"What's the matter? Was she in some kind of accident?" I asked, my nerves picking up again, my stomach flipping over.
"Sammy killed herself tonight, Reagan," he told me.
I don't remember if he said anything else.
I don't remember if his voice hitched when he told me.
All I remembered was my phone smashing to the floor, scattering shards everywhere as my knees met the hardwood when my legs gave out.
I remembered the noise that escaped me then. Loud, primal, the shriek of a dying animal. Because that was what I felt like right then. Like someone had stuck a knife in my belly and pulled up, like they had yanked out all my insides, like there was nothing left.
I couldn't say how long I sat there wailing, but a neighbor must have thought the worst, because cops stormed in, tried to talk to me, tried to get me off the floor, tried to get me to answer questions.
In the end, finding me completely inconsolable, they drove me to the hospital, they left me in the care of people who specialized in breaks.
Because that was what it was.
A break.
A fracture so deep there was no way to fuse it back together again.
Luis had been the first one to show up, fresh off a flight from New York, eyes red-rimmed, face sunken, slipping into the bed beside me.
We sobbed together for hours, finding a bottomless well of misery inside, constantly surging up to the surface and pouring outward.
At some point, my father came, giving permission to the staff to sedate me, to hold me temporarily.
Because he didn't want to lose two daughters in one night. And I honestly couldn't give him any promises about having a will left to live.
I was released heavily medicated forty-eight hours later, just in time to buy a dress, to walk rubber-legged into the funeral home, to accept embraces from people who loved Sammy.
But none of them as much as me.
I loved her more than I loved myself.
The meds numbed me enough that I couldn't attach those feelings of love and loss together right, couldn't process the pain, couldn't purge it.
Which meant I was composed through the service, as stoic as my dad and brother. My mother had to sit on a couch in the back, embraced in the changing arms of her friends as she cried.
I don't really remember much about the days that followed. Luis was there. In my apartment. He canceled all his shoots to try to make sure his only sister stayed on this earth. He was the one who ordered food, forced me to eat, cleaned my apartment, dealt with my work and my bills.
Eventually, he was the one to bring me back to the doctor, to insist I was too medicated, that I was a zombie. And I was.
I was weaned back downward gradually, letting the grief slip in, letting my mind finally wrap itself around this new reality.
Sammy had killed herself.
She had left my home, gone back to her apartment, climbed into her tub, and slowly and carefully downed an entire bottle of the sleeping pills prescribed to her for her migraines.
Her words came back to my brain that was no longer numb and slow.
I want it to be over.
She hadn't meant the week like I had.
She had meant the obvious pain inside.
She had meant her life.
She told me.
She told me and I didn't listen.
I didn't hear.
I didn't take five minutes out of my own life to save hers.
Eight weeks after the funeral, Luis needed to go back to his life. I had to let him.
And I retreated wholly from my own.
I never went back to work.
I didn't need the money.
I didn't clean.
I barely ate.
I screened calls from my family.
I shirked all social obligations I had agreed to attend before.
It was somewhere around the tenth week that I decided I couldn't just accept that Sammy, this woman I knew as well as I knew my damn self, was somehow secretly hiding depression from me for weeks or months.
It made no sense.
Yes, even knowing all the stories about celebrities who were happy and smiling and laughing with their families but later went and hanged themselves or shot themselves or downed some pills.
I understood depression could be sneaky.
I was becoming intimately acquainted with it myself.
But there was just a gut feeling, something sharp and uncomfortable, that told me Sammy hadn't lost a battle with depression.
It was something else.
It had to be.
And I was going to figure it out.
With a purpose again, I showered, I changed, I got in my car, and I drove the hour toward Sammy's apartment.
Sammy lived in a beautiful area in a giant penthouse apartment she shared with one of her friends who, clearly, was raised just as wealthy as we had been.
She could have afforded to live alone, but Sammy always claimed she didn't like being alone, that she didn't feel safe. Despite the twenty-four-hour doorman and the state-of-the-art security system.
She liked having someone close by.
That someone, Charlotte Patrick, had been the one to find her body, to call the police, to get the police to call my parents.
I didn't remember seeing her at the service, but I was sure she had been there, my brain just was too sluggish to place her.
I let myself up using my key, avoiding the sad eyes of the doorman and the fellow tenants in the elevator.
But, for the first time, I knocked on the door.
Because Sammy didn't live there anymore.
"Reagan," Charlotte's voice sighed out of her, shoulders slumping. "It's nice to see you up and about," she added, no doubt having heard of my descent into grief, And the depth of it.
"She wasn't depressed, Char," I said by way of greeting, shaking my head.
"Okay," Charlotte said, inviting me in, closing the door behind me.
"You know I'm right."
"I do," she agreed, nodding. "She wasn't depressed."
"Something else happened."
"Yes."
She wasn't just agreeing with me to be polite because I was clearly just one bad day away from being back in the psych ward. And she wasn't doing it out of respect for the dead or wishful thinking.
She was agreeing because she knew.
She knew more than I did.
"You know what happened, don't you?" I asked, adrenaline surging through my system at the idea of getting an answer, stopping the voice in my head demanding I do so, driving me crazier by the hour.
"Sit, Reagan," she demanded, moving to do so herself.
Because it was more of a demand than a request, I did, dropping down on the couch, one large cushion between us.
"What happened?" I demanded, wincing at the raw sound of my own voice.
"I was waiting," she said, shaking her head. "I didn't want to pile on. I was waiting for one of you to come and ask me. I knew you were... struggling."
"I'm here, Char. I'm asking."
"She was raped, Rae."
The words were ugly. They were always ugly. I didn't think it was possible to hear them without cringing on the inside. They were made uglier still by knowing they applied to someone you loved.
"What? When?"
"Tuesday night. She had gone out after work. I came home late after going to see Asher. She was in the shower when I got in. I thought nothing of it. Until an hour passed, and the water was still running. Then almost two hours. Honestly, I was more worried she'd fallen, and hit her head or something," she admitted, shaking her head. "Instead, I found her chilled to the bone, shivering, and silently sobbing. I knew."
"She didn't actually say--" I started, but she cut me off.
"I knew because I've seen the aftermath a few times. Because I know it myself," she admitted, giving me a piece of her past I had never known before. The ache in my chest amplified. "I got her out of the tub, dressed, un
der the blankets. And then I waited for it to spill out. I knew it was coming."
"What did she say?"
"She said she wanted to get the feel of his hands off of her," Char told me, closing her eyes tightly, tamping down an ugly memory. "I didn't really need more information than that."
"Why didn't you call the police?"
"Because she told me not to. Because she said she couldn't go through that, that she didn't want more hands touching her. I've been through that exam, Rae. I can't blame her. It was her choice. So I gave her one of her pills. I let her sleep. I waited to speak to her in the morning. I tried to coax her into making a statement. She told me no."
"You could have called me," I told her, voice small, maybe even a little accusatory.
"That wasn't my place," Char insisted, voice steely. "If someone trusts you with that, you don't break that trust. I did get her to talk to the hotline, though. I heard her on the phone with them on Thursday night. I thought that was a step in the right direction. I figured the next foot forward would be confiding in you. I never could have known she would kill herself the next night, Rae. I couldn't have known that. You can't blame me for that," she insisted, tears welling up and pouring out.
Mine joined hers as I wrapped my arms around her, as I told her that Sammy had come to see me, that I felt guilty too. And we shared those unfounded sensations of guilt for a long time before we managed to pull ourselves together again.
"She never said who it was?" I asked, swiping at my salty cheeks.
"No. I don't know why. I don't know if it was because she didn't know, or.--"
"Or because she did," I finished.
"Yeah," she agreed, nodding her head. "I wish I had pressed harder. But I didn't want to make it any worse for her."
"Did she say anything? Do you know where she went that night?"
"No. When I asked that morning as we got ready for our day, she said she had a dinner."
"A date?"
"No. No, it didn't sound like a date at all. She was talking about it very formally. Like she had a dinner. You know, like an obligatory dinner or something like that."
"She wasn't dating anyone."
It wasn't a question, but she answered anyway. "No. She'd been single for a long time. No hookups. No nothing. Just happily single."
It could have been anyone.
She could have gone to her dinner, left, and been attacked.
Or she could have gone home with whoever she had dinner with. Maybe she felt like she was to blame because she followed him, because he said she led him on.
I didn't know.
It was killing me not to know who the person was who had caused my sister to cut her life short.
"I just remember one thing she said about him. About the attacker," she clarified.
"What?"
"She said he kept calling her 'princess' the whole time he raped her."
'Princess' was a common word.
An annoying pet name.
Plenty of men used that endearment
But as soon as the words were out of Charlotte's lips, I knew.
I knew like I knew the sun was going to come up the next day.
I knew who she'd had a dinner with.
I knew who called her princess.
I knew who had raped her.
Michael McDermot.
My mind flashed back to every interaction we'd had with the man. He'd been a fixture in our lives as far back as I could remember. When my parents hosted a dinner party--which was often--he had always been invited. When there was a charity fundraiser we attended, he was there.
It all tapered off maybe a year before when he decided to relocate to the east coast. I remembered feeling a sigh of relief when I walked into a dinner party and didn't see him there. He always had a tendency to corner Sammy, or me, or both of us, something that had always set me on edge. I'd always been pretty social, had a large circle of friends, easily conversed with those older than me because I'd been raised to do so. None of my parents' other friends made me uncomfortable. But Michael did.
And a large part of it had been the fact that he insisted on calling us princesses. Repeatedly.
It was weird.
I'd told Sammy as much a few times.
She, being the nicer of us, the one who always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, always insisted that I was being paranoid.
"Charlotte?" I asked on my way out the door a little while later, after pulling myself together, knowing I had to play this card close to my vest, that men like Michael didn't let rumors spread about him, that if I wanted proof, I had to be very careful.
"Yeah?"
"You went to the Mitchell's dinner party with Sammy that last weekend right?" I asked. I'd decided to sit that one out, which had gotten me a pout from Sammy because she had already said she'd go and didn't want to do it without me.
"Yeah. God, the food was terrible."
"It always is," I agreed, shaking my head. "Sammy wanted me to go. Now, I feel like I missed out on a chance to spend time with her. Did I miss anything? I never got to talk to Sammy about how it went."
"Uneventful for the most part. Judy is back in rehab. Alice got her nose done. Oh, and Michael got the most obvious hair plugs. God, they were bad. You'd think with all his money, he could get more convincing ones."
"Michael McDermot?" I asked, hoping my voice came off as casual even as my head started spinning.
"Yeah."
"I thought he was over in New York or something."
"Jersey. Yeah, but he was back to see his sister's art exhibit. Which was also pretty terrible. When this abstract trend is over, I will finally be able to enjoy art again."
"I know, right?" I agreed, shaking my head. "Did Sammy have a good time there?"
"She reconnected with the Dodd sisters."
'Ew."
"Yeah. But she was happy. They were going to go out this weekend." Her eyes closed tight, trying to hold onto the tears. "I haven't been able to talk to your parents about this yet, but I am breaking my lease here. I just... I can't," she said, shaking her head, her gaze shooting toward Sammy's room. Where she'd found her body in the tub.
"I understand," I agreed, feeling the piercing sensation inside. "I will talk to my dad. He will have it handled. I will collect Sammy's things in a few days," I added, not sure how I would be able to box everything she owned and tuck it away, knowing she would never get to touch it again.
But I would do it.
I would get through it.
Because through all the grief was something else. Something that was proving a good distraction, taking the edge off, letting me focus.
Michael McDermot raped my sister.
He made it so that she didn't want to be on this earth anymore.
I was going to make sure he paid for that.
I was going to ensure that he could never do that to another woman again.
"Thanks, Reagan. I know this is a horrible time for you. I didn't want to pile more on."
"It's a bad time for you too," I reminded her, reaching out to grab her wrist, giving it a squeeze.
With that, I moved out into the hall, got down into my car, drove it to the beach, and promptly lost my shit again.
Rage and grief and helplessness mingled with a heavy dose of guilt until it bubbled up and burst over, came pouring out.
As I wiped my face later, ignoring the curious look of a couple of teenagers standing next to their car, witnessing my breakdown, I felt something else started to spread inside, something I had never experienced before, something I thought would feel hot, searing, but found cold and cutting.
Hatred.
I disliked plenty of people in my life.
But Michael McDermot was the first person I ever hated.
I was honestly pretty sure that were he to stand in front of me right then, I would have plowed into him with my car, taken from him what he took from my sister.
I'd happily spend a decade or two in prison f
or that.
Nervous energy pent up, making me sweaty and uncomfortable, I got out of my car, I walked down the beach, sitting down when I found a somewhat private space, staring off into the waves for hours, trying to figure out what my next move was.
I had to tell my parents.
And Luis.
They had to know that Sammy hadn't lost a long, hidden battle with depression. They had to know someone had hurt her, that she hadn't been able to handle it, had wanted the pain to stop.
Maybe they would be able to tell me what to do about Michael.
There was no actual evidence. She hadn't filed a report or gotten a rape kit run. And even if she had, she'd likely washed most of the evidence down the drain in her desire to get clean.
It wasn't like we could approach the cops and accuse him. But maybe my parents would know of some other course of action for us to take.
Of course, I hinged that thought on the surety that they would believe me when I told them.
It never even crossed my mind that they wouldn't.
In the end, though, they didn't.
"We're not saying that someone didn't... that they didn't hurt Sammy," my father said, upper lip twitching. In him, it was a sign of frustration, not upset. He was likely feeling helpless, angry that he hadn't been able to protect his little girl.
"Of course we believe that," my mother insisted. She'd been taking trips to the shrink and pharmacy since the funeral as well, her meds helping her get out of bed, function again, not zombifying her like they had with me. "We would never question that," she added, voice insistent.
"We just think you are trying to force pieces together that don't fit," my father told me, taking a deep breath.
"He was here that week! He was at that party!"
"Many people were at that party, Reagan," he insisted, voice firm, a little sharp, as it always was when he thought I was being stubborn. "And from what Charlotte said, it didn't happen the night of the party."
"No, but she would have seen Michael. She could have easily been conned into dinner with him,. You know Sammy. She would have been too polite to turn him down."
"Honey," my mom said, reaching across the table toward me, placing a hand over mine. "Have you been back to the therapist?" she asked.
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