“And you’ve decided that it’s worth fighting with me over this?” Rosa guessed.
Sylvia beamed at her. “Exactly.”
Maybe it was because she was so startled by Sylvia’s determination, or maybe it was because in her heart she knew her friend was right, but Rosa finally nodded. “I’ll get my purse.”
She started away, then turned back and squeezed Sylvia’s hand. “You’re a good friend and I love you. I hope you know that.”
“Well, of course, I do,” Sylvia said, her cheeks pink. “You have no idea how much you, Jolie and Helen mean to me, too. I love my husband, I really do, but it’s different with a man. They’re just not wired the way we are.”
Rosa grinned. “Tell me about it,” she said as she went to get her purse.
Sylvia was silent on the ride to Saint Luke’s. The big Spanish-style stucco Catholic church with its red-tile roof sat on a low-rise overlooking the lake. A separate building housed classrooms for elementary school children and another building had meeting rooms for Sunday school classes and the adult education programs the church offered. The grounds were well tended and filled with blooming hibiscus and bougainvillea, which added bright splashes of pink and purple.
It was a serene setting that Rosa had always found to be the perfect counterpoint to the hectic rush of her life. This, though, was the first time she’d come here since Don’s death. Even now, she wasn’t sure she was ready for an encounter with the priest. In fact, given his stance on the subject of suicide, she was almost surprised he even permitted survivors to join the grief-counseling group on the premises.
“Sylvia, who runs this group? Not Father Gregory, I hope.”
“Hardly. No, it’s a psychologist. I spoke to her yesterday and told her I was planning to bring you today. She seems very nice.”
Rosa nodded, relieved that she wouldn’t be facing the priest today.
When they reached the meeting room, Sylvia hesitated. “I should let you go in alone. I don’t belong here. I can take a walk and meet you later at the car.”
“No, please,” Rosa said. “Come with me, just this once. I can’t walk in there alone.”
“Of course, you can,” Sylvia argued, then relented. “But I will come this time, if it will make it easier.”
There were fewer than a dozen people gathered around a coffeepot when they went inside. An attractive dark-haired woman in her forties separated herself from the others and came toward them. “Which one of you is Sylvia?” she asked, smiling.
“I am. And this is my friend, Rosa.”
“Welcome.” She held out her hand, clasping Rosa’s just a second longer as if to reassure her that everything would be okay. “I’m Anne Porter. I’m the psychologist and the only one here who uses a last name. We try to give each other at least an illusion of privacy, though Winter Cove is small enough that some of our participants do know each other outside of this room. What we say in here goes no further, though. That’s the one and only rule we have.”
Rosa nodded, relieved to know that these people, at least, weren’t likely to be gossiping about her behind her back.
Anne gave her a reassuring smile, then clapped her hands. “Everyone have coffee? Then let’s get started.”
The group gathered in a small circle, four women, two men and a teenaged girl, not much older than Andy. Rosa and Sylvia added their chairs to the circle.
Anne glanced at Rosa and Sylvia to include them. “We go around the circle and everyone talks about whatever’s on their mind, whether it’s a hurdle they’ve finally been able to overcome or a problem they encountered,” she explained. “If you don’t feel like talking, that’s okay, though we do encourage everyone to speak. Everyone here is at a different stage in the grief process. Since Rosa is new, would each of you tell her a little bit about yourselves and your situation, when it’s your turn? Okay, then, who wants to start?”
“I will,” a woman who appeared to be in her late twenties said. “I’m Nancy, and I’m here because my mother committed suicide six months and fifteen days ago.”
To Rosa’s surprise, Nancy had managed to get the horrible words out without a hitch in her voice.
She gave Rosa an understanding look. “You have no idea how long it took me to be able to say that without bursting into tears. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss her. And for a long time, not a day went by when I didn’t hate her for leaving me and my sisters and her grandchildren too soon. You see, she had cancer and she thought she was sparing us all the suffering. That’s what she said in her note. She had no idea that we would have given anything for just one more day with her. My sister Ellen still hasn’t forgiven her because she didn’t even wait long enough for Ellen’s baby to be born. She said in her note she didn’t want to spoil that happy time for my sister, but, you see, she did it, anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” Rosa whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by all the things that Don was going to miss…weddings, grandchildren, baptisms, holidays.
“So am I,” Nancy said. “I understand why she did what she did, even though I hate it. I’m working on forgiveness now, but I’m not there yet.”
“You will be,” Anne reassured her. “Who’s next?”
One of the men raised his hand, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose I will.” He glanced at Rosa with dark, haunted eyes, then looked down at the floor. “I’m Larry. My wife died in an accident.” He sighed heavily. “Only the police don’t really believe it was an accident. The official version is that she deliberately drove into a canal. There were witnesses who saw it happen and the medical examiner concurs. He says she didn’t have a stroke or a heart attack or any other discernible medical emergency.”
His words hit Rosa with the force of a sledgehammer. It was all she could do not to gasp with recognition as he described the awful uncertainty over his wife’s death.
He hesitated, his expression shattered. “If what they say is true, it’s my fault. I’d told her that morning that I was leaving her for another woman.”
This time Rosa’s gasp of dismay escaped. She understood his guilt all too well, had been living with the torment of believing herself responsible for Don’s decision.
“Larry, it was not your fault,” Anne said firmly, turning to share the same sympathetic look with Rosa as if she’d read her mind.
Larry wasn’t readily convinced. “How can you say that?” he asked heatedly. “It was because of me, because I wanted out of our marriage.”
“But you’d been unhappy for a long time, hadn’t you? You’d even talked about divorce before, correct?” Anne persisted. “What had stopped you?”
“She’d always talked me into staying, into giving it one more try,” he said.
“How had she done that?” Anne prodded.
“By threatening suicide,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“In other words, she emotionally blackmailed you into staying,” Anne said, putting it in the harshest possible terms.
He nodded.
“But she’d never tried to kill herself, had she? And you’d encouraged her to get help, isn’t that right?”
“She was supposed to be seeing someone, a doctor. He’d given her antidepressants,” he said. “I honestly thought she was better, that she was well enough to take it.”
“Then you did everything you could,” Anne said.
He didn’t look the least bit relieved by her reassurances. “God knows, I tried,” he said. “Now, not only do I have to live with all this guilt, but also with the anger, because her dying cost me the relationship with the woman I’d been seeing. We broke up this week. I couldn’t seem to look at her without thinking about what had happened and finally she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“So your wife got what she wanted, didn’t she?” Anne asked.
Larry looked startled by the question. “How can you say that?”
“You’re no longer with the other woman.” When he started to speak, she held up her hand. “I don’t know if this woman is
the right woman for you, but if she is, are you willing to sacrifice your future happiness because of something you couldn’t control? Or are you going to forgive yourself and move on? Maybe fight to get her back?”
He nodded slowly, but he still looked miserable. “I hear what you’re saying, but I’m just not there yet.”
“You will be,” Anne promised him. “It takes time. Who’s next?”
It was the pale, slight teenager who spoke, after giving Rosa a shy smile. “I’m Lauren. I’m going to be a senior in high school this fall, and I’m here because my boyfriend committed suicide just before Christmas last year.”
Once more Rosa wasn’t able to prevent a horrified gasp. “You poor child,” she murmured.
“Teen suicide is a growing problem,” Anne told her. “Think back to when you were that age. Every problem was magnified a thousand times. Everything seemed to be life-or-death important, whether you had a date for the prom, whether you failed a test, whether you got into college. Teenagers don’t have the same perspective that we do. They don’t understand that problems are temporary, that things usually work out for the best.”
Lauren nodded, her expression serious. “That’s what happened to Christopher. His parents had scrimped and saved forever so he could go to an Ivy League college. All they ever talked about was college and how much better his life would be if he had such a good education. When midterm grades came out, he was failing chemistry. Everyone told him he could make it up and still get a B or at least a C in the class, but he panicked. His other grades started slipping, because he was struggling so hard to catch up in chemistry. He felt like this huge failure, and nothing I said could get through to him. He just kept saying how disappointed his parents would be.”
She regarded them with tears streaking down her cheeks. “The awful part is that I knew his dad kept a gun in the house and I knew Christopher was depressed and talking about finding a way out, but I didn’t realize he really meant it. I thought maybe he was going to drop out of school or something. Then one of his teachers called his folks to ask if they knew why he was suddenly having trouble in school. They confronted him and it was pretty awful. That night, he went into his room, called me, and then shot himself before I could call 911 to get help over there.”
“Oh, Lauren, what a terrible thing for you to go through,” Rosa said, her heart filled with sympathy for what this young girl was dealing with. If it was impossible for her to deal with Don’s decision to take his own life, how on earth could this young girl cope?
“I’m okay,” Lauren said staunchly. “It’s just that now I panic when anyone starts talking crazy. I’ve called 911 so often, they recognize my voice. And I’m terrified that one of these days, they’ll think I’m just scared for no reason and not respond, and it’ll be the one time something bad happens.”
Rosa knew that Matt would not permit the police to ignore a cry for help, even one from a teenager who tended to overreact. The girl had every reason to fear for her friends. She’d learned from bitter experience what the danger signs were and she’d never risk ignoring them again.
As the others told similar stories, many of them about anger over a loved one’s dying, even of natural causes. Rosa felt as if a terrible weight was lifting from her shoulders. She was not so different, after all. She was going through the same stages of denial and anger and grief as these people. They weren’t freaks. Nor had they deserved to lose their loved ones in such a tragic way.
And neither had she. She could almost accept that now.
She glanced up and saw Anne regarding her expectantly.
“Rosa, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?”
“I’m Rosa,” she began softly. Sylvia reached for her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I think—no, I’m almost certain—my husband committed suicide two months ago. And…” She looked into all those sympathetic eyes and her voice faltered. “And I don’t know why.” She looked toward Larry. “In my husband’s case, the police do believe it was an accident. That’s the official report. It would be so easy to accept that. For one thing there’s insurance money that we desperately need right now, but I can’t let that matter, not when I know in my heart it wasn’t an accident. There’s too much evidence to the contrary, and it’s breaking my heart that I ignored the signs and never saw this coming.”
“What really matters is that you lost the most important person in your life,” Anne said quietly. “You need to grieve for him. Have you done that?”
Rosa shook her head. “Not really. I’ve been too angry.”
“Been there,” several voices reassured her.
“It gets better,” Nancy said. “I promise you.”
The others nodded.
“I don’t think I would have made it without this group, though,” Larry said. “Keep coming, Rosa. I know it’s hard to expose your feelings in front of a bunch of people you’ve never met before, but it helps. And we’ve all been there.”
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it. She turned to Sylvia. “Thank you especially. I wouldn’t have come today if she hadn’t pushed me,” she told the others.
“I just did what any friend would do,” Sylvia said, looking embarrassed by the praise. “You’re going to be okay, Rosa. I honestly believe that now.”
Rosa nodded. “So do I.” She faced the group. “And I will be back next week,” she said with renewed determination. She was finally going to take the steps necessary to get her life back.
Cori looked as if she wanted to cry. Emma felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach the instant she saw her. She reached out and gripped Matt’s hand.
“Jennifer’s not here, is she?” she asked Cori.
“I told her it was really important, but she said she had another commitment and that it was important, too.” Cori regarded them apologetically. “I honestly don’t know what’s gotten into her lately. She’s not herself. She hasn’t been for weeks and weeks now.”
“You said something like that at your house last night. What’s going on?” Emma asked her.
“I can’t explain it exactly. She’s been way stressed out, snapping at me in a way she never had before, refusing to take calls. Then she vanished without a word. I had no idea where she’d gone or when she’d be back till she finally called in the middle of last week. All I had was a note saying she’d be in touch and to put off all appointments until she told me to start scheduling them again.”
“When did she leave?” Matt asked.
“I guess the first time was a couple of months back, out of the blue. She didn’t have a vacation planned. She just left. I found a note on my desk saying there’d been some sort of emergency and that she’d be out of touch indefinitely. This from a woman who usually has a cell phone attached to one ear and one eye on the stock ticker from the second the stock exchange opens every day.” She looked at Matt. “You know how she is.”
Emma looked at Matt. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
He hesitated.
“Come on, Matt. Tell me.”
“I’m thinking that the timing is damned weird, that’s what I’m thinking.”
Emma’s breath caught. “You think her leaving is tied to my father’s death, don’t you?”
He met her gaze. “Don’t you?”
“That’s a huge leap,” she said, not wanting to believe that there was any significance to the timing.
Cori stared at Matt. “You can’t be serious. Jennifer and Emma’s dad? That’s absurd. Of all people, you should know that.”
Emma regarded Cori curiously. Why did she think Matt would have some special insight into Jennifer’s behavior? Was there something he hadn’t told her about his relationship with Jennifer? Were they something more than old classmates? She couldn’t read anything in his expression, but more than once now she’d picked up on hints that there was something he was hiding where Jennifer was concerned.
“Was Don ever here?” Matt asked, his face carefully aver
ted from Emma.
“Well, sure, but…” Cori’s voice trailed off. She called up the date book on her computer and scanned back a few weeks. “Emma, look at this. Your dad died on the night of the seventeenth, right?”
Emma pushed aside her suspicions about Jennifer and Matt and concentrated on Jennifer’s schedule for the date her father had died. Emma’s father had been on her calendar for a four o’clock meeting. And two days later, two days after his death, Jennifer had canceled all of her appointments and left town. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the coincidences.
She tried to imagine her father involved with a woman half his age, but the image wouldn’t come. Besides, if this were about an affair, would Jennifer have had his name on her office calendar where Cori could readily find it? Wouldn’t she have been far more discreet? And if Emma’s father had somehow lost his mind and gotten mixed up in an affair with the investment adviser, where did Matt fit into the equation? Were they rivals of some sort? Had Jennifer thrown Matt over for Emma’s father? Or could it have been the reverse? Could the woman have broken things off with Don in order to be with Matt? Was that what had driven her father over the edge? Was that why Matt was being so nice to her, because of his own guilty role in the breakup?
Obviously she was letting her imagination run wild. She could only worry about one part of that, Emma told herself. She had to concentrate on Jennifer’s relationship with her father. She had to find out whether it was professional or romantic.
Unfortunately, the only person who could answer those questions was Jennifer herself and she’d gone missing.
“Reschedule us to see her tomorrow,” she told Cori flatly.
“No,” Matt countered. “Don’t put it on the calendar. If she’s trying to avoid you, Emma, she’ll just take off again when she sees her date book. Cori, you call me when she comes in. I’ll get Emma and we’ll come over as soon as we hear from you.”
Cori nodded slowly. “There has to be some mistake, Emma. I can’t believe it’s anything like what you’re thinking.”
Emma attempted a reassuring smile. “I’m trying really, really hard not to think at all.”
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