“I think about that sometimes, too,” I said. “How’s Mom doing?”
“About as well as you’d expect. Would you like to speak to her? Here she is.”
He got off the phone before I could object; I could tell from the slight quiver in his voice that he was doing his best to hold his tears back. The only time I had ever seen my father cry had been at Marissa’s funeral.
“I’m so glad you called,” my mother said when she got on the phone. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m trying to hold it together. Today is always hard. I planted some pansies at your sister’s gravesite. It looks very nice. There was some moss growing on the headstone, but I scraped that off.”
“I’m sure it looks nice there, Mom,” I said.
“We were there for a while. I know your father wanted to leave, but I just couldn’t. I know that doesn’t entirely make sense, since she’s not really there, but I always feel like I’m leaving her behind.”
“I just don’t understand why this had to happen,” my mother sobbed. “Still, all these years later, and it hurts as much as it did when we first found out. She’d been clean for so long—why would she use again? She had such a bright future ahead of her. She’d turned a corner—the hard stuff was in the past. Wasn’t it?”
“That’s what everyone thought, Mom. But obviously it wasn’t, at least not in her mind.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it.”
“You might not,” I said. “We’re all trying to do the best we can. I know it doesn’t always seem perfect, and things haven’t gone how anyone thought they would, but we’re all trying, Mom.”
“You are more than anyone. I feel so guilty—”
“Don’t.”
“But I do. Everything that you’ve taken on, that you’ve had to deal with, it hasn’t been fair to you, and—”
“Mom, I’m not doing anything I don’t want to, okay? We’re a family, right? Remember you were always telling us that? That we’re a family, we’re all on the same team, and sometimes that means stepping up and doing things for the team. That’s just how it goes.”
“I just wonder sometimes how things might have been different if I hadn’t asked you to—” Abruptly, she stopped talking. My father must have come back into the room. “Thank you again for calling,” she said. “You know it means so much to me.”
“I love you, Mom,” I said. “I better get going; I’ve got another patient to see in a few minutes. I’ll see you guys on Sunday, okay?”
“Okay, sweetie,” she said. “I love you, too.”
I got off the phone and then leaned forward, putting my arms on my desk, then resting my forehead on top of my arms.
That evening, after Declan had a bath and I got him to bed, I went into my bedroom and opened the closet. It was a walk-in closet, with a shelf running along one of the walls, about eye level. Toward the back was a shoe box with things like my birth certificate, my passport, and a life insurance policy. I took the box down and opened it. Inside, underneath all my own personal belongings, was a folded piece of notebook paper. I took it out and unfolded it, the creases soft, the paper starting to yellow. My sister’s loopy handwriting in blue ink still seemed just as bright as it had been the day I’d found the note next to her already-cooling body.
I just don’t want to live anymore. I know that’s not the right thing
to say, the right way to feel, but it’s the truth. I’ve caused other
people so much pain, and I’m so tired. I hope you can forgive me
and not blame yourselves because there is nothing anyone could
say that would change my mind. All I ever wanted was to be happy,
but for some reason, despite all the privilege I was born into,
I am unable to feeling anything but this overwhelming sadness.
I forgive you, Cole, for what you did—
I stopped reading. The letter continued for several more lines, and sometimes I was able to make it to the end, sometimes I was only able to read the first couple of words.