She didn’t understand, and Jennifer would never explain it to her. The things she knew, she held inside. The caustic nature of those memories continuously ate away at her. No one tried hard enough or cared deeply enough to pry them out. It took her years to let go, to forgive herself, to climb out of the depression and anxiety that gripped her, and move on with her life. Tonight she felt like she had fallen all the way back to the bottom of the mountain.
She had come home at the end of her workday agitated and upset. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t concentrate enough to lose herself in a book—her lifelong method of escape. She turned the television on, but couldn’t settle to watch anything. All the local news stations wanted to talk about was the double homicide of the U of M professor and his wife, and the man wanted for questioning. All the news was bad. Violence, hatred, racism, bigotry—everyone was angry, everyone was outraged. The world was a terrible place full of terrible people doing terrible things.
She changed the channel to a decorating show and was immediately confronted by the phony drama and staged arguments of a real estate agent trying to convince his clients to sell their home while a decorator tried to convince them to spend thousands remodeling the dump. Even that was too much conflict to deal with.
Her arms wrapped around her as if she was freezing, she paced her apartment. Her mind was racing. Even earlier in the evening she had been dreading the night. Eventually, she would need to sleep, and sleep would bring the nightmares. Not even sleeping pills would keep them at bay . . . unless she took one too many.
The thought slipped itself into her consciousness surreptitiously, like a snake slipping through a crack in a wall. As she recognized it, it frightened her. She hadn’t thought that way in a long time. She shouldn’t be thinking that way now. People who had never experienced suicidal thoughts didn’t understand the seductiveness, the insidiousness of those thoughts. Her immediate, instinctive response was to distract herself with physical pain. She wanted to go to the kitchen and get a knife and cut herself to relieve the pressure and clear her mind.
Tears welled in her eyes. She had so many scars from cutting in her teens and her twenties that she would never change clothes in a gym locker room or allow a sales associate to see her in a department store fitting room. She didn’t want more scars. She wanted to be free—and that thought took her straight back to the idea of the sleeping pills. The ultimate freedom was death.
The endless loop of destructive thoughts had begun, fueling itself from her fear and despair.
Maybe if she took another Valium.
Maybe if she took three . . .
How long is forever?
Sometimes, just one second . . .
The phone on the breakfast bar rang, startling her. She let the call go to voice mail and then dialed out and picked up the message.
“Ms. Duffy, this is Detective Liska. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to ask you a couple of additional questions. If you could, please call me back at your convenience . . .”
More questions. As if the questions she had already asked hadn’t caused Jennifer enough upset, awakening memories and stirring up emotions like stirring up the sediment at the bottom of a still pond. When she closed her eyes, she could see the faces of her past: her father, Angie, Jeremy . . . She had very deliberately not thought of them in years. Now here they were, come to haunt her. They would be waiting for her in her dreams, and they would be angry and accusatory and threatening.
You can never tell, Jennifer . . .
How long is forever?
The tears she had been struggling to hold back burst forth at that thought, like water from a crumbling dam, taking all resistance, sweeping away everything in its path. Sobbing, she hurried into the kitchen, pulled a paring knife from the knife block, shoved her left sleeve up, and . . . hesitated.
Her hand was trembling, the sharp blade a hair’s breadth above her soft white flesh. She shouldn’t. She had gone a long time without resorting to this. If she started again, she might not be able to stop. Just once always led to just once more to this is the last time . . . The rush of endorphins, the relief of releasing that inner pain was so tempting.
The pressure and the anxiety were just so terrible.
Just this once.
She’d been taken by surprise by the renewed interest in her father’s murder. It was only natural that she was upset. She’d been doing so well. If she could just relieve the pressure now, she’d right herself, and that would be all. She was stronger now than she had been before. She wouldn’t need to do it again.
The sense of pain was clean and sharp as the blade sliced the delicate skin of her inner arm. The sense of relief followed immediately, followed by a quick, brief high as the endorphins were released in her brain. Then the high bottomed out, and the sense of shame welled up inside her like the line of blood rising on her skin.
Jennifer dropped the knife in the sink and turned the water on. Doubled over, lying against the edge of the sink, she stuck her arm beneath the ice-cold flow and cried and cried and cried.