The Suicide Gene Read online

  Melanie: My mother was still at the hospital. I believe she had complications with the delivery. The doctor released her the day after Melissa died—Mary said.

  Dr. Kerr: So you believe they argued about Melissa, the baby?

  Melanie: Well, yes, at least I thought so…but gosh…it never occurred to me until just now that they may have meant my grandmother’s sister.

  Dr. Kerr: (Silence.)

  Melanie: This is confusing. I’m going to have to think about this. That dormer is where they both died, the baby and my grandmother’s sister. My grandmother found her sister in the dormer’s bathroom.

  Dr. Kerr: So, you aren’t completely sure which Melissa they argued over?

  Melanie: Well, all this time I thought they were blaming my grandmother because the baby died at her house while she babysat. Never did it cross my mind they meant the other Melissa. She dated my grandfather before she passed away. But why would they blame my grandmother for her sister’s death? She committed suicide. Unless—”

  Dr. Kerr: Unless?

  Melanie: Unless my grandparents fell in love before Melissa died, and that’s why she killed herself?

  ****

  That thought was a less incriminating twist, and Emma hoped it accurate. The possibility Sara indirectly rather than directly caused her sister’s death would mean Mary misinterpreted, not lied about, her grandfather’s words.

  One more person remained to pry information from—Matt. She rested, back against chair, contemplating ways to get him to talk about his grandmother. She wondered if Giff could relay interrogating tactics. Her gaze shot across the room, toward him.

  He’d stopped working, and as he’d caught her staring earlier, now she caught him watching her. She smiled and her thoughts shifted. In the two years they’d been married, she never witnessed Josh looking at her the way Giff was staring at her right now, either.

  She closed her computer. Only he could do that. Effortlessly draw her from the McKinneys.

  “Ready for a break?” He pushed his tray aside and stood, smiling back at her, looking like he felt much better.

  “Sure,” she said. The crackers had settled her stomach, too. “Want to run down and pick up our cars?”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind.” He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom.

  It was nearly dark by the time they made their way downtown.

  Chapter 26

  Sunday April 19, 2015

  Twenty-five days.

  She spent the entire weekend at his apartment, and when the call from her father came, she was sitting beside Giff on his couch, her legs nestled underneath a multicolored afghan Agnes had crocheted for him. She was listening to the wind against roof, her eyes raking the walls of the small apartment. She had decided the rooms were probably an attic at one time. Her laptop sat open in front of her, but her head tilted upward, and her mind was lost in the studio’s charm. The windows sweated, the walls needed re-plastering, and not one corner was square in the place, yet the suite was breathtakingly beautiful. Her phone’s ring slithered up the walls and rebounded off the ceiling, startling her.

  She saw the number on the screen and grabbed the phone. “Dad?”

  Giff drew his face away from the deposition on his screen.

  “Calm down, Dad. You’re at the hospital? Mom fell?”

  Giff set his computer on the coffee table, tossed his half of the afghan off his legs, and said, “Tell him you’re on your way.”

  Twenty minutes later, they scurried through emergency room doors and found Heidi and Ben in a blindingly bright room blanched by sterile white walls, fluorescent lights, and shiny stainless-steel apparatus. Blue-scrubbed nurses worked around the pair like they were a part of the room’s fixtures.

  The doctors weren’t sure what occurred first—the fall or the disorientation. Heidi took a tumble, and by the time she rolled into the hospital on a gurney, she was utterly confused. When Emma arrived, she didn’t recognize her and thought Giff was the doctor.

  “You remember Giff, Mom, and I’m Emma. Look at my face.” She moved in close and touched her mother’s chin gently. “See, it’s me.”

  Heidi’s hair was tangled with sweat and her complexion, pale. Not a tinge of recognition showed in her eyes. She moaned in agony and looked away.

  “Dad, how long has she been like this?”

  “Since this morning after she fell. I called an ambulance right away, but she made me promise on Friday to leave you alone for the weekend. I only called now because she’s so bad.”

  “You should always call me, Dad. What are they saying it is?”

  “Mostly, they blame the Alzheimer’s. Her hip is bruised but not broke, and they said her spine looks the same as two years ago except for a little more arthritis, and she’s had that herniated disc forever. They said the fall probably aggravated it.” Ben let go of the bed rail and felt behind him for the chair, collapsing into it when his fingers found the armrests. His bent posture sunk into the worn cushions. “I told them something else is wrong. She was fine last night. The doctor said he’ll keep her for the night, but they’ll move her to St. Mary’s in the morning.”

  They spent the night at her side, Emma and Ben. Giff gathered Emma’s work clothes from her house for Monday and dropped them off at the hospital just past midnight, along with a pizza and salad, which he had finessed out of a round, little woman at a closed Italian restaurant. Heidi fell asleep from exhaustion. Emma left her in a sound sleep Monday morning, and they moved her to St. Mary’s that evening.

  By Wednesday afternoon, Heidi was bad, but Emma couldn’t skip work. Matt McKinney was on the schedule, and missing his appointment was not an option. His session lasted past its hour, and afterward, time for her to grasp what he said eluded her. Giff was outside waiting to take her back to St. Mary’s when it ended. Her mother had taken a turn for the worse. By the time they rushed in, Heidi was tormented by pain. She wheezed and panted and once begged Ben to find her husband.

  “Emma,” Giff said, pulling her aside, “the doctors missed something. You need to get her back to the hospital.”

  St. Mary’s physician agreed, and Heidi was sent back by ambulance. Giff and Emma made phone calls to every physician and psychiatrist they knew or had the slightest affiliation with to see if they were available to meet them at the hospital. No one was. So, Emma did something she had sworn off doing. She called Josh. He met them in the ER.

  He examined Heidi, medicated her, and sent her to radiology, where a man behind a thick clear shield pushed a button and watched her unconscious body inch toward the MRI scanner. When the medication wore off, a mere five minutes after the scan was done, her screams began again. They wheeled her into an elevator and sent her to ICU. Emma could still hear her wails when the elevator doors closed behind her.

  ICU staff couldn’t cut her pain. When Emma visited, her mother was in more agony than Emma had ever witnessed in someone.

  Heidi grabbed hold of Emma by her sweater and began screaming for help. Giff had to pry Emma away, so Josh and the other doctor could examine her. They lessened her pain medication for two hours, attempting to pinpoint the problem. Heidi went ballistic, and Emma went into shock. She calmly told Giff she needed her father’s gun.

  “Even if it means spending the rest of my life in prison, I don’t care,” she said. “Just get his gun. I have to stop her pain.”

  “Emma.” Giff shook her. “Get a hold of yourself. They cut the pain medication to find where the problem is. As soon as they do, they’ll medicate her again, and the pain will stop.”

  “No, I have to end this for her,” she insisted, her eyes glazed. “I can’t let my mother suffer like this. Go get my father’s gun. There’s a gun cabinet in the basement of their house. He tapes the key behind it, up high, top right corner—”

  “Emma, stop it. Come back to me.” He shook her harder. “You’re talking crazy.”

  She broke then, cried, and Giff helped her to the wai
ting room. There, she wept in his arms as the minutes dragged by. When Josh finally returned, she rushed to him. He put both his hands on her arms, a sullen look on his face.

  “The radiology report showed a fracture in her leg. I phoned an orthopedic surgeon, the best in town,” he said.

  “She has a broken leg?” Emma’s hands wrapped tightly around his forearms. “How did that happen?”

  “Emma, calm down. Take a deep breath.” Josh moved one arm around her back to steady her. “Everything is going to be fine. Originally she complained about her hip and back. More than likely that pain resonated from her fall. The problem is actually a broken fibula and that is an easier fix. We’re sending her to surgery. They’ll set and cast it.”

  “Can she handle that?” She asked. “Won’t that increase her pain? Because you know I can’t stand that, Josh, to see her in pain.”

  “I know, Emma,” he said, tightening his grip. “I’ll make sure she is comfortable. I promise.”

  Emma set up a vigil by her bed after surgery, cancelling most of her Thursday and Friday appointments. She asked the new hire, Doctor Rebekka Waite, to take two she couldn’t reschedule.

  On Friday evening, after forty-six grueling hours, Heidi Kerr woke up.

  “Emma, how long have you been here?” Her voice was low and scratchy but possibly the best sound Emma had ever heard.

  “Not long, Mom,” she cried. She stood, bent, and laid her head face down in the pillow beside her mother. “Not long at all. I love you.”

  “I love you too, honey,” Heidi Kerr whispered, then brought her hand up, IV tubes dangling, and stroked Emma’s hair.

  She looked past her weakly. “Oh, Giff, is that you? Please excuse Emma, she doesn’t usually look this weathered. She worries too much about me.”

  They laughed long and hard and gratefully. Ben circled the bed and laid his head on the other side of Heidi, and the three of them cried with their arms around each other. Josh entered the room with Heidi’s primary care physician, and Emma rose, went to Josh, and hugged him gingerly while the other physician examined her mother.

  “Thank you,” she said, a few remaining tears spilling down her cheeks.

  “You’re welcome.” Josh closed his eyes and drew her close, squeezing her tightly. Emma tucked her head under his chin and felt his throat rise and fall with a deep swallow. She tightened her own arms and then released him gently.

  “She will be fine now.” Josh inched his way to the door, stepping slowly backward. His eyes never left Emma. “Her family physician will take it from here.”

  When he stepped into the bright lights of the hospital hall, his eyes moved to Giff and then the floor and he was gone.

  By Saturday, her mother was remarkably better. On Sunday, plans were made to send her back to St. Mary’s for a long recuperation. Sunday night, after an exhausting cry, Emma fell asleep in Giff’s arms.

  Monday morning, immediately after a phone call to confirm her mother continued mending peacefully, Matt McKinney’s words came to the forefront. Her aim was to catch up on every missed client as quickly as possible and get back to his Wednesday transcripts, and the monkey wrench he’d tossed into the McKinney mess.

  It wouldn’t be until late Tuesday night when she was certain her mother rested comfortably at St. Mary’s that Emma would realize she had missed three phone calls from Minnie McKinney over the weekend and two from Mel.

  Chapter 27

  Monday, April 27

  Suicide attempt. Two.

  She knew if she ingested the pills and carried on as long as she could, acting as if nothing was wrong, the drug would damage her organs beyond repair.

  This was a Catholic loophole. She’d end up in the hospital in time to save her soul but not her body. She’d confess her sins to the priest, obtain absolution, and then her bodily functions would shut down one by one. Medical staff would keep her comfortable as she slipped into oblivion.

  She stood at the kitchen sink struggling to get the kid-tight lid off the bottle. When she finally succeeded, the container jerked open and pills fell into the basin, down the drain.

  Why, for the love of Jesus, did they stop putting cotton balls in the top of the bottle, she wondered. Would the loss of a few pills matter? She had purchased the thirty-six pill container. Should have bought two.

  She peered down into the depths of the garbage disposal. Gone. Seven, eight, nine? Ten or eleven more lay in the sink, melting away. She dumped the rest in her hand, staring at the little white pieces as they fell like Chicklets into a child’s palm. It was still a lot of pills. Was it enough? She couldn’t risk living, being incapacitated, her mind damaged beyond repair, but her organs and body saved to spend years in a nursing home, being pricked and prodded by nasty old LPNs and doctors long past their prime.

  She thought for a long time. Nurses and doctors couldn’t really keep a person comfortable while their organs shut down, now, could they?

  No, she supposed she always knew this type of lingering death was much too painful to endure. Gratefully, she cupped her hand and let the pills clunk back into the bottle. Loophole or not, this was the absolute worst idea she had ever had.

  Not today.

  Chapter 28

  Wednesday, April 29, 2015

  Fifteen days.

  With Matt’s last words still scratching their way forward in her brain, Emma held them back a little longer in order to decipher what was going on with the twins. Wednesday morning, she returned Melanie’s phone call.

  “I’m worried about Mary,” Mel told her. “Last Saturday, she gave Minnie her diamond ring and said if anything happened to her, she should give it to Ruby.”

  “Is that why Minnie called me?” Emma asked, knowing the question was a rude response but hoping desperately to avoid a lengthy return call to Minnie. Melanie was so much easier.

  “Yes. She was frantic, but I calmed her down. She asked me to talk to Mary.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, I went over and spoke with her in person. Asked why she gave her ring away. She acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. Completely pretended she hadn’t given it to Minnie.”

  “When was that?”

  “Sunday afternoon.”

  “Did you talk to her after that?”

  “Yes, and I’m not sure if it was an act or not, but she seemed fine. I went over on Monday after work. She was mad at Minnie—probably because Minnie told me about the ring—but other than that, she was fairly upbeat.”

  “Mel, do you think you can convince her to come in and see me before her next appointment?”

  “Let me see if Minnie can help me get her in.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she received a call from Minnie.

  “Doctor Kerr!” She hollered into the phone. “I can’t get her in there. She said she’ll keep her regular appointment.”

  “Would it help if I called her?”

  “Oh, for the love of Jesus, no. If she finds out Mel and I talked to you, she’ll be furious. Mel and I are going to take turns keeping an eye on her. I was there yesterday and will go over tonight. She’s right next door to me, you know.”

  “How was she yesterday?”

  “Calmed down. A little depressed but insisted we needn’t fuss over her. I’ll keep checking on her.”

  Calming down wasn’t always a good sign, but Emma had no time remaining to call Mary. It took thirty minutes to get Minnie off the phone. She drifted elaborately onto a book she just finished reading, Running from Crazy by Muriel Hemingway. Emma, her digital “to-do” list glaring at her from her computer, lied and said she’d read it to end the phone call.

  She skipped the first four items on her list and started with number five—Matt McKinney. She reheated her coffee in the office microwave and settled in comfortably. She moved the computer mouse and rested the pointer on April 22nd like she was aiming a remote at her TV and turning on a who-done-it movie.

  She hung over her keys and read.

&nb
sp; Patient: Mathew McKinney

  Psychiatrist: Dr. Emma Kerr

  Date: April 22, 2015 5 p.m.

  ****

  Dr. Kerr: When you were young, could you tell them apart?

  Matt: Not when I was very young. I didn’t know who was who until I was about four.

  Dr. Kerr: You didn’t trust either twin.

  Matt: (Silence.)

  Dr. Kerr: Matt? Did something happen in your childhood with one of the twins?

  Matt: (Silence.)

  Dr. Kerr: Did you see something that may have stayed with you all these years?

  Matt: (Pause.) So you know.

  Dr. Kerr: Yes, I do.

  Matt: Can I ask which one told you?

  Dr. Kerr: Who do you think told me?

  Matt: (Pause.) I’m not one hundred percent sure but if I had to guess, I’d say Minnie.

  ****

  It had been a hunch. She guessed Matt, not sure which twin to trust as a child, turned on both because of some incident bad enough to cause post-traumatic stress syndrome in them years later. She had no idea what that incident entailed, only pretended to know.

  In order to coax him into saying more, she had lied:

  ****

  Dr. Kerr: One more question, and Mel gave her permission for me to ask it.

  Matt: Mel?

  Dr. Kerr: Yes, Mel. It occurred to her that she may have been mistaken about something. She said to discuss the issue with you.

  Matt: Odd.

  Dr. Kerr: What’s odd?

  Matt: That Mel wouldn’t talk to me herself.

  Dr. Kerr: She told me about the argument between you and Minnie. She said she would never bring it up again. She loves you, Matt. She’s seen your severed relationship with the twins. You’ve been good to her. She wants to keep it that way.

  Matt: (Silence.)

  Dr. Kerr: Would you like to talk about that argument?

  Matt: (Pause.) My grandmother was a murderess, responsible for Melissa’s death. What’s to talk about? Minnie and I argued over it.

  Dr. Kerr: Mel wants me to ask if you were talking about your great-aunt Melissa or baby Melissa that night.