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“So you saw him?” Elizabeth said, digging her spoon into her ice cream. “You saw his body?”
I nodded. “I did.”
I'd gone home after leaving Mike at the house and it took much longer than I expected to get back because traffic on Interstate 8 was heavy nearly the whole way. I'd called Elizabeth halfway through the drive and offered to pick up Chinese food for dinner. She was excited by that and said she’d run to the store to pick up ice cream for dessert. We’d mowed through the Chinese food when I got home and minutes later, retired to the sofa with our bowls of ice cream.
“Ugh,” she said, licking her spoon. “That's gross.”
“And sad.” I thought about all the cases I’d looked into over the years, the kids who had never made it home.
“Well, yeah, obviously.” She shot me a sympathetic look. “So you think he killed himself then?”
I leaned back into the sofa and spooned out some of the ice cream. It was chocolate, with ribbons of peanut butter and fudge laced through it. “Certainly seems that way, yeah.”
“What do the police do then?” she asked, concentrating on her bowl. “If he killed himself, why do they have to do anything?”
“They just need to make sure,” I said. “So they'll treat it like a crime scene and then they'll run some tests on his body to confirm. They'll interview people close to him, but my guess is it will happen pretty fast and be ruled a suicide.”
She ran her spoon carefully around the rim of her bowl. The metal clanked against the porcelain, almost like a percussion instrument. “That sucks.”
“Yep, it does.”
“I feel bad for Mike.”
I stared into the bowl of melting ice cream. “Me, too.”
She held up her spoon and licked the back of it. “So now you're done?”
“What do you mean?”
“With the case,” she said. “If that’s what it was.”
It wasn’t a case, it was a favor, but I knew what she was asking. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” she repeated.
I explained what Mike had asked me to do.
“Why?” she said, looking up from her bowl.
“I think he just wants some reassurance,” I said. “It's hard when someone takes their own life and it seems out of character.”
“I guess,” she said. She set her bowl down on the coffee table. “Did you ever think about it?”
“About what?”
“Suicide.”
“Me?” I glanced up, surprised. “Why would you ask that?”
She pulled her knees to her chest. “I don't know. You've told me how hard it was when I was gone. You said it was awful. You and Mom got a divorce. When you talk to me about it, you sound like you were sort of a psycho.” She added a rueful smile, proably as a way to soften her words.
“I was,” I said, nodding. “Not really a violent psycho, but I was...not totally rational all the time.”
“Right,” she said, hugging her knees. “So I just wondered. Did you ever think about it?”
My bowl was empty now, too and I set it on the table next to hers. “No. Because if I'd killed myself, it would've meant I'd given up on finding you and that was the one thing that got me out of bed every single day.” I looked at her. “Did I get depressed? Angry? Sure. But killing myself wouldn't have solved anything for me or your mother. I never got to that point.”
She nodded slowly, mulling that over.
It was the truth. I'd spent many nights, alone in small hotel rooms in strange places, staring at the walls or flipping mindlessly through the TV channels. I'd cried. I'd punched holes in walls. I did plenty of irrational things. But I couldn't recall ever wanting to kill myself because I'd always believed that she was out there.
And I'd been right.
“I thought about it,” Elizabeth said.
An icy knot formed in my gut. “Suicide?”
She let go of her knees and stretched out her legs. “Yeah.”
I shifted on the couch. “When?” I tried to keep my voice steady, even.
She leaned her head back against the arm of the sofa. “It was some time that first year. And I know. I was too young to really go through with it or actually do anything. But I felt...helpless. I knew something was wrong, but it was like my brain and my memories were scrambled. I knew things weren't right, but I couldn't figure out why or how, and I would just cry at night when I went to bed.”
The sharp ache that lived in my gut for all the years she'd been gone was threatening to take up residence again. I knew that I had her back, and I knew she was safe. But even taking a few moments to go back to those dark years was like taking a baseball bat to my head.
“I'm sorry,” I said. It was the most inadequate thing in the world to say, but it was all I had.
“I just knew it was all off,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me, and her eyes had this faraway look. “And the Corzines were great and they gave me space and all that crap. But I knew something was off, and I'd get so angry because I felt like everyone knew something I didn't and that they were trying to confuse me.”
“They were,” I said sharply.
“The Corzines weren't,” she said, shaking her head. “They believed the story they'd been given.”
I grunted. “Maybe. But they knew the way that you came to them was wrong. They were kidding themselves.”
“I guess,” she said, shrugging. The gesture irritated me, as if she didn’t believe her fake family had been capable of doing something wrong or that she thought it was simply irrelevant. “But I hated that everyone was trying to make me think something that I knew wasn't right.” She shook her head. “I pulled the pillow over myself one night, like I could suffocate myself or something.”
The knife in my gut twisted. “I'm sorry,” I said again.
“I know,” she said. “But it's not your fault and it's not going to change the past. And...I don’t know, sometimes I just feel like I need to spit all of this crap out.”
“Spitting crap out is good.”
“I guess.”
I leaned forward on the couch. “It is. If you've got stuff you need to get out, then get it out. To me or whoever.” I looked her straight in the eye. “But get it out. Don't keep it bottled up.”
“Okay,” she said. There was a pause, and then she asked, “So what happens if you find out it wasn't a suicide?”
“I'm not sure I will. And nice segue.”
She made a face. “Okay. But what if you do?”
“If I do, I'll tell Mike,” I told her. “And he can do with that whatever he wants to.”
She nodded slowly, then started to say something, but bit off the words.
“What?” I asked.
“You've talked more about helping Mike than teaching since I got home last night,” she said. “And not that I expected you to talk continuously about teaching or anything. But...I don't know.”
“Didn't we already have this conversation?”
She rolled her eyes. “That's not what I'm saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I'm saying you seem to care about this,” she said. “I'm saying that you seem a little ambivalent to teaching right now. And I'm saying that after not investigating for a few years, maybe it's...tickling your fancy.”
“Tickling my fancy?” I chuckled. “What century are you living in?”
“Shut up. You know what I mean.”
The chuckle turned into a laugh, and I was grateful for the shift in both of our moods. I did know what she meant. But I just wasn't sure how to answer her.
“Right now, all I'm trying to do is help Mike,” I told her. “That's it. No ulterior motives or anything like that. I haven't given a whole lot of thought to teaching because I'm so far behind. So I'm not at a point to even evaluate it like that. So, I want to help my friend and I want to spend the winter break with my daughter. I probably won't be talking much about school at all.”
She held her hands up in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. Was just asking.”
“You're allowed to ask,” I told her. It was my turn for a segue.“Are we running again in the morning?”
She stood and picked up the bowls from the table. “I am. Wasn't sure if your old bones would be ready to go again so soon.”
I threw the pillow at her as she walked to the kitchen, cackling.