Before I Wake Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ohio. It would be better to go there. Better to see him face-to-face. Because a phone call wasn’t enough. A phone call wouldn’t fix anything.
    It can’t be fixed.
    You can’t fix it.
    He can’t fix it.
    Done is done, and dead is dead.
    Not her thoughts. Someone else’s. Remnants of Albert French lingering in her brain.
    She sometimes thought of French as something smoky, something that curled around in her skull, settling deep into cracks and crevices, into places where ideas and egos liked to hide…
    Eli’s prattle was a hum in her ear, no distinct words that she could turn into pictures in her head. Worse than white noise, but not as bad as Muzak.
    Then the signs came.
    MADELINE 20 MILES
    The signs made it real.
    MADELINE 16 MILES
    When they reached the five-mile marker, she sat up straighter, her body tense and bent slightly forward.
    Five miles in rural West Virginia were like twenty somewhere else. Arden had forgotten that. Forgotten how long it took to get from point A to point B.
    Forever and never.
    Especially when your heart was racing and you didn’t want to arrive at your destination.
    They topped the last hill.
    There was the town. There was Madeline. So cute and cozy and innocuous. Red brick and church spires peeking out from behind clusters of trees.
    The scene would make a nice greeting card.
    The town had been laid out in a deep valley surrounded by hills. A teacup, residents liked to say, the distance from rim to rim only a few miles.
    Sheltered. Protected. Isolated.
    Her gaze shifted across the valley to the bluff overlooking the town.
    The asylum stared back, causing her heart to jump.
    She put a hand to her chest, and felt the rapid, erratic pumping.
    Am I breathing? I don’t think I’m breathing.
    She opened her mouth and inhaled, then exhaled.
    There. Better.
    Eli made a left turn, taking a new bypass around town, heading straight for the Hill.
    If Arden were driving, she would pull over. Stop.
    Hadn’t she just left New Mexico a couple of hours ago?
    She checked her watch. Not a couple of hours. Eighteen. Eighteen hours since she’d stood under a velvet-black star-filled sky, breathing refinery fumes.
    This was a bad place.
    She’d known it before, but now that she was here, now that they were circling up the steep drive, the tires on the wet brick pavement making a jarringly familiar humming sound. It took all of her willpower to keep from jumping out of the car.
    Everything was happening too fast. She had to slow things down. She had to distract herself.
    She spotted a man dressed in a plaid jacket walking a black Lab with a red nylon lead.
    Dogs. Would her life ever be that normal again? Dog normal?
    Maybe a cat would be better than a dog. More than one cat, so if she went away for a few days the cats could keep each other company.
    But I really like dogs ….
    But dogs were much needier. They expected things of you. They wanted to make you happy, and didn’t like it if you stayed in bed all day. Cats, on the other hand, loved nothing better than a bed day.
    Dogs like to play .
    Arden couldn’t see herself playing. Couldn’t see herself tossing a ball, then talking in a high-pitched, enthusiastic voice when the dog retrieved it.
    Had she actually done that? Yes. Yes, she had.
    Eli’s voice brought her back to the reality she was trying to escape. “Do you remember this place?”
    His question made her wonder how much he knew about her. “Yes.”
    The visual impact of the Hill was an imprint that had never blurred, never faded. Bleaching hadn’t been able to remove it from her mind.
    The asylum was massive. More like a town, or at least a large campus. At its zenith, it had boasted landscaped gardens with fountains, swans, and geese where the townspeople came to picnic on weekends. The brick for the buildings had been fired on site, dug from the very clay they now drove over.
    Eli swung the car in the direction of the main building.
    Five stories tall, with grand pillars and a