Read Online A Cure for Madness by Jodi McIsaac - Free Book Online

he said, “I know this is the last place you want to be.” There was bitterness in his voice, but it was soft, like an echo. “But . . . it’s good to see you again. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”
    “Yeah. Me too.”
    “How are you really?” he asked. “Before all this, I mean. Were you happy?”
    I remembered Rob asking me the same thing as we drove from the airport. “I was,” I answered, truthfully. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel . . . going forward.” A sense of unease hovered in my chest. “And you? Are you happy?”
    “As happy as a recently divorced single father can be, I suppose.” His eyes crinkled when he smiled.
    I flushed. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s okay. It was my fault. Workaholics don’t make good husbands, or so I’m told. It’s part of the reason I moved back here with Maisie. She’s five. My mother helps look after her. And I’m trying to be around more. This current . . . whatever it is, it isn’t making that easier. Do you have kids?”
    “Me? God, no. I can barely keep houseplants alive.”
    He smiled. “I remember that. I bought you a cactus for Christmas one year, and you managed to kill it.”
    I stood up. “I should go. I told Wes I’d bring him a coffee.”
    “I should go too,” he said, glancing again at his watch.
    He waited in silence while I bought another coffee, then walked alongside me to the elevator.
    “Well,” I said. “It was good to see you.”
    He pulled a card out of the inner pocket of his lab coat and handed it to me. “Listen, I know this is a really hard time for you. If there’s anything you need . . . well, my cell number’s on the card.”
    The doors opened and I stepped inside. I slipped his card into my pocket. “Thanks, Kenneth.”
    I closed my eyes as the elevator ascended. That was . . . not as bad as it could have been. Awkward, yes. But it had felt good to see him again.
    When the doors opened on Wes’s floor, I had to double-check that it was the right one. A half-dozen men and one woman were huddled behind the nurses’ desk, peering at a computer screen over the shoulders of a harried-looking nurse. Two of them were speaking quickly into cell phones pressed to their ears. They were all wearing suits, as though this were a board meeting.
    “This can’t be right,” one of them was saying. “Can you run that again?”
    The nurse at the desk huffed. “I’ve run it three times,” she said. “I don’t believe it either, but there it is.”
    I slipped down the hall to Wes’s room. The security guard outside recognized me and let me in. Wes was sitting in the chair near the window, reading a worn copy of Fahrenheit 451 .
    “Sorry for the wait,” I said. “I ran into Kenneth downstairs.”
    “Who’s Kenneth?”
    “My old friend from college, remember? You met him once or twice.”
    “Oh yeah, that guy. The one you dumped the same time you left me.”
    “It wasn’t like that.”
    “Whatever. You don’t look too happy about seeing him,” he said.
    “It’s not a big deal. There are more important things going on right now.”
    Wes nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get that. Relationships are tough.”
    “We don’t have a relationship,” I insisted. “Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked, both to change the subject and because I was suddenly curious. I had never given much thought to Wes’s love life.
    “Oh yeah. She’s awesome. Her name’s Brandy.”
    “Where did you meet her?”
    “Church. One of the times they let me go home for the weekend.”
    “You met someone at Mom and Dad’s church?” I found that hard to imagine; I couldn’t think of one person under the age of sixty in our parents’ church.
    “Nah, I went to the Meeting House downtown. It’s a cool place. You can be yourself there, y’know? If you want to dance, you can dance. If you want to prophesy, you can prophesy. No one gives a shit what you look like. Anyway, I say she’s my