He spent Saturday with the kids and grandkids, who overfilled the family house in Concord. They looked at pictures. They watched videos. They told stories.
Oh, everyone had their moments—they couldn’t believe Mom was gone, they missed Grandma—but with all five grandchildren under the age of six, it was basically just chaos. No time to really think about anything. Emmett had switched from cop mode to grandpa mode, forcing cheer as he played with dolls and trucks.
Then they left. All three kids. All three spouses. All five grandkids. They had to go back to their regularly scheduled lives.
And now it was again Sunday morning—one week, exactly, since Wanda had died—and Emmett was alone.
Powerfully alone.
He wandered from room to room, still expecting to find Wanda in one of them. Everyplace he went was drenched with memories of her.
Upstairs—their bedroom, the bathroom—still smelled like her.
The kitchen? Forget it. Even in death, her vivacious presence filled the space.
In the dining room, there were three easels, each containing a poster board filled with pictures. Wanda, the most gorgeous bride ever, walking back down the aisle, newly married. Wanda with Emmett in dress uniform, on the long-ago day when he had been promoted to detective. Wanda with the kids in various stages of development, with their trophies, dance outfits, and diplomas. Wanda with grandchildren, smiling brightly.
He had to get out of there. Fast.
That’s how he found himself in the den.
Which was probably the last place he should have been.
He asked himself, not for the first time, whether it would have mattered if he’d done something different. If he had forced her to get the stupid mask. Or if he had insisted she wear those breathing strips they had gotten from the drugstore. If he had just kept her in bed with him, because her snoring wasn’t that bad. Something.
Suddenly he couldn’t handle the den anymore either. He was on his feet and moving. Down the stairs, to the basement, where Wanda almost never went.
It would be safer for him there.
He clicked on a pull-chain light. There was his workbench, built into the left side of the far wall.
And, to the right, his gun safe, where he stored his hunting rifles and service weapon, a Smith & Wesson M&P 45.
He looked at his tools for a moment, all neatly arranged. Then, in a kind of trance, he walked to the gun safe, spun the dial, and opened the door.
His hand went for the Smith & Wesson, reflexively checking the magazine.
Full. And he knew there was one in the chamber.
He slid the magazine back in, hearing it snap into place. He lifted the gun, feeling the weight of it. The grip fit his palm perfectly.
This could be so easy.
No more suffering.
And it would either be Wanda, waiting for him on the other side, or it would be nothing. Both possibilities were better than what he was feeling now.
His index finger, which had started in its automatic resting spot outside the trigger guard, had somehow worked its way inside.
One week. One miserable week. The previous Saturday night, before they went to bed, everything in their lives was settled, everything made sense. She had retired after thirty-two years in the Concord City Clerk’s Office. He was a month away from finishing thirty distinguished years of service to the New Hampshire State Police, the last eighteen of them as a detective with the Major Crime Unit.
They had bought an RV, a Leisure Travel Vans twenty-four-footer. They had been planning their retirement for years, calculating and recalculating their pensions, saving and working—overtime for him, every chance he got; an extra job for her at the outlets during the holidays—so they could go wherever they wanted, do whatever they wanted.
Visit the kids. See the country. Spend their golden years together.
Emmett and Wanda.
What a pair.
Now that the unit was broken, now that there was no together anymore, what was he still doing here? What was the point?
He fitted the barrel of the gun into the soft underside of his chin.
Just to see how it would feel.
And it felt, well, inevitable. The pain had been unbearable, and he didn’t see how it would do anything but get worse as the days, weeks, and months without Wanda passed.
If he didn’t do it now, he was just going to do it later. Why not get it over with? It wouldn’t hurt. At least not for very long.
Really, what was he afraid of?
He began applying gentle pressure to the trigger. Not enough to send the bullet on its way. But it was definitely heading in that direction. Just a little more squeeze and then—
His phone rang.
He pulled it out of his pocket.
Gracie. His youngest. The pregnant one.
He put the gun down so he could answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Dad, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Good. Go to your computer. I just sent you an email. I want you to pull it up right now.”
Emmett had a flip phone, as all of his children knew. If you sent Dad an email, he still had to check it on his laptop.
“I’m down in the basement. I’m not—”
“Just go to your computer.”
Emmett did as he was told, leaving the gun behind, walking into the kitchen, flipping open the lid on his laptop, clicking on Gracie’s email, which consisted only of a picture.
An ultrasound photo.
“What . . . what’s this?”
“That,” Gracie said, “is your granddaughter. Isn’t she adorable? Look at that little face. The technician was supposed to send us the picture after our last checkup, and it finally just arrived. I think it’s Mom, working her magic. She knew we need a little pick-me-up.”
Or maybe she knew they weren’t the only ones.
Emmett tilted his head, and, yes, you could see the baby’s face.
“How about that,” he said.
“And we decided on the plane ride back we’re going to name the baby Wanda. Is that okay?”
“Oh, Gracie,” Emmett said, his throat squeezing.
“Love you, Dad.”
And Emmett managed to choke out, “Love you too.”
CHAPTER 6
I felt like I was tiptoeing all through the next two weeks, just waiting for the phone call saying that Matt had lapsed into another fit.
That had become my euphemistic name for what happened to him: a fit, like the whole thing—being plunged into a catatonic state for reasons that eluded medical explanation—had been nothing more than a childish tantrum.
Without telling Matt, I packed a bag that I kept in my car, just in case. And I established with Aimee that all I had to do was text her a 911, and she’d know to come running again.
In the meantime, I lived in a kind of suspended animation. Normally, I tried to get out for a hike at least once a week—as long as the weather wasn’t too terrible. Ever since I started losing my hearing, hiking had become my preferred method of self-care. Often, the family joined me. Mount Cardigan State Forest and Gile State Forest were our go-to spots, with Mount Moosilauke thrown in if we had time to make the drive.
But there was no way I was going to risk Matt going into a seizure while we were on top of a mountain somewhere. And I didn’t want to go alone either. It felt irresponsible to wander out of cell phone range.
As it was, every time my phone rang—in the office, while I was out doing errands—my first thought was that I’d have to dash back to Dartmouth-Hitchcock for more tests, hand-wringing, and dread.