Take the Key and Lock Her Up

“You are not okay,” Alexei says, taking my shoulders and turning me from the room.

“I am,” I say. “I will be.”

“You don’t have to be strong for me,” he says, and he’s sweet to think it. But he’s wrong. I have to be strong for me. It’s a lesson I learned three years ago. It’s a lesson that someday—just for an hour or two—I’d love to be able to forget.

He takes my hand. “I have you,” he says again.

I look up. Smile.

We have each other.

As we start down the hall again, I admit, “It wasn’t like this. I mean, it was. But nicer. Cleaner,” I say as, in the distance, someone screams.

“It wasn’t like this,” I say, and I know it’s not a lie.

There, I was the one who was screaming.

When we reach the end of the hall, Viktor pauses beside a door, takes a key from his pocket, and turns the lock. He gestures us inside.

There’s no bed in this room. No dresser. Just a table and a few chairs.

“You may wait here,” he says. “I’ll go see that she is escorted to this room.”

He closes the door behind him but doesn’t lock it.

I’m not sure how long we wait. There’s no clock in the room, and the sky is so gray there’s no use tracking the sun.

“Maybe she’s sleeping,” I say. “Or having therapy or something.”

“Do you honestly think this place offers therapy?” he asks.

I don’t, but still I shrug and say, “Well, maybe—”

Alexei gets up so quickly his metal chair crashes to the floor. “We should go.”

“We just got here,” I say.

“We’ve been here for more than an hour. Something isn’t right. We should leave. Now.”

In my mind I know he’s right, but in my heart I can’t bring myself to move.

“Something is wrong, Gracie. This feels wrong. My gut is telling me … Jamie says to trust your gut.”

Mentioning Jamie is a low blow, but it works. I’m turning toward the door when I hear …

“Hello, there.”

There’s a woman in the doorway. I know her from Megan’s photo, but I would never have recognized her as my mother’s old friend. She wears a dirty, threadbare robe over some kind of nightgown. On her feet are army boots. Her hair is dirty and pulled back in a pink plastic headband. But the most surreal thing is the expression on her face. She is smiling, bright and wild. She’s like a child on Christmas morning, getting her first look under the tree.

“They said that I had visitors.” She brings her hands together. “I love visitors!”

Her voice is high, with a singsong lilt. I doubt she’s had a visitor in years, but now isn’t the time to say so, because she’s rushing forward, exclaiming, “I never dreamed it would be you!”

I expect her to hurl herself across the room and into Alexei’s strong arms. I think she’s going to cry big fat tears of joy to finally be back with her only child. But Karina rushes right at me instead.

“I thought I’d never see you again. I …” She eases closer, looks at my face like I’m a painting in a gallery, as if every brushstroke matters. “It’s really you.”

I look at Alexei. Worry grows inside of me but turns to panic when his mother dips into a clumsy curtsy and says, “I am beyond honored, Your Highness.”

I know I’m not crazy. Not really. Dr. Rainier says that I was traumatized, confused. I was hurt in both body and soul by what happened three years ago. And I’ll be better someday. Maybe. I spent years not knowing what was real and what was imagined. Truth and fiction are a spectrum, you see. And I am slowly, surely, trying to crawl back to the other side.

But that’s not true for Karina.

It’s not just the glossy look in her eyes, the vacant smile and messy hair. She’s entrenched on the wrong side of reality. She’s been too deep for too long, and I don’t know that there is any way to get her out.

She’s rising from her shaky curtsy, her smile too bright as she exclaims, “The heir is here! The heir lives!”

“I’m … no!” I exclaim, partly because it isn’t something I like being reminded of. Partly because the last thing I need is for the rest of the world to hear her.

“Amelia—”

“No!” I snap, and grasp her by the arms. “I’m not the heir. Mrs. Volkov—Karina—I am Grace. Grace Blakely. Do you know who I am?”

Alexei’s mother goes silent and still. It’s scary how drastically she changes. She tilts her head, as if studying me. It’s like I’m a noise in a distant room, trying to pull her from a dream.

For a second, she sees me. I can tell by the tilt of her head, the look in her eye. Then her gaze shifts onto Alexei, and the curtain falls again.

“Karina,” I try, but she reaches out for both of my hands, makes me twirl around like we’re a pair of girls playing outside on the first pretty day of the year. But we’re not outside. We’re surrounded by four dirty cinder-block walls and there are bars on the windows. The sky outside is dull and gray.

But Karina doesn’t notice, doesn’t care. She just starts to sing.

“‘Hush, little princess, dead and gone. No one’s gonna know you’re coming home.’”

“Karina, please. I need to ask you about Caroline.”