The Suicide Gene Read online

  She strolled up the overpass, found the highest point, and peeked over the guardrail. Trucks sped by below in both directions. East bound or west bound she asked herself. West bound, she thought, taking a stance. She always wanted to head west toward California, never did.

  She looked down. If she timed everything right, a truck would nail her before she hit the ground. Truck drivers were the only people on I-90 at this hour. Well, she thought, maybe a few travelers on their way to Cleveland or Chicago—or California.

  She hated ending her life this way—possibly traumatizing a driver—but parking authority workers had installed cameras in her favorite parking spot downtown, and she was in a hurry tonight. No time for ropes or hoses.

  She hiked herself onto the ledge and carefully held her arms out as if to fly. A truck screeched by beneath her, and the driver laid on his horn. The blare startled her. She jumped back onto solid ground, then asked herself if he had really blasted his horn at her? A complete stranger? That quickly? Was it a sign? Fate?

  Instantly, she didn’t want to kill herself. Maybe hanging on one more day, one more month, was possible. Living wasn’t so bad. Maybe she could make that trip to California.

  She glanced in both directions. What was she thinking? She took off running toward her car.

  Not tonight.

  Chapter 21

  Thursday, April 9, 2015

  Thirty-five days.

  Sleep shunned her. At four o’clock in the morning, she rose and tottered to the little corner desk with the uncomfortable chair in the dining room. She lit the desk lamp. No living-room-couch sprawl for this session review, she needed to be on top of her game. She had forced herself to rest for a few hours, but since Mary left her office yesterday, her thoughts flipped through the McKinney scenes of the past six months like she was watching an old, silent vaudeville film. What were they saying?

  She fired up her laptop and went for coffee, debating how to handle the information she received yesterday. Outside the black wind howled. Perfect setting, she thought, as she sat down to reread what made her feel like she was smack dab in the middle of a horror film.

  Patient: Mary McKinney

  Psychiatrist: Dr. Emma Kerr

  Date: April 8, 2015 1 p.m.

  ****

  Mary: I want to tell you something.

  Dr. Kerr: Tell me anything you like.

  Mary: I’m going to talk about something I never discussed with anyone—not even Minnie.

  Dr. Kerr: Fine.

  Mary: (Silence.)

  Dr. Kerr: Mary?

  Mary: I guess I’ll just say it.

  Dr. Kerr: Okay.

  Mary: I believe there is a good twin and a bad twin.

  Dr. Kerr: Are you referring to the twins in your family?

  Mary: Yes. Maybe. I never thought about twins in other families. I’ll have to think about that but, yes, in our family.

  Dr. Kerr: Why do you feel there is a bad twin?

  Mary: (Silence.)

  Dr. Kerr: Mary?

  Mary: (Silence.)

  Dr. Kerr: Is something troubling you?

  Mary: My grandmother killed her sister.

  Dr. Kerr: Excuse me?

  Mary: Melissa, she didn’t kill herself. My grandmother killed her because she wanted to date my grandfather.

  Dr. Kerr: What makes you believe that?

  Mary: Overheard arguments. Dad and Mom talked, fought, one night. Then later—months later—a family ruckus confirmed she did.

  Dr. Kerr: A family argument?

  Mary: Yes, between my parents and grandparents.

  Dr. Kerr: You kids were there, too?

  Mary: No. Keep up. We overheard my parents and grandparents. Dad confronted my grandmother in front of Grandpa McKinney. Late one night. Grandpa cried. Grandma Sara and Dad yelled. Mom didn’t say a word. We all got out of bed to listen. Mom sat in a corner chair, quiet, like in a trance.

  Dr. Kerr: Did you overhear someone say Sara killed her sister?

  Mary: Yes. My grandfather said over and over, “Sara how could you do that to your sister? I loved you. I loved Melissa.” He was in shock.

  Dr. Kerr: How old were you at the time? Sometimes children misunderstand adult situations.

  Mary: No. All of us kids heard it. Melanie, Matt, Minnie. I wondered if any of them told you. From the look on your face, I guess not. They’ll be mad I let the rat out of the trap.

  Dr. Kerr: What you tell me is confidential, but you’re correct. I never heard this story.

  Mary: It’s not a story. Grandma Sara screamed denial. None of us could sleep through her screeching. That’s what woke us. We sat at the top of the staircase and eavesdropped.

  Dr. Kerr: All four of you?

  Mary: Yes. We listened for a long time. I’m not sure Mel understood. She was young. We left one by one. I was the last to go back to bed. I couldn’t drag myself away.

  Dr. Kerr: Have you discussed this with anyone?

  Mary: Heck no. I’m not dragging that skeleton out. That is one dark carcass in the closet—twin annihilating twin, never heard of such a thing. I locked that door a long time ago, and just decided to give you the key. How long have you counseled people? Two and a half years including residency hours? You won’t hear another family secret like that for the next twenty years.

  Dr. Kerr: (Pause.) You never confirmed this with any of your siblings, correct?

  Mary: I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong. I didn’t imagine or dream it. The murder occurred. And—

  Dr. Kerr: And?

  Mary: There’s more. Worse. Ask Minnie.

  Dr. Kerr: Minnie?

  Mary: Yes. See if she confirms what I’m saying and offers more.

  Dr. Kerr: I won’t betray your confidence.

  Mary: Oh, no, you can ask her. You have my permission. Is our time up?

  Dr. Kerr: Almost, but if you’d like to stay longer, that’s fine. I don’t want you leaving if you are upset.

  Mary: I’m fine.

  Dr. Kerr: Are you absolutely sure? What you just relayed—

  Mary: Crazy isn’t it? But, no, I have to get back to work. Big IT update this afternoon. Just one question before I go. One I’ve been toiling over for years.

  Dr. Kerr: What’s that?

  Mary: Doctor Kerr, do you think…do you think I am the good twin or the bad twin?

  ****

  Emma sat in the dark room and chills crept up the back of her neck. For the first time, she hoped a client was a pathological liar.

  Outside, angry air swirled against brick, and Emma’s peripheral vision tormented her with a dark shadow in the window. Her head jerked to the right, eyes to glass. No one was there. I have to get my phone number changed. She turned back toward the McKinney transcript.

  Something else bothered her, not just the unthinkable murder. How did Mary know how long she had been counseling? She intentionally omitted that from all media. Two and a half years was not long in the counseling business.

  She pulled up Minnie’s file.

  Patient: Minnie McKinney

  Psychiatrist: Dr. Emma Kerr

  Date: April 8, 2015 5 p.m.

  ****

  Minnie: You know she’s crazy don’t you?

  Dr. Kerr: Mary?

  Minnie: Yes. I don’t like to talk about my sister, but she is delusional. I know why you are asking me about Melissa and Sara. It’s because of her wild imagination. She tells tales.

  Dr. Kerr: Have you talked to her about this—tale?

  Minnie: We talk about it all the time. It gets annoying.

  Dr. Kerr: About your grandmother, Sara?

  Minnie: Yes. She thinks Sara killed Melissa. Right?

  Dr. Kerr: I’m more interested in what you believe, and what your experiences were with your grandmother.

  Minnie: (Pause.) I’ll be honest. My grandmother was not the problem. Mary was. She always has been, and now I’m worried about her. Sometimes—

  Dr. Kerr: Yes?

  M
innie: Sometimes she becomes confused between what is real and what isn’t. She is in denial.

  Dr. Kerr: Denial?

  Minnie: Yes, about how taking your life runs in our family like in the Hemingway family. She is afraid she might kill herself, so she conjures up stories about how the people in our family didn’t kill themselves. It’s partially because of me.

  Dr. Kerr: You?

  Minnie: Yes. Mary didn’t like Grandma Sara. She fabricates stories about her.

  Dr. Kerr: What does that have to do with you?

  Minnie: I was Grandma Sara’s favorite, of course. We were close. Mary hated that, so she formed a creepy allegiance to Grandma’s dead sister. Took sides, you know what I mean? Me on Grandma’s side, Mary on her sister’s side. She’s jealous of me. Like Margaux was of Muriel.

  Dr. Kerr: The Hemingways.

  Minnie: Yes. Margaux envied her sister. Most people couldn’t recognize that but I could. She acted all prim and proper like she worshipped her, but I saw the truth. She hated her. She was six feet tall and beautiful but still jealous—like Mary.

  Dr. Kerr: Are you worried about Mary taking her life?

  Minnie: No, she doesn’t have any phenobarbital. (Laugh.)

  Dr. Kerr: Phenobarbital?

  Minnie: That’s what Margaux overdosed on. She had epilepsy. Thank the Holy Spirit seizures don’t afflict our family. We have enough problems. You know another weird thing?

  Dr. Kerr: No, what?

  Minnie: None of us abuse alcohol or drugs. The Hemingways drank alcohol like they feared the return of Prohibition.

  ****

  A garbage can blowing over and a lawn chair scraping the ground outside caught her attention, drawing her thoughts away from the twins’ opposing stories.

  She thought she heard the thudding of Moses’ paws charging through mud as he sprinted up the side of Judy’s yard. Good, she thought, he was early. The far-off sound of his panting fell easy on her ears. His watchdog nose held some consolation for her failure to install an alarm system.

  She slapped her laptop shut. The sound echoed through the still house like a jaw clenching in the night. She headed upstairs toward the shower, thinking real or fiction? Mary or Minnie? Which story was accurate? One of them was lying. She had no idea which one but prayed it was Mary.

  By the time she disrobed and stepped into the hot spray, she was thinking of Matt McKinney, set on what she needed to do. Drawing the true story out of him would be difficult but not impossible. With a little finessing, he would cave.

  Matt to the rescue…again. An eagerness to see him grew inside her.

  She hurried her grooming and was out in her car backing out the driveway by five-thirty when three days’ worth of newspapers decorating her front steps caught her eye. She’d, yet again, forgotten to cancel the paper. She put the car in park and got out, bent down, and picked up all three in one sweep of her hands, the paper heavy with the elements. As she turned away, she noticed a semi-circle of furrowed ground coming from the side of the house. She tossed the papers in her back seat, grabbed her cell, and shined its flashlight at the ground. Fresh, thick imprints in the mud led up to her front window.

  Fear gripped her. Was someone still there? Thoughts of her neighbors, those who rose early, swept through her. Judy wasn’t awake. How dumb to think those earlier sounds were Moses. Was Mr. Fuhrman across the street up? He was usually first in the morning. If someone was hiding in the bushes and she screamed, would he hear her?

  She stood still. Only moved her eyes at first. Then her head. When she was certain no one was around, she ran back to the car and jumped inside, locking the door behind her. Her heart pumped wildly and her hands choked the steering wheel. Her body slumped forward and she laid her forehead between her hands on the wheel until she caught her breath.

  Finally, she sat up and shifted into reverse.

  Her cell rang. Restricted.

  Chapter 22

  Monday, April 13, 2015

  Thirty-one days.

  Sharon hurried through Giff’s front office and lumbered down the long hallway that stretched along the east side of the old foursquare home. The corridor, recently stripped of its puce chair rail, still flaunted drywall. She sidestepped a paint tray and toddled toward the back room, her shoulders reaching toward her ears as she carried the Crock Pot. She pushed through the door to the little kitchen with a shoulder, then plunked the pot onto the black-and-white speckled counter, let her ten-pound purse drop to the newly-tiled floor, and rubbed her aching arms briskly. When the pain subsided, she reached into the goody bag still dangling over her arm, pulled out a spoon, cracked the Crock Pot lid, and stirred the beef, shallots, potatoes, bacon, and celery, so its smell infiltrated the room.

  “This is not good.” Giff snuck up, bent over her shoulder, and looked into the pot, his face so close she could smell his aftershave, which she fancied. She had bought the seductive-smelling cologne for her husband after first sniffing the scent on Giff a month ago.

  “What’s not good?”

  “I’m dating another woman but falling in love with you.”

  Sharon giggled like a teenage girl with a crush. She had a soft spot for him. Loved that he made Emma happy. She reached back into her bag, removed a plastic container of bread sticks, and handed it to him.

  “I told that other woman you would bring stew over for her at lunch today. Noon, by the way. Can you save her some?”

  “Oh.” He whined and swayed. “I hate it when you make me share. Does she know about the breadsticks?”

  “Yes.” She stopped, reached into the sack again, and pulled out a second container, raising her eyes to him as she cracked its lid. “But not about the black-raspberry pie. There was only one piece left.”

  He stepped back, openmouthed. “You’re giving it to me? Not her?” He laid a wide-fingered hand over his heart. “Now I know I’m in love.”

  She handed the pie to him, smiling. He jerked a drawer open, grabbed a fork, and dolloped a piece into his mouth.

  “Hey, that’s for lunch!”

  “Nope.” He continued eating. “Not taking any chances. You know her. She always shows up at the worst times. If she walks through those doors this morning, this is going to be gone.”

  Sharon relaxed her back against the stone countertop’s rounded edge and laughed. Her small frame juddered behind a new, pale-blue blouse that flattered her eyes. She watched and waited, her laugh dissipating gently in a slow, soft fade. When he finished, she cleared her throat and began the conversation she had planned all weekend.

  “I have a confession to make,” she told him. “I have an ulterior motive.”

  “Ah, I knew there was a catch. Pie this good is never free.”

  Sharon forced a timid smile and folded her empty food bag in half. “I want to talk to you about Emma. I’m worried about her.”

  Giff’s face sobered. “About her changing her number again?”

  “That, too. I’m sure she didn’t tell us the truth. I bet the calls started again,” she said. “And, yes, I’m very worried about that. But there’s something else.”

  He licked the jelly from the side of his thumb and nodded. “Okay. Let’s go to my office.”

  He set the empty container in the porcelain-chipped sink; grabbed a paper towel from a rack mounted beneath the tall, whitewashed cupboard; and wiped raspberry filling from his lips. He exited the room through the door with no knob—more than one of many annoyances still wreaking havoc on his hundred-year-old building—and Sharon followed him into the house’s only completely-renovated room, his office. She sat down in the leather chair he motioned toward, and Giff circled his glass-topped desk, unbuttoned his suit coat, held his tie in place, and took a seat opposite her.

  “What’s going on?” He lit a desk lamp and the polished wainscot that trimmed the room boasted its sheen.

  Sharon wiggled uncomfortably away from the light, paused while Giff swung the lamp away from her, and then scooted forward. “It’s a
bout Mathew McKinney.”

  Giff laid his forearms on the desk and bent toward her but didn’t comment.

  “I’ve been worried about him for a while.” She pursed her lips, and then folded the bag into a fourth and an eighth, smoothing it over and over in her lap. “Don’t you think it odd he showed up that day Josh barged into the office?”

  “I do.”

  His tone wasn’t as certain as she hoped, so she spoke bluntly

  “I’m worried he’s watching Emma.”

  “It seemed unusually coincidental, I’ll admit.”

  “I think he admires her too much—more than a client should.” She continued stroking the bag, consolingly.

  Again, Giff held his tongue. He folded his hands and waited.

  “You may think I’m crazy, but something’s not right with him. Emma’s preoccupied with the twins, but I worry about Mathew.” She balanced the bag on her knees, clutched the arms of the chair, shimmied forward, and gazed to the side as if afraid someone might hear. “Don’t get me wrong. I like the guy. He grows on you. And I don’t believe he’d harm her or anything like that. It’s just—” She stopped and bit the side of her lip.

  “Just?”

  “Giff.” She sharpened her tone. “Do you think he’s in love with her?”

  He broke eye contact then looked quickly back. She fixed her gaze on him, arched her eyebrows, and waited for his reaction. When he didn’t respond, she continued. “The way he looks at her.” She stopped, then blurted, “I’m sure he’s in love with her. Every ounce of my being tells me so.”

  She was sure the thought had crossed Giff’s mind, too. If Mathew McKinney wasn’t Emma’s half-brother, something else was going on. The way he looked at her, the twist of his lips right before he closed the door to Emma’s office on that day—when he just happened to come to her rescue, just happened to be there when Josh arrived raging mad—was doting and flirtatious and anything but client-like.

  She watched Giff’s shoulders fall against the back of his chair. He rested his elbows on the chair’s arms, clasped his hands together, and shook his head. “I’m not sure what’s going on.” In that instant and for the first time, Sharon witnessed bewilderment in Giff.

  After a long silence between them, she offered him some comfort. “Emma’s having a tough time right now. She’s confused. A lot is going on in her life. Regardless of everything, I want you to know I’m in your corner. You’re good for her. I’ve seen a change in her. She’s happy when she’s with you. But—”