He had the decency—or the cowardice, perhaps—to say nothing to that.
“I never did fall, did I? You made all that up,” she said.
He raised his hand in surrender, the only admission of guilt she needed.
“How could you do that? You drugged me,” Allison said. Her voice was small, scared, far away.
“Just Benadryl,” he said. “A double dose.”
“You made me recite a poem to help me fall asleep. Kubla Khan.”
“‘A savage place!’” Dr. Capello recited, “‘as holy and enchanted / As e’er beneath a waving moon was haunted / By woman wailing—’”
“‘For her demon-lover!’” Allison completed the line, finally remembering it. She closed her eyes and whispered a name. “Roland...”
“Yes, Roland,” he said.
“It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“No.”
“He killed Rachel. Murdered her.”
“I don’t believe children, even psychopathic children, are capable of committing murder in the legal sense. But did he kill her on purpose? Yes,” Dr. Capello said. “He did. Their mother was long gone, father wasn’t home much. Roland would abuse Rachel, brutally abuse her. That’s how she came to me. Through the ER. Roland cracked her skull against the sidewalk.”
“Oh, God,” Allison said. She didn’t want to know any of this.
“She was too scared of Roland to tell anyone the truth about her injuries. The police assumed it was an accident and so did I. She was the sweetest little thing. I held her hand before the surgery, just to let her know I was taking good care of her. She didn’t want to let my hand go,” he said. “I can still feel those tiny little fingers. Her whole hand fit inside my palm. I told her she needed to be more careful playing outside. She said her accident wasn’t an accident, someone had pushed her. I assumed it was her father. Who would ever have guessed it was her brother? He was just eight.”
He stopped speaking and for a moment it seemed he was somewhere else, somewhere he wanted to return to.
“She asked me to take her home with me,” he said. “The sort of desperate hopeless wish children make, like wishing for wings. I never planned on having children. Work was my life. But I couldn’t let her go back to her father. I thought I would die if something happened to her. I’d never felt like that before with one of my patients, like she was my own child. So I asked to take her and they gave her to me. Just like that. And I thought if the father was hurting her, he’d probably hurt Roland, too. I brought them home and we spent a happy week together. Five whole days in this house, the three of us. And on the morning of the sixth day, before I was even awake, Roland dragged her out to the beach, buried her in the sand and let her suffocate to death. My little girl. My poor little Rachel.”
Though his eyes were dry and his body dehydrated, he still found a way to weep. Allison wept, too, but not with him. Their tears were for different reasons. He wept for what he’d lost. Allison wept for what he’d taken.
Finally, he calmed himself. He turned and opened the filing cabinet drawer, the third one, and riffled through some papers before bringing something over to Allison.
“There she is,” Dr. Capello said, handing her the photograph of a little gap-toothed girl of five with brown hair and brown eyes and a smile to break anyone’s heart. Allison stared at the photograph, the little girl killed by her own brother. Her brother, the man Allison loved.
“Master manipulators, psychopaths are,” Dr. Capello said. “Even as children. And I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Rachel was too scared of Roland to tell me the truth. And she died for it.”
In the photograph, the girl sat cross-legged on a bed, a blue bed, holding a stuffed toy puppy. She wore a floppy beach hat to hide the shaved part of her hair from the surgery. She wore a smile to hide how scared she must have been trapped in the same house as the boy who would kill her that week.
“I made Roland tell me why he did it and you know what he said?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“He said, ‘Because you liked her better than me.’ He killed her because I loved her. It almost makes me want to believe in hell. I could have wrung the life out of him with my bare hands. A boy of eight and I hated him. Do you know how terrifying it is to realize you truly want to strangle a child? But I didn’t do it. I didn’t hurt him. I fixed him. And I was right to do it, Allison. Instead of justice, I showed him mercy. They love to talk about mercy at his monastery. I say what I did was an act of mercy. I operated on him, and lo and behold, the old boy was dead and a new boy was born in his place. He was a work of art. Total transformation. Demon to angel... Yes, he killed her because I loved her, and I saved him because I hated him. God, I hated him. Until I loved him.” He lowered his head and Allison knew he wanted to weep.
“I love him, too, you know.”
“Love him? You’ll destroy him if you aren’t careful.”
“Destroy him? How?”
“You don’t know fragile these kids are. Before the surgery, they have no remorse. After, they’re penitent as saints. You have to protect them from too much guilt. They’re like sponges, especially in the beginning, soaking up everyone’s feelings. If you hate them, they hate themselves. That’s what did Oliver in. His mother’s grief became his. And I saw the way she watched him, like he was a bomb about to go off. He was better here where no one knew what he’d done. He needed to be shielded. But she took him home and you know the rest. I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want to lose him like I’d...”
“What?”
Dr. Capello didn’t answer.
“You lost another patient, didn’t you?” she asked. “Another kid? A kid who killed himself like Oliver?”
He still didn’t answer.
“How many kids?” Allison demanded. “Tell me how many kids died.”
“Five.”
Chapter 26
“Five,” Allison repeated. “Five kids? Five of your patients committed suicide?”
“Two killed themselves within a year of the procedure. Two died during or right after the operation—brain bleeds. One lived but...she wasn’t well. She ran away. I don’t think she’s ever turned up.”
He paused and took a weak, shuddering breath.
“Oliver was the last one. After his death, I stopped the experiment.”
“It took you that long?”
He raised his hand in a fist. “Dammit, Allison, it had worked. On Roland, on Deacon, on Thora—somehow I got them just right. I had proof right inside my own house the procedure was valid, that it had merit. Everything came together with them. The stars aligned. They were...”
“Lucky,” Allison said.
Dr. Capello lowered his fist. “I was shooting arrows in the dark,” he said. “Even a master archer will miss a target he can’t see.”
“You were shooting at children. It’s not right.”
“I never said it was right. Never! But it was necessary.” He nearly spat the last word out at her. Necessary. She’d never heard an uglier word.
He rested against the filing cabinet.
“I never meant to love them, you know,” Dr. Capello said, quiet again. “I never meant to love those awful kids. Especially not Roland. I planned on operating on him and sending him back into the system. His father could have him if he wanted him. Anybody could have him as far as I cared.”
He paused to take a breath. He was angry and that alone was keeping him upright.
“And then the damnedest thing happened,” he continued. “I went into his hospital room after the surgery and watched him sleeping, a bandage on his head and bruises on his eyes. He was just a little boy. That’s all he was. This skinny twig of a boy, just a little boy. He was in a coma for a week after the surgery. Longest week of my life.” Dr. Capello laughed to himself, a mirthless sound. “The operation damages the memory. When he woke up, he didn’t know his sister was dead.”