“So they got along pretty well, your brother and Rick?”
“Always. I mean, he was the dad we never had. My brother worshipped Rick like a superhero and they were inseparable, even after the divorce, until . . .”
“Until . . . ?”
Derek’s blue eyes cloud over. “Until, you know . . . Mom died. She killed herself, too. My brother almost lost it.”
“Lost it?”
“You know . . . he had a rough time. He kind of went off the deep end.”
“In what way?”
“He couldn’t sleep, he lost weight and he didn’t want to see anyone, not even Rick.”
Understandable. Some -people react to a sudden loss by holding on tightly to their remaining loved ones; others by letting go for fear of losing someone else.
“He’s the one who found her,” Derek adds.
Steve pretends he wasn’t aware of that when, in fact, he looked into Vanessa De Forrest’s death before he headed over to Brooklyn.
She had, indeed, slit her own wrists in a bathtub, on November thirtieth of last year.
She was discovered by her eldest son, who’d gone over to check on her after she failed to show up at work. Her doctor had recently prescribed an antidepressant that carried a risk of suicidal tendencies, and she’d left a rambling, handwritten note that both blamed her ex--husband and professed her love for him.
That isn’t unusual after a divorce. The timing isn’t unusual either: she killed herself on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
According to Derek, Rick had custody of the younger half siblings on that first Thanksgiving after the divorce. Derek went to Mexico with friends, so Vanessa cooked a turkey for herself and Casey. When Derek called her that night, she was alone again, had been drinking, and was upset and resentful.
“At you?” Steve asks.
“Kind of. At everyone, really. But mostly at Rick.”
“Why did they split up?”
“They were so different. Looking back, I’m more surprised they ever got married in the first place than I am that they got divorced.”
“Did your brother feel the same way?”
“Probably. I don’t think anyone who knew them wouldn’t feel that way.”
“Yet your mother didn’t want the divorce.”
“No.”
“Because she was still in love with him?”
“That, and I think she felt like a failure. She was a real perfectionist, and . . . you know. Both her husbands left her.”
Steve shifts gears.
“When was the last time you saw your brother?”
“It’s been a while. Probably not since . . . I’d say it’s been almost a year.”
“That’s a long time when you live in the same city.”
“I know, but he’s . . . not that social. Plus, he travels a lot for work.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s an electrical lineman—-he does power restoration in areas that have been hit by storms.”
From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives
Front Page
July 8, 1916
Second Young Woman Murdered
Bloodied Corpse at G. H. Purcell Residence
Village in Uproar at News
At approximately ten--thirty this morning, Mrs. Florence S. Purcell of 46 Bridge Street was greeted by a horrific sight upon entering the second--floor guest room to prepare it for weekend visitors. A young woman lay beneath the coverlet with her head resting upon a pillow, eyes closed as if in slumber. Had Mrs. Purcell not been aware of a similar discovery earlier in the week at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Silas O. Browne of 65 Prospect Street, she might have approached and attempted to awaken the sleeping intruder as did the unfortunate Mrs. Browne.