The Suicide Gene Read online

  The beautiful, tiny Melissa Megan McKinney, born prematurely on September 11th—

  She gasped, and then reminded herself she had just located the baby’s obituary. She took deep breaths until her lightheadness subsided and then she continued reading.

  —passed away on September 15th. She was my little bundle of joy to care for. Mother promised I could help watch her.

  Emma forced herself away from the September 11th date. Coincidental. The baby died. She concentrated on the September 15th date instead, taking note that the death occurred shortly after birth, not typical of SIDS.

  She read on. Minnie rambled:

  My grandmother married John McKinney two years after her identical twin sister drowned in the bathtub on their sixteenth birthday. Her sister dated John for a spell. She brought him home to meet the family shortly before she took her life. Sara had no beau at the time. Surely their shared despondency over this tragic death impelled their sweet passion, grief and longing obliterated by unity. I think of their love every time I pass by Trinity Cemetery, where one can glimpse the McKinney family plot from the road.

  A family cemetery plot? Emma’s fingers fell from the keyboard to her lap.

  She took a minute to think, then she shut down her computer and threw the paper files into her drawer, locked it, and hollered to Sharon. “I have to leave.”

  She stuffed her phone, hat, and gloves in her purse, slipped her arms into her coat, and hurried toward the front door.

  “Where are you going?” Sharon stood up as Emma rushed by. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, everything is fine. Can you lock up for me tonight? I won’t be back.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that. What’s the hurry?” Sharon asked, but Emma was already out the door.

  The frigid air engulfed her like a swarm of bees, but she hardly felt it. By the time she reached her car, her hands were trembling from the cold and too stiff for her to thread the key into the ignition. She forced herself to stop and put on gloves. She started the engine, jumped outside, and used two scrapers simultaneously to gouge big holes through the accumulated ice on her windshields. When her front and back vision seemed somewhat cleared, she slid inside and rolled all four windows down to scrape away thick frost obstructing her side view. Frozen chunks of ice cracked and streaked down the windows, leaving lines transparent enough for her to see a little out the sides. She backed out of her parking space, threw the car into drive, and headed for Trinity Cemetery.

  Chapter 16

  Saturday, February 28

  Seventy-five days.

  She awoke to the sound of her next-door neighbor’s dog, Moses, yelping in pain. Her clock flashed 8:37 a.m. She still lay on the couch curled in a fetal position. A half-full glass of Moscato sat on the coffee table, its empty bottle lay sideways on the floor, tear stains streaked the designer pillow, and a bag of potato chips she didn’t remember opening stood upright beside the sofa.

  She stretched and sat up, peering out the bottom of the side window to see the Ibizan hound scurry toward his owner’s back door. Probably had knocked his head on an icicle hanging on Judy’s wood-framed shed. He’d done it countless times—both the jumping and the waking. Moses, whom Emma was convinced could leap the Red Sea in pursuit of a cat, loved taking a running start and lunging toward the shed’s icy treats. She feared he was one jump away from losing an eye. She watched for a minute, allowing the dog’s plight to distract her from her own.

  Once satisfied Moses would survive, she leaned back on the couch and felt the peacefulness of a restful night unfolding into the dawning feeling something was wrong. A realization that only hits in the morning after sleep has compassionately allowed a person hours of ignorance before they wake, full-brained, and realize, oh my God, the direction of their life just took an acute turn.

  She clicked her cell phone. Messages. She hit the voicemail and listened.

  “Emma, I need to talk to you right now,” Ally said on her first message.

  Delete.

  “Emma, call me,” she jeered on her second.

  Delete.

  Emma didn’t listen to the rest of Ally’s. She deleted them and then listened to and deleted the others, including one from Sharon, asking if she was all right. One from St. Mary’s inquiring about her mother’s condition. And one from her father saying her mother had spent Friday in total coherence, so Emma’s trip out of town for work should not be cancelled. “Go and enjoy,” he advised.

  The trip, she thought, remembering her concocted story about a weekend seminar in Pittsburgh. In truth, Giff had asked her to go to his cousin’s wedding. She had lied to her parents on the small chance she accepted his offer.

  Then yesterday she visited the cemetery, further confirming Melissa McKinney was dead, and in the end, told him no.

  She rose and staggered to the kitchen for coffee. She grabbed a vanilla single-serve C-cup and turned on her new coffee-brewing system. She bought the device on her way home from the cemetery, along with a new dress, shoes, and a five hundred dollar painting. The artwork depicted a Victorian-dressed girl standing on a cliff, arms reaching out to the sides, palms turned down, and one foot hovering over the edge. Behind the child’s weary eyes, she appeared to contemplate flying. Now, Emma staggered back to the front room and stared at the strange, gilt-framed image leaning against the doorframe awaiting appointment on the wall. The girl gazing back seemed to ask what she was doing there.

  “I have no idea,” Emma answered, shaking her head. “Mania, I guess.”

  The phone rang. She didn’t answer for fear Ally or Josh lingered on the other end. She had no remaining strength to argue with Ally and never wanted to talk to Josh again.

  He began calling five days ago after stopping by for some of his clothes. She supposed he noticed the pink roses still clinging to life in the ceramic vase on the dining room table. She had set Giff’s card at the bottom of the vase—maybe had left it there for Josh to read.

  Now, he was talking possible reconciliation. He’d lit up her phone with messages on Monday. More on Tuesday. A stalking amount on Wednesday, and on Thursday he casually mentioned he’d stop by over the weekend before he left for an out-of-town seminar. She had the locks changed late yesterday. Paid a pretty penalty for the locksmith to work a Friday night. She was done. Hung up on Josh last night in her drunken stupor, refusing to talk. She didn’t want to discuss anything with anyone—except.

  She glanced at the clock and rushed to the mirror next to the front door. Her reflection showed snarled hair, black-streaked face, and a slept-in, disheveled dress. She licked her thumb, wiped the stains from her cheeks, and smoothed her hair.

  Maybe the best thing to do was get the hell out of town.

  She grabbed her phone and dialed Giff’s number.

  “Hey,” he answered, “you didn’t change your mind, did you?”

  “As a matter of fact.” She bit her lip and grimaced. “I did. Have you left?”

  “I’m turning the car around,” he said.

  “Oh, no, don’t,” she told him. “I thought if you were still at home, I might go, but please don’t turn around.”

  “Too late, already getting off the interstate. I’m only two exits away. I’ll get back on and come for you.”

  “No,” she argued. “I believe in fate. If you already left, it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Oh, yes, it was. Put on that little black dress you wore to dinner last Friday and pack an overnight bag. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I haven’t showered!”

  “Make it twenty. I’ll slow down. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am not to show up at another wedding alone. I would have turned around even if I were two hours away, in Pittsburgh.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Stop wasting time and get in the shower. Now my family has to refrain from hounding me to ask every single girl at the reception to dance.”

  “They may still have to. I’m a terrible dancer.”
Emma laughed into the phone.

  “I beg to differ.”

  “Really?” She was blushing and not sure why, her mood already on an upswing. “I’m fairly certain you’ve never seen me dance.”

  “Oh, but I have,” he said, laughing. “I asked you to dance once.”

  “You never asked me.”

  “Yes, I did. You turned me down, and it has taken me, what, twelve years to ask you again?”

  “What are you talking about? You never—” She stopped, remembering that pimply-faced boy who asked her to dance in high school, the only one who’d ever asked back then.

  “From the silence, I see you have remembered.” His laughter slid into a nervous chuckle.

  “That was you? All those years ago? What were you doing there?”

  “Lindsey Clarke asked me to go.”

  “And you asked me to dance?”

  “Lindsey and I were friends. She was trying to make her boyfriend jealous. It worked. Unfortunately, I was left alone to fend for myself. So I gave it a shot and asked you. I remembered you from that inter-school mock trial competition. You gave the best closing argument.”

  She could hear his uneasy laugh through the phone. She laughed louder.

  “Why, Attorney Johnson, if I didn’t know better, I’d be worried you were stalking me.”

  “I’m hanging up now before you change your mind,” he said and he did. The call disconnected.

  She sat for a while, stunned, the phone stuck to her ear. Then a whimper of a laugh escaped her.

  “So, that skinny, nerdy kid was Gifford John Johnson,” she said aloud.

  She tossed her cell phone into her purse. “What am I doing?” she whispered, but she was still smiling.

  It was the first happy thought she had since leaving the cemetery. Finding Melissa McKinney’s headstone at the graveyard had knocked her into a self-pitying gutter, and Josh’s phone call last night deepened the trench. She had answered by accident. Merely picked up the phone to see who had called and, in her drunkenness, hit his name thinking he’d left a message. He was still on the call. She said hello, surprised. He babbled. She listened, heard him say he was having a hard time signing the divorce papers. Didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. Maybe they should reconsider. See a counselor.

  “Sign them,” she said, and clicked the phone off.

  He called back. She let the call go to voicemail.

  Three months ago she asked Josh to go to counseling, broke down and begged him once. Now she was leaving for a weekend with another man. To hell with fidelity, she thought. She needed a break from her marriage, her clients, Alzheimer’s, and the bizarre McKinneys. She ran to her closet and ripped the dress Giff mentioned from its hanger, threw it on the bed, and jumped in the shower as if her life depended on it.

  And maybe it did.

  Chapter 17

  Monday, March 2, 2015

  Seventy-three days.

  Emma parked her car at the back of her office, removed the shovel from the shed, and pushed it in front of her as she walked, picking up snow all the way to the front path. There, she brushed the light powder away with abrupt, left-to-right swipes, striping the walkway leading to her door into a neat, parallel, white-ladder pattern.

  She stood momentarily, searching for reasons not to go in. Not only had she cleared the light snow, her shoveling had erased fresh footprints on the path.

  When she slipped the key into the lock, the door pushed open without a twist. She stamped snow off her boots as she walked through the front room, and when she entered her office, she saw her. Ally, sitting in her chair.

  “Emma, what are you doing?”

  “I’m arriving at my office to see clients. What do you think I am doing?” Almost immediately she regretted her agitated tone. The last thing she wanted to do was engage in a row with Ally.

  She and Giff arrived home late Sunday night, and she had fallen into a wonderfully deep sleep, a sleep so peaceful that if someone had been there, they would have fingered her wrist for a pulse.

  She’d hit a home run at the wedding. His family soaked her with attention that even a Hollywood supermodel didn’t deserve. She loved Giff’s brother and adored his sister and her two beautiful children who drove in from Philadelphia. She danced with every male member of the Johnson family and laughed with every female member, all of whom teased she was way too good for Giff.

  She’d never dated a celebrity but supposed an evening with a star felt a little like being at that wedding with Giff. His family idolized him, and fifteen minutes after she walked into the reception, she realized why. He made each person feel he’d made the two-hour drive specifically to see them. He introduced people to Emma by revealing the one story they cherished about themselves: Uncle John golfed a hole-in-one last year at age seventy-six, Cousin Jane built a Christian school in Cambodia, Aunt Nancy’s son was NHL bound, Aunt Carolyn qualified to run the Boston marathon. He danced with three-year-olds and eighty-year-olds, toasted great uncles, and teased nieces and nephews relentlessly.

  More than his charm, his hand on her back the entire time unsteadied her. She felt a titillation she’d never experienced before, and the excitement left her wanting more. More dancing, more stories, more laughter, and more wishing the person next to you would wrap his arms around you and never let go.

  At the last second on Saturday, when Giff picked her up to leave for Pittsburgh, she dropped her briefcase by the front door and left work behind. Not one client crossed her mind during the entire rendezvous. She staved off thoughts of the McKinneys, Trinity Cemetery, everything. She lived for the now, something she only read about in books. Her mouth hurt from smiling, her stomach muscles from laughing, and her calves from dancing. For the first time, she slept with a man other than her husband, and she had felt an ecstasy beyond anything she imagined.

  Standing there in the aftermath of forty-eight hours of bliss, she regretted asking Ally to help her with the McKinneys. The fingers of her left hand shot open and her work tote dropped to the floor. She refused to let Ally dig up the sins she spent all weekend burying.

  “Don’t play dumb.” Ally broke into her world, dredging.

  Despite her determination, a sudden loss of words struck her and she looked away. The baby’s obituary, her cemetery trip, and a follow-up discussion with Father Mike on Friday had remedied Emma’s lack of objectivity regarding the McKinneys. She could handle their cases alone now. But dealing with Ally would be difficult.

  “You know what I’m talking about. What you’ve done. What were you thinking?” Ally jumped up and approached her.

  Emma stepped away, leaned toward the the thermostat and fidgeted with the dial, lowered the temperature.

  “You’re going to lose your license and for what? To find out something you already know?”

  The simple, gray walls in the hot room closed in on Emma. The space around her felt like a confessional, and Ally, a priest, who was also a family friend. Sure, he’d forgive her, but he’d forever look at her funny when he came to Sunday dinner, because he knew what she had done. No matter how long she kneeled in prayer, her penance was never going to end.

  Instantaneously enraged, she grasped for ammunition, a steel ball she could sling back at Ally. She removed her coat as if rolling up her sleeves.

  “What did I know? I didn’t have a neat little birth to two great parents like you. I was adopted. OCY lost my records. No one could tell me the name of my biological family.”

  “Heidi and Ben treated you wonderfully, gave you everything, including all the love you needed,” Ally shot back.

  “Yes, they did, but none of their blood flowed through my veins, did it? It was all someone else’s DNA.”

  “And genes. Aren’t you going to mention genes?”

  “Yes, and genes. You don’t know anything more about my genes than I do, so don’t lecture me.”

  “No, I don’t, but I know you, Emma. I stood by you through your depression and your obsession with y
our suicide gene. I sat up with you and assured you that you didn’t inherit it, and you had lots to live for. I fed your ego, stilled your mania.”

  “Mania?” Emma shrieked. “Really?”

  “Yes, mania,” Ally retorted. “What else would you call it?”

  “Counseling,” Emma rebounded. “I’m counseling four adult children who experienced a suicide in their family. It isn’t the first case I’ve handled like this and won’t be the last. And, you know why? Because I’m good at it. I understand it. Know how to deal with these people.”

  “Yes, you do, but taking on a family you think is your birth family and counseling them? Are you crazy?”

  “They are not my birth family.”

  “I was there with you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emma lifted her arms in the air.

  “Years ago when you stopped to pick up the clothes you had on hold at The Limited, and the sales clerk hurried off to find them. She came back with someone else’s merchandise. Remember?”

  “No, I don’t remember.” She covered her ears for a moment, and then dropped her hands to her side when she realized what she had done.

  “Yes, you do. You told the girl they weren’t your clothes and she said, ‘Aren’t you a McKinney?’ ” Ally walked around to face her. “That wasn’t the first time someone mistook you for a McKinney. In seventh grade, our science teacher, Mr. Espy, looked at you and said he was thrilled to see another brilliant McKinney in his room. Then he looked at the class list, and when he didn’t see the McKinney name, he apologized. No one knew he meant you except me—and you.”

  “Oh, so, one teacher confuses me with another family, and you spend eternity dwelling on it? Give it up, Ally.”

  “What about Mr. Martin?” Ally crossed her arms.

  Now, Emma deliberately covered her ears and walked away. “Forget Mr. Martin. Go to work. I’m sorry I asked you to look at their files.”

  “This isn’t about them. This is about you, your license, everything you worked for, all those godforsaken hours of studying, the sacrifices we made to get those little letters after our names that made us successful, important, normal. Do you want to throw it all away to confirm something you already know?”