Dying to Tell Read Online Free PDF Page B

Amelia’s alters has taken over, she might not talk to me.”
    Jake’s eyes held a sliver of compassion, and she realized she’d said too much. “I don’t understand the alters. How many are there?”
    “Amelia has three personalities. The first one that emerged was Bessie. She’s the childlike personality, the innocent little girl. Actually, she appeared when Amelia was little, about three. At first, my grandparents and I thought she was just an imaginary friend, and we went along with it. But when Amelia was eight and she started showing signs that she really believed she was Bessie, Papaw got worried and took her to therapy. Then around age twelve, adolescence hit and Viola, the woman who likes sex, came out. A couple of years later, Skid, the angry belligerent teenage boy, appeared. He claims to protect the others.”
    “Does Amelia talk to them?”
    “When she was younger, she had no idea the others existed. She completely blacked out when one of them took over. It’s called a transition state. The goal is to merge the alters into one identity.”
    “And now?”
    “Obviously she still blacks out sometimes, especially during a stressful situation like Papaw’s death.” Sadie ran a hand through her hair. “Although Dr. Tynsdale said she had progressed to the point that the other three personalities had met and started to talk to each other. Now at times Amelia can hear them. Hopefully she’ll become strong enough to stand on her own, and she won’t need them anymore.”
    “So you’ll try to talk to each of them and find out what really happened last night?”
    “Yes.” Déjà vu struck Sadie, and she wanted to run again. To be back in San Francisco, where the temperature stayed the same all year. Where thunderstorms didn’t rip apart trees...and lives. Where the ghosts of the past weren’t waiting to choke her.
    Where no one knew Sadie, and her twin, the crazy lady.
    But she couldn’t share any of that with this man.
    She had to protect Amelia, just as she always had. “But first, I should call a lawyer.”
    “Tynsdale’s already called Chad Marshall.”
    “Chad’s a lawyer now?”
    Jake’s lips thinned, and she remembered that Jake and Chad had butted heads in high school. In sports and over girls. “Yeah.”
    “Good. Then I’ll talk to Chad.”
    Jake gave a clipped nod, then gestured toward the door. “Come on, I’ll take you to see Amelia now. But brace yourself. I just took over the job, and I haven’t had time to clean up the cells.”
    They turned right out of his office, then walked through another set of double doors. She prepared herself for one of her sister’s notorious, tearful outbursts, for a cuss fight from Skid, for the slutty voice of Viola, or for a stranger she might not recognize at all.
    But an ominous silence reverberated off the dingy walls.
    Two cells sat on the right, two more on the left. Basic prison decor—stained concrete walls and floor. The place reeked of dust, urine, sweat, and the musty odor of cigarettes. An odor she remembered from the first time she’d visited her sister in jail when she was fifteen, and Viola had gotten caught shoplifting lingerie at the local department store.
    A thin thread of light from outside had managed to creep through the narrow windows, which had been carved out above eye level and were too small for a person to crawl through.
    Jake stopped at the first cell on the right and reached for the keys jangling from the hook on his belt loop. Apparently Amelia had the place to herself.
    Through the metal bars, she stared at the pitiful lump hunched on the cot.
    The girl who’d played with her as a child and told secrets to her as a teenager lay curled in a fetal position facing the wall, athin wool blanket pulled over her body and head, as if she’d disappeared inside it.
    The sight reminded Sadie of the first time Amelia came back from the sanitarium. She’d talked about how awful it had been, about a friend she’d made