The Suicide Gene Read online

  Chapter 18

  Wednesday, March 4, 2015

  Seventy-one days.

  She expected Josh to walk through the front door of her office any minute. Chills of dread shimmied up her spine and found her shoulders. She squared them—ready. She squirmed to her seat’s edge, glanced toward the window, and took a bite of the turkey and Swiss sandwich Sharon left her. She stopped chewing to inspect it. Mayonnaise slithered down its sides and dripped to the waxed paper below. She tossed it down and sipped coffee, instead. Her mood—once again tempered by genetic uncertainties of a lost natal last name—ebbed and flowed like an irregular heart beat on a monitor.

  Getting through Monday had been hell. Thoughts of her own life and her clients’ lives looped in and out of her head—kindred worlds crocheted into one big snarled mess. By late Monday afternoon, she couldn’t distinguish between the two. Was her client delusional? Or was she the delusional one? Did they need medication or did she? Were they flipping crazy or was it her? When Giff called and asked her to join him for dinner, she blurted out yes before he finished asking, then spent the evening confiding in him. She admitted accepting the McKinneys as clients despite believing they were her biological family.

  “Now, I’m sure they’re not,” she had conceded with the whine of a child discovering Santa was a fake. “For two years, I felt like I was at the bottom of a celestial staircase staring up through the clouds toward the golden gates—that opening to the end or the beginning, whichever you prefer—waiting to hear the Lord’s voice shouting down my birth family’s name, McKinney.”

  She sank in her chair, chin to chest, and broke into a sob—half laugh, half cry.

  “Emma.” Giff reached across the table for her hand and smiled. “You’re watching way too many movies.”

  “I know.” She laughed and nodded synchronously, then picked up her head and muttered the standard passage she murmured when life disappointed her. “ ‘Everything in its own time,’ my mom says.”

  “Smart woman.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, and his lips fell down into a long, solid kiss on the back of her fingers. “You’ll find them someday, and I’ll be right beside you—if you want me to be. I promise.”

  Emma liked both aspirations, her finding her family and him being there. She glanced past plates and drinks and her uneaten food, at his eyes shimmering with sincerity, his hand clutching hers, his thumb stroking the skin of her knuckles, and she almost believed him.

  Almost.

  “But they were right there. My family.” She closed her eyes and whispered. “Then they disappeared.”

  Giff stood and moved around the table to the seat beside her. He loosened his tie and lifted his arm over her, pulling her close as he rested thick muscle on thin shoulder. She laid her weary head on the smooth lapel of his suit coat.

  “You’ll be fine.” He kissed the top of her head. “Half of life’s fun is not knowing what lies around the corner. Just when you feel life is at its worst, there’s a bend in the road, you come out of the woods, and there’s light again. Lean on me, rest. I’ll get you there. My faith is strong enough for both of us.”

  The truth? She didn’t know how much faith remained in her or what she believed of God anymore, but in that instant, Giff did feel like a savior sent from above. And true to form, like the King himself would know to do, Giff nudged her beyond her dashed dreams—or ingrained nightmares—by motioning to the waitress to bring dessert. Tantalizingly, he dangled a simple flourless chocolate torte, the Puffer Belly Restaurant’s to-die-for special, in front of her.

  “Always a sucker for chocolate,” he said, laughing when he saw the corners of her lips turn up. And with that first bite, she blocked her birthright impasse from thought and fought hard to enjoy the remainder of the evening. She leaned her tired frame against him occasionally for strength when introspection rallied.

  On Tuesday, she saw clients until eight in the evening when her Alzheimer’s support group began. At quarter after, while a guest speaker from Cleveland discussed the importance of a caregiver’s support system, Emma tiptoed into the back of the auditorium and slipped quietly into a seat. Downtown Erie’s ghost-town likeness on winter evenings made across-town travel easy—one of her favorite bennies of living in a mid-sized city.

  The speaker wasn’t gifted enough to keep Josh out of her head. She had received five nasty messages from him on Sunday admonishing her for changing the locks. He had stopped at the house on Saturday, while she whiled away the weekend in Pittsburgh with Giff, and became livid when he realized he couldn’t get in.

  Emma vividly imagined him making those calls on the cross-country trip he left for—thank God—on Sunday. After landing at the Philadelphia terminal, message one, he headed out on a plane toward Las Vegas. At the Vegas terminal, he threw a few coins in the slot machines, message two, downed two Manhattans—he hated flying— before boarding a third plane, message three, and then landed in San Francisco. There, he Ubered to a five-star hotel, message four, for his medical conference—the type he bragged about but secretly loathed. By the time he settled in for the night, ordered a drink and room service, stretched his legs out on the white linens, and interlocked his fingers comfortably between billowing pillows and the back of his gaunt little head, he was furious with her, message five, and left his most vicious message of all.

  Then late Monday his texts flip-flopped. One—probably tapped into his phone half-consciously at the hotel bar—said he missed her.

  “Don’t know what I was thinking,” he’d typed. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I can’t think of anything but you. I’m sorry.”

  A second pitifully apologetic text followed, arousing remorse, or fear maybe, in Emma. The get-a-divorce and you-go-to-hell belief instilled in her since first grade surfaced. Catholicism had done its job. Guilt seized her.

  “I’ll go to counseling. I’ll stop asking about babies,” is how he ended the text.

  Momentarily, she pondered reconciliation, but the thought was short-lived. An angry Tuesday-morning voicemail of him shouting profusely about being able to get into HIS house when he got home—she doubted he remembered the prior night’s crying-jag texts—reminded her why a matrimonial reunion was unthinkable. His constantly seesawing mood was more clearly noted in the morning light. And since inheriting psycho genes from the McKinneys no longer plagued her, she didn’t like the thought of tainting any future child of hers with Josh’s foul-tempered DNA.

  “I changed the locks because the house is in my name, and I can do whatever the hell I want,” she said out loud. Two people in the row in front of her tossed eyebrow-raised stares her way.

  During the remainder of the seminar, her compassion slid further toward the frigid, Lake Erie water. That Josh helped pay her mortgage for the past year was a minor point. Possession was half the battle. A property in your name? You won the war, Giff said. He had referred her to Paige Riker, the best divorce attorney in Erie.

  Now, Wednesday morning, she considered calling another attorney. Riker couldn’t squeeze her in soon enough. Emma begged, pleaded, and promised to take out a second mortgage for a quick appointment. But getting in at this time of year—when after-Christmas bills and below-zero wind-chill blues ripped through marriages—was virtually as tough as scoring Ellen DeGeneres twelve-days-of-Christmas tickets. She booked an April 1st appointment with Riker. Happy fool’s day.

  Now Emma thudded her coffee cup onto her desk. She expected Josh to slither in soon. This morning she had checked flightaware.com on her iPhone from her bed. She estimated he would arrive in Erie at noon, and at her office, shortly after. She prayed the prior night for a blistering snowstorm and closed airports.

  “More prayers unanswered,” she said, sighing.

  Now she squirmed at her desk, pacing to the window occasionally and taking intermittent bites of food she couldn’t enjoy, feeling much like a convict eating his last meal while awaiting the executioner, the guillotine. She rehearsed out loud wha
t she’d say when she saw him—like a last elocution—and practiced the calm tone to use when she heard his voice going up—like the blade coming down.

  When the front door opened at twelve-thirty, she expected to see Josh. But Matt McKinney stood staring back at her when she stormed into the front office. Stunned, it took her a moment to change gears. She backpedaled and choked back her prepared speech, trying to camouflage her surprise.

  “Matt,” she said awkwardly, struggling to hide disappointment.

  “Sorry to drop in, but I’m off work this afternoon. I’m spending time backtracking, going to places I’ve been in the last few weeks. Trying to find my prescription glasses. They’re photochromic. Expensive.”

  “Photochromic?”

  “Yeah, they darken in sunlight. Change to sunglasses when I’m outside,” he said, laughing a little. “Although why I own a pair in Erie, Pennsylvania, I do not know. Maybe for the glare of the snow.”

  Emma beckoned him with a hand wave, and Matt followed her into her office and watched while she searched under furniture and in the seams of her chairs.

  “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve found down here,” she said as her hands worked to feel between the leather upholstery. “Wallets, keys, glasses—a diamond ring, once.”

  “Anything now?”

  “Nope.” She stood. “Nothing. Let’s take a look at Sharon’s lost and found.”

  They went to Sharon’s desk, and Emma opened her junk drawer and took out the wooden cigar box that harbored lost items. Amid the mess were two pair of sunglasses and a pair of readers. None were Matt’s.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’ll check with Sharon when she returns from lunch, but this is normally where she keeps anything we find.”

  Like magic, Sharon shuffled through the door, juggling her purse and her coffee and her lunch bag, and confirming, no, she had not found Matt’s glasses.

  “That’s fine. It was worth a try,” Matt said, reaching a hand in his pocket and fishing out his keys. “I lose things all the time. Have since I was a kid.”

  “I hope you find them,” Emma said, but when he made no motion to leave, the uncomfortable silence made her glance toward her wrist. She had twenty-five minutes before her next appointment, enough time to wedge a brief counseling session in.

  Her gaze snapped to Sharon, and Sharon shot her a don’t-you-dare stare, motioning with her head toward Emma’s office where her lunch lay across her desk, half-eaten. But Emma felt compelled.

  “Matt, when is your next appointment?”

  Sharon sighed quietly.

  “Not until the twenty-fifth. That’s why I stopped,” he said, swinging the keys on his key ring around and around. “I’ll find them. I always do.”

  He lingered there while Emma considered offering him a few minutes of counseling, but she didn’t get the chance.

  The scene hit her fast. The doorknob and chimes rattled in unison. The door swung open, banged, and lodged between the wall and the coatrack. Cold air rushed in with Josh. He hesitated, his eyes searching the room for her. When his gaze found her, she averted eye contact, momentarily confused by the scene outside the door on the street behind him. A vehicle—possibly Giff’s Wrangler—bounced over a curb across the street and skirted around another car—probably Josh’s Audi—that was stopped, mid-street, blocking the one-way lane and sitting idle, its door wide open and its exhaust spitting smoke. The Audi’s perfectly-tuned engine still hummed. Had he thrown his car into park in the middle of the street and run for her front door?

  “Are you crazy?” were his first words. “What the hell do you think you are doing? That’s my house, too!”

  “Actually, no, it isn’t.” Emma folded her arms. One, two, three—the blade—stay calm.

  “Don’t give me that shit.” Unflattering beads of spit spewed from his mouth. She was certain he didn’t see Matt in the room until Matt stepped in front of him and stopped his rush toward her—Matt’s hand like a Mack truck.

  She watched realization surface in Josh’s bandying eyes: they weren’t alone. Sharon was there. And the big dude. The man with the unfamiliar face, broad shoulders, thick neck, raging eyes.

  Matt was close enough that he had only taken one long step to cut Josh’s beeline toward Emma in half. Later, Emma would question her sanity over the odd thought his lunge provoked. Take one giant step. Mother may I?

  “Whoa, slow down there, mister. I don’t think the lady wants to see you.” Matt’s voice was smooth, steady, and artful. “I’m not sure what this is about, nor do I care. But rest assured, you’re going to calm down or get the hell out of here.”

  Matt’s hand lie against Josh’s wool overcoat, and Josh’s cyclist frame looked puny next to him.

  “Who the hell are you?” Josh’s voice still raged, but at an octave lower.

  “Right now,” Matt said, inching threateningly into Josh’s space. “I’m just a man looking for his glasses. But take one more step toward Doctor Kerr, and I’ll become your worst enemy.”

  “Get your hand off me,” Josh said, but his ire was ruffled. He moved his head back a bit.

  Matt’s fingers curled around the lapels of Josh’s coat, and he licked his bottom lip. His eyes were so enraged and scary that if this were another setting—a back alley with a dim light—Emma thought Josh might wet himself.

  Matt brought his other hand up and wagged a single finger at Josh. “I’m going to say it one more time. You are going to walk out of here now, or I’m going to drag you, by the nape of your scrawny little neck, back to your car and stuff your sorry little ass into that seat.”

  The corners of Matt’s lips flinched, and a small laugh, from deep within his throat, escaped him. His visage was so evil Emma and Sharon would shiver for years when they recalled it.

  “And if you think I won’t do it,” he said, his face drooping into a mad stillness, “it’s only because you don’t know me.”

  Emma took a long breath in to speak. She had planned her encounter with Josh for days, knew what to say, had rehearsed her line over and over. “We can talk about this through our attorneys,” she was going to tell him. “We have no children and should be able to handle this quickly and like two mature adults.” But what came out of her in that moment, when one of her clients stood holding her husband by the collar of his coat, was “Josh this is Matt McKinney. Matt this is my husband, Josh Riesling.”

  Later, when they remembered the introduction, she and Sharon would laugh until their stomachs hurt.

  “Get your fucking hands off me, Matt McKinney,” Josh said, but he looked terrified.

  Matt picked him up off the floor with one hand, and Josh’s neck sunk down into his coat, his toes pointing frantically downward, feeling for the rug.

  “I’ll take my fucking hands off you when I’m fucking ready to take them off you.” Matt’s voice was a whisper.

  “M-Matt, it is okay,” Emma uttered.

  “Let me be clear.” Matt set Josh’s feet back on the ground, and for a split second, Emma thought he was going to head butt him. “You’re never to talk to Doctor Kerr again like that. Do we understand each other?”

  Josh’s face reddened and his voice shook. “Let go or you’ll be hearing from my attorney.”

  “Perfect!” A voice behind them erupted, and Giff Johnson entered and jockeyed for position, wedging himself between Matt and Josh. “I’m this gentleman’s attorney. Have your attorney call me, and we can rectify any problems.”

  Giff pulled his business card from the inside of his coat pocket, flipped it over, handed it to Josh at eye level, and smiled. Emma gazed into Josh’s eyes and knew he understood; Giff’s move was cordially threatening.

  “Now, if you’ll vacate the premises,” Giff added. “Doctor Kerr can return to her work.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until—” Josh began, but Giff cut him off, motioning toward the street.

  “You may want to get out there and move your car for the gentleman in the big, yel
low snowplow.”

  Josh turned. Outside, a man in a reflective-orange vest closed Josh’s car door and signaled toward a man in a snowplow. The plow inched forward toward his car, someone yelled, and somewhere behind, cars honked.

  Giff winked at Matt, who still gripped Josh’s coat with a clenched fist. Matt relaxed his fingers and Josh backed away.

  “We’re not done.” He pointed a finger toward Emma.

  “Oh, yes, you are,” Matt hollered around Giff, but Josh didn’t respond. He sneered at him and took off in a trot.

  Giff closed the door behind him, turned, clapped his hands together, breathed on them, and then rubbed them as if warming them over a fire. “That was fun. When’s the next match?”

  He didn’t dawdle. “I’m Gifford Johnson.” He extended a hand. “Any friend of Emma’s is a friend of mine.”

  “Matt McKinney,” Matt answered, hesitated, and then continued cautiously. “I’d have to say the same.”

  He shook Giff’s hand firmly, but his serious expression didn’t soften until his eyes searched the room and found Emma’s. He lowered his chin, and an apologetic laugh edged out of him. Emma responded with her own nervous laugh, and Giff widened his arms and shook his head with a brilliant smile.

  “Nothing like a warm and fuzzy Wednesday to get the blood pumping.” He moved toward Emma, put his hand on the back of her neck, tugged her slightly forward, and kissed the top of her head spontaneously. “I haven’t much time. I’m on a brief recess from jury selection—begged for it. I need to head back. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  He nodded and let go, turning toward Matt. “Seriously, thanks for defending her.” He reached in and grabbed another business card. “If you ever need anything, it’s on me.”

  At first, Matt said nothing, and Emma watched his focus shift from Giff to the card and then back to her. Slowly, cautiously, he slipped the card from Giff’s fingers and started for the door. He held it at arm’s length, pretending to read the information. Then he turned.

  “Giff Johnson.” He reached for the doorknob and nodded. “Thanks. I may take you up on that some time.”