Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Maybe that was why he tried to kill himself. I sat up, wiping my sweaty hair from my face. Oh god, had that been it? He felt guilty over so many things that he couldn’t change, no matter how often I told him not to. Had he thought he’d doomed me to a life I didn’t want? That was ridiculous, and I’d told him so. But Neil wasn’t just a control freak. He was the special kind of control freak who can’t trust anybody to tell him the truth about their feelings. He always doubted me, even when I reassured him.
The longer I thought about it, the more every second of my life with Neil began to feel like a lie. I blamed myself for not seeing the truth of how sick he was. I blamed him for hiding it from me. The guilt was unending, and so consuming that for a few minutes I forgot where I was.
Maybe I was losing my mind, too.
I thought of Neil pleading with me the night before, asking me not to leave him, and my hands clenched to fists. He wanted me not to leave him? What about me? He hadn’t asked me how I would feel if he left.
I checked my messages. Holli, Mom, Deja… Ugh, I would have to call people and explain this to them—if some nosy asshole neighbor hadn’t called the news. Then again, if the media reported on every billionaire suicide attempt, there probably wouldn’t be room to report anything else. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. How did I know what to share? Maybe Neil wouldn’t want everyone and their brother to hear that he’d tried to off himself.
So, I ignored the phone and went about my day as I normally would. I gave Olivia her bottle and sent her off to playgroup with Mariposa. Julia made me lunch, but I didn’t eat it. I told her Neil was in the hospital but didn’t say why.
Eventually they’ll know, I told myself as I stared at the bean and asparagus salad I couldn’t eat. They’ll all know you weren’t enough to live for.
Somehow, I could rationalize that Neil loved Olivia, that she was “enough” to make Neil want to stay, but I couldn’t accept it of myself. I liked to think of myself as a pretty modern, well-informed adult, with a clear understanding of what suicide was and wasn’t. But, when I had to apply it to my own family, all I could do was blame myself and absolve everyone else.
At least, some of the time. Because, wow, I did not feel the same set of emotions all day. I swung between anger at myself—for not recognizing the signs, for not putting a lock on the medicine cabinet the second Emma died—to anger at Neil, for putting me in this position, for not consulting me in this plan, to outright hating Emma.
With Neil’s one stupid choice, I rocketed into the anger stage of grief. I probably broke some land speed record for emotional whiplash. The night before, I’d been all love and hope and memory, and now, I was just pissed. How dare Emma die and leave me to cope with her grieving father? How dare her death almost kill Neil?
While Olivia was down for her afternoon nap, I went back to Neil’s study. The letter he’d written me lay on the floor where I’d dropped it. I didn’t reread it. Instead, I went to his desk and looked at the manila folders stacked on the blotter.
One of them was labelled “insurance”. Another, “Internet passwords and auto-renewing subscription services”. There was one with a sticky note on the front that read, “Give to Valerie—Elwood & Stern concerns”, and another that simply said, “Will”.
I hated to even look at it, but sick curiosity drove me to it. I skimmed through the paperwork and found that I would have been the beneficiary of all of our bank accounts, investment accounts, and stock. His shares of Elwood & Stern also went to me, while his shares in his father’s company reverted to his siblings to be split among them. All of the houses went to me, including the Venetian apartment I’d never seen. He’d set up a trust fund for Olivia, and another to ensure the continuation of the rape crisis center.
There was no mention of Emma, which meant he’d worked on this after her death.
It would have taken weeks. All that time, he’d hid his intentions from me. When had he started planning?
I opened the top drawer of his desk. Since Dr. Harris had given me no indication when Neil might come home, I was going to search the house from top to bottom looking for any hidden pills or alcohol.
Because Neil was Neil, everything in the top drawer was a mess. At least his study was tidy. In our London house, his office had been a nightmare. I never understood how he could be so picky about having everything else in his life organized, but office supplies and paperwork were somehow beyond him.