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AM I MAD?

“No,” Thornhollow answered from his chair. “You’ve had an extremely taxing few days. Your tormentor was under your roof, your close friend took her own life, and you’ve been denied the use of your voice by a lie that must hang over you for as long as you remain here. Emotions were tearing you apart and they came out the only way they could. Grief is by nature the most violent of them all. The ancients tore their hair and rent their clothing to express it. Now we keep the dead body in our homes, shaking people’s hands as they pass by to view it and trying to stop ourselves from crying because it’s not socially acceptable. Tell me—which of these mourning practices is least sane?”

Grace’s mouth turned up slightly, grateful for his words. But there was no feeling alongside it; all of her convictions had flown out of her in the padded room. She could not avenge the dead, or protect her sister, or even stop her own mind from reliving her horrors. Her fingers trailed upon the chalk letters she’d made, leaving a white film on her fingertips.

“You are not mad, Grace,” Thornhollow said, watching her movements. “I assure you.”

She found the chalk and wrote again, the only thing she knew.

THEN I AM NOTHING.

“For God’s sake, man! Do you not think I know a suicide when I see one?” Thornhollow’s voice brought Grace from his office, where she’d been dozing by the fire. George and Davey stood in the atrium, holding their wet hats in their hands.

“It’s not my place to say what you know or don’t know,” George said. “I was told to come ask a few questions about a girl that’s gone missing up here at the madhouse. And from what I heard, there’s a screaming fella running around with an ax mixed into this story as well. That don’t sound much like a suicide to me, though I’m just a policeman, not a doctor.”

“I thought it was you,” Davey said, going to Grace as she stepped into the hall. “When I heard there was a girl gone, I . . .”

Grace stared at him as his sentence evaporated, his words hitting nothing. The concern she’d seen in his eyes before, the tiny attentions that he’d bestowed upon her meant nothing now. They could only be absorbed by her blankness.

“You’d best step away from her,” Thornhollow said, intervening between the two smoothly and taking Grace by the hand. “The girl in question was a good friend of hers, and Grace has had . . . a spell.”

Davey looked at her again, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Gentlemen,” Thornhollow said. “I can assure you that Nell committed suicide.”

“How so?” George pushed. “And where’s the man with the ax being held?”

“He is held nowhere,” the doctor answered. “He is a docile resident of the asylum who merely found the instrument Nell used to chop through the ice in order to throw herself into the lake. Now if you would please go.”

“I don’t believe we will,” George said. “I’d like to see this Nell girl’s room and talk with the ax man myself. And if you want to keep having access to all our crime scenes, I suggest you let us into yours.”

Thornhollow heaved a sigh, his grip tight on Grace’s wrist. “I will be with you every step of the way.”

George mocked a bow. “But of course. I wouldn’t dream of trying to solve a crime without your assistance, Doctor.”

They climbed the steps together, Davey pausing to allow Grace to pass in front of him on the landing. She walked by without acknowledging him, leading the men to Nell’s room among the whispers of the girls who gathered in the hall. Thornhollow let go of her arm when they entered the room.

“As you can see, Nell has laid out all of her personal belongings very carefully,” he said, indicating her desk. “She didn’t own much but what she had is here—hair ribbons placed with precision alongside one another, what clothes she had freshly laundered and folded.”

Grace slipped away mentally; the room where her good friend had quietly prepared for her death became simply another room. The ribbons that she’d seen adorning Nell’s black curls transformed into evidence easily, her emotional attachment to them vacuumed away by the cold, clinical evaluative stance she had used so often by Thornhollow’s side. Her breath came more easily, her pain sinking into the coldness that grew inside her.

Thornhollow walked the men through Nell’s room, but they insisted on seeing Ned, whose face still bore signs of tear tracks. The musty smell of the stable enveloped them as Ned talked, his hands telling the story as well as his mouth, but Grace heard little and felt less. Thornhollow was more than capable of convincing the police that Ned was innocent, and she let her mind drift to a place where facts held sway and emotion meant nothing. A place where she could never be hurt again.

She ignored the knock when it came, well aware of who it would be in the middle of the night. Janey cracked the door and slid inside Grace’s room. “Grace,” she hissed. “The doctor needs you.”

Grace rolled onto her side, presenting her back to Janey. “Grace.” The nurse’s hands shook her. “The doctor said to tell you that . . .” She paused, the oddness of the words catching on her tongue. “He said to tell you that he’s found another doll.”

A spark of interest ignited in her belly, but what good would come of looking at another dead girl, eyes wide with questions Grace could not answer? She shoved Janey’s hands aside and shook her head, burrowing deeper into the pillow.

“All right,” Janey said with a sigh. “I’ll tell him you’re not coming. I said before that I’d take your part if I felt it was too much. But I can’t help but think it might do you some good. You’re not one for talking, but I always see a purpose in you, Grace. I haven’t seen a trace of anything in you at all these past few days.”

Janey left, but Grace remained motionless in her bed. In the days since Nell’s death, the bleak winter had wrapped itself around the asylum, seeming to fill even Grace’s head. Everything inside of her was gray, all of her actions meaningless. Letters written to Alice were taken by the wind; long conjectures with Thornhollow produced nothing more concrete than chalk on slate. She was a madwoman in truth, with no direction and no hope.

There was a timid scratching at her door. Grace ignored it but the door creaked open slightly and Elizabeth appeared, long braids hanging out from under a sleeping cap. She crept inside, crawling into bed with Grace without being invited. The girl’s hand wound into Grace’s unbound hair and she nestled in beside her.

“String said you needed me,” she said, tucking the comforter around both of them. Grace slipped off to sleep, lulled by Elizabeth’s hands moving through her hair.

“It was a mistake,” Thornhollow informed her the next day in his office.