The Purgatorium by Eva Pohler Page A

asking, especially when she knew her heart still belonged to Brock.
    He smiled and said, “No. She doesn’t like horses.”
    “Okay then. Three o’clock?”
    Cam nodded, before kissing the top of her head, and walked out the door.
    Lying beside Daphne was the book Hortense had given her, The Tempest. She picked it up and carried it across the room to one of the striped chairs. The book fell open to a page that was marked with a folded piece of paper—a clipped, yellowed newspaper article:
    May 1994: Harvard Professor Fired for Unethical Practices: New York: Dr. Hortense Gray, Harvard Professor of Psychology, was recently relieved of her duties by the Harvard School of Psychology when her paper, “Using Pain to Stimulate Pleasure in the Clinically Depressed,” was submitted to and rejected by the American Journal of Psychology . The paper was rejected because it revealed methods the journal and the university deemed unethical. According to Dr. Fordham, chair of the Department of Psychology, Dr. Gray administered pain treatments to subjects diagnosed with clinical depression in order to locate the point at which a subject’s desire to die becomes replaced by the drive to survive. Dr. Gray hypothesized that when “the survival instinct kicks in, suicidal tendencies are overcome and the patient is cured”…
    The article went on to say that Hortense was the adopted daughter of renowned psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Gray. The article also mentioned that Hortense was one of many orphans adopted by the psychologist who himself had been accused but never charged of using the children in his own experiments.
    He used orphans—his own daughter—in his experiments?
    Daphne looked through the rest of the book to see if there was anything more, and when she found nothing else, wondered if she’d been meant to find the article, or if the doctor would be mortified to know Daphne had it. Daphne also thought again about the long scars all over the doctor’s arms. Did her father’s experiments have anything to do with them? A shiver skipped down her spine.
    Then she opened The Tempest and began to read.
     
     

Chapter Nine: Runaway
     
    Later that afternoon, a group of them met at the same sunny clearing near the jeeps, where they had met for the sunset cruise. Daphne and Emma climbed behind Roger and Cam. Daphne was relieved to learn Cam had been telling the truth about Bridget not coming,  even though she had worn her yellow backless halter top and most flattering navy shorts just in case.
    She hated herself for wanting Cam’s attention, but there it was.
    Another jeep—with the round-cheeked, older woman named Mary Ellen sitting beside Phillip in the front seat and with Dave and Vince in the back—followed Roger up the road and out of the canyon. They drove for five or ten minutes along the canyon ridge until they came to the Nature Conservancy headquarters. Cam told her that the oldest of the buildings, the chapel, constructed during the ranching period, had been converted into stables. Kelly, the guide, whom Daphne had briefly met at dinner her first night on the island, greeted them and gave them instructions before taking them into the pen and helping them to mount, one by one.
    Daphne waited her turn next to Cam and Emma on the dirt with the sharp smell of animal and leather and hay. A gentle breeze made the smells bearable.
    Kelly looked to be in her late thirties, and was a red head with green eyes. She wore jeans and a white tank with an unbuttoned denim shirt. When Kelly explained she had just returned to work on the island after ten months of maternity leave, they all congratulated her on her baby.
    Daphne rode a white mare named Pearl. Kelly led them on a gray gelding called Chief from the pen and up the canyon ridge toward the deep valley.
    Kelly warned everyone not to let the horses feed on the tall grass along the hills. The riders should, instead, show them who was boss by forcing them on the trail. There