The water inside freezes and thaws, freezes and thaws.
Stop it! Nick would never, ever commit suicide without saying good-bye to me. Right?
But I couldn’t shake it off, and by the time the traffic started moving again and I’d had my last pit stop, even my playlist couldn’t distract me anymore. It came at me from everywhere. The powerlessness was unbearable. I had a strong urge to turn around. Go back. But what was the point? I was too far away.
I had to wait till I heard something from him.
Outside the Focus, the rain was hammering the windshield. Outside the Focus, the restless evening. Outside the Focus, the Dutch border.
It was after eight. On the bright blue signs over the A12: amsterdam 117. Kilometers, that is.
I was almost there.
8
I was planning to drive to the address I got from Emily Wan right away. It was in Amstelveen, less than a mile and a half from our house in Amsterdam-Zuid. For three years of my life I’d lived here, and yet I felt absolutely nothing when I drove into the city. My sense of belonging, my home, my anchor here was Nick, but Nick belonged to the mountains now. The only thing I found here now was a vague feeling of discomfort. You couldn’t ascribe it to my fourteen-hour motor marathon. To the fact that Nick was missing. Uh-uh. The discomfort came from my growing feeling that everything was about to derail even more than it already had.
Something ugly was waiting here.
And although I didn’t want to see it, I had no choice.
Emily Wan lived in one of those typical Dutch row houses in one of those typical Dutch upscale neighborhoods. I parked the car on the street. In the streaming rain, I saw a light burning behind the drawn curtains. That was good. It was something. Rain streaming down my neck and the sign next to the doorbell reading emily wan—julian and naomi.
I rang the bell.
Almost rang it a second time, almost backed down the walkway, but a second too late, cuz then the door opened. What I saw played a disturbing game with my expectations. The woman in the doorway, she looked like Emily Wan’s Insta pics, but at the same time, you were looking at someone altogether different. This was Emily Wan if she’d led an altogether different life with an altogether different career on an altogether different continent.
Let me guess: it was Emily’s sister.
Let me guess: here from Beijing or Shanghai or Chengdu.
Let me guess . . . I think I knew then what was coming.
“How can I help you?” the woman asked, hesitant and with a heavy Chinese accent. A pale girl, about five years old, slipped past her legs and looked up at me. Her right eye was swollen almost all the way shut.
Let me guess: Naomi.
“I . . . I’m here for Ms. Emily Wan,” I bumbled.
“I’m sorry, she can’t speak to you now.”
The door swung shut. I instinctively shot out my hand and blocked it. “But I have an appointment with her.”
The pale kid reappeared in the narrow doorway, PJs and whatnot, and like any other kid would have said “My mommy is a policewoman,” she said, “My mommy is dead.”
All the blood flushed from my face. The woman babbled at Naomi in Chinese and I, ever the linguist, couldn’t even tell if she was snapping at her or comforting her.
The door opened a coupla inches more, and now, in the light of the outdoor bulb, I could see how tired the woman looked. “Excuse me for being so impolite, but it’s been a very long day for all of us.” She said, “My name is Sue. I’m Emily’s sister.”
But was she dead?
“I’m sorry. She died last night.”
“But that’s impossible . . . I spoke with her last night!” Not your consequential masterpiece; it just slipped out as an expression of my shock. “We had an appointment to meet today.”
“Sorry, may I ask who you are?”
“I’m Sam Avery,” I said. “I’m . . .” Yeah, who was I, actually?
But she was already like, Ahh, as if my name rings all sorts of bells, and she goes, “Wait a minute please.” And withdraws back into the house.
So there I am, standing there, rainwater on my lips. Totally stunned. That little girl Naomi in her jammies and her puffy eye looking up at me.
And Naomi said, “My mommy is dead.”
What do you say to a five-year-old who’s just lost her mother?
My clever contribution, “Aw shucks, man.”
Naomi stretched her pajamas tight with both hands and said, “I have teddy bears on my PJs.”
I said, “If I’d been wearing PJs, I could have warned them in time and the house wouldn’t have burned down.”
Sometimes people are just in shock.
There was a sound, and Naomi looked around and skipped back into the hall. Sue reappeared, an A4-size envelope in her hand. She came outside, under the leaking awning, and pulled the door to. Held the envelope against her body to keep it from getting wet, but even then you could read the two words written on it in neat and steady handwriting: Sam Avery.
“I’m afraid I can’t invite you in, because of the children. May I ask you what your relationship was to my sister?”
We were friends, I lied. I was supposed to meet her today about . . . about a number of things. Work-related things. What happened?
Sue let out a shaky sigh. “Emily took her own life last night. I’m telling you because she apparently knew you well enough to leave you this envelope.” She handed it to me and said, “It’s inexplicable. We knew she suffered from depression, but we didn’t see this coming.” Still she added, almost offhandedly, “She had delusions.”
Sue had arrived from China the previous day and, after seeing what Emily had done to her little girl, warned Child Protective Services. She’d been granted temporary care of the children as Emily was taken to PES. There, she’d apparently managed to convince the social workers that she’d calmed down. That it was safe to let her go.
And all of that, yesterday evening. Must have happened right after she texted me her address.
Still it didn’t tally with the rational manner in which she’d gone about it. Wan’s suicide seemed a calculated act, committed by someone who’d considered all the possibilities, crossed them off one by one till she saw no other way out. She’d left a neat stack of papers on the dining table. Her will. Her deed to the house. Passwords, cards with codes. The works. Plus an envelope for her children. An envelope for Sue. For me. Emily Wan had been an organized woman, she’d even paid all her due bills. As if she were going on vacation.
“After that,” said Sue, “she went up to the hospital roof and jumped off.”
9
Back in the Focus, I ripped the envelope open. It contained a pile of printouts. A paper clip on the top left corner. The top sheet wasn’t clipped; a letter. The halo of the streetlamp created moving patterns of rain over the text. My wet fingers wrinkled the paper.
’Course, I asked myself later what would have happened if I hadn’t read Emily’s letter. If I’d given in to my first impulse: Turn it into confetti. Drive off. Go to the North Cape or something.
But, duh. Like not reading it was an option.