before she died. Actually, I thought she was already dead, but turns out she wasn’t.”
“Well, some of the people here basically are.” Petra clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oy. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Still outspoken, I thought. “No problem.”
“When was she here?” Petra asked, fingers tapping on the keyboard.
I gave her the year my mom died. “I’m not sure when she …
checked in?”
“Last name?”
“Renfield.”
She nodded, her fingers clicking quickly over the keys, then hovering lightly where they’d finished as she watched the flickering letters. “Yup. Georgia?”
There was a lump in my throat. They had it. “That’s her,” I said hoarsely.
“Some of her records are on the system. The rest are probably in the archives, handwritten. Barrow was just starting to file electronically then, so things in that time period are kind of a mishmash. Let’s see what we’ve got …” She hit some more keys, glancing at me quickly. “You know, Beth down at reception is right, there really is procedure we’re supposed to follow. Forms you need to file. I can tell you’re anxious and I know you went to a lot of trouble to get here, so I’m going to tell you what I see, but I’ll still need you to send in the paperwork and you won’t be able to leave with anything—no notes, no photocopies, nothing—today. Is that cool?”
“That’s great,” I said. “Really. I appreciate anything you can tell me.”
She shifted her eyes back to the screen. “Let’s see …” She read for a minute or two, then looked up at me, her eyes wider. “She died here.”
I nodded.
“You knew that?”
“It was in her obituary.”
Petra nodded and resumed reading. “The cause of death is listed as …” She glanced at me and said softly, “Suicide. I’m sorry.”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. I mean, she’d been at a mental institution. But it made me think of that girl, that awful day in New York, watching her fall. How must it have been for Nan? Awful to have her daughter run away, terrible that she wound up someplace like this. Unbearable to have her die like that. And then, suddenly, I realized Nan had come back here, remembered a few days with Agnes at our apartment and a woman, Mrs. Johnson, who sometimes stayed with me if Nan or Agnes had to go out. It was jumbled together, I was only six, but Nan had been tired when she came back. Didn’t feel like playing Candyland or Chutes. Who would after burying their only daughter?
“How could that happen?” I asked. “Wouldn’t she have been watched?”
“Yeah.” Petra shrugged. “But we don’t always see it coming and sometimes people are so determined …”
I nodded, thinking again of the girl in New York. “Does it say anything about her … problems? Why she was here?”
“Well …” Petra scanned the screen again. “She was at Barrow for about four years. Depression. Severe. But no details. That kind of stuff would be in the archives.”
“Can we go there?”
She glanced at her watch, then nodded. “Okay. Just let me make a quick call.”
I waited outside, hearing the soft mumble of her voice through the unlatched door. “… my final rounds? Owe you one.” Then she was by my side. She gave my arm a little squeeze. “I really am sorry. I know how hard this kind of thing is.”
I nodded, actually feeling comforted.
In the archives, cardboard boxes were stacked floor to ceiling on metal shelves. It took nearly half an hour of Petra’s pawing through files to come up with my mother’s.
“Whoa,” she said, hefting a folder three inches thick from the box. She glanced at her watch again. “You came here by taxi, right?”