She Wore Mourning by P.D. Workman (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

We all saw it coming, but we couldn’t watch her twenty-four hours a day. Even if we tried to put her in an institution for her own safety, they’d only do a seventy-two-hour evaluation. If she didn’t want to stay and they didn’t think she was a danger to herself, they would let her right back out.”

“They wouldn’t have let her out, would they?”

“They would,” Molly said with certainty. “I know they would. We’ve been here before.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. I guess I should have done a little more background on the case.”

Molly wrung her hands.

Spencer hovered nearby, pausing from his pacing.

“Like she said, it wouldn’t have made any difference. You couldn’t have done anything to change it. We were doing our best to keep an eye on her, but… it was bound to happen anyway.”

Zachary studied Spencer, shaking his head. “It wasn’t inevitable. You can’t know that.”

“She was getting more and more depressed, slipping further and further into unreality.”

Zachary remembered Isabella’s bizarre call. “She phoned me. She said that her lost cat Mittens came back. I thought it sounded strange; I wondered if it was a psychotic break… was it?”

Molly raised her head, and she and Spencer looked at each other.

“The cat did come back,” Molly said, her voice distant. “I swear, I never thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell. Did you, Spencer?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I thought it was just crazy talk. I thought it was just Isabella…being Isabella. She would get stuck on things. For years at a time. I don’t know how many bags of that damn cat food she went through. Putting food out for it every single day it was gone. It was crazy.”

“But now, the cat is back,” Spencer said.

He started pacing again.

Zachary sat with Molly. There wasn’t much to say to her. She told him about Isabella and Declan, little stories about them. The things that become legends in families. Remember when…

Zachary couldn’t help thinking about his own history while she talked about her child and grandchild. What would it have been like for him if he had still been part of a family? Would he still have been teetering on the edge like he was? It didn’t seem to have helped Isabella to have a loving, interested parent. She had still attempted suicide.

Or maybe Zachary was looking at it all wrong. Maybe he wasn’t paying any attention to the dysfunction in the family, and that was the key to Isabella’s instability. Maybe the mother who was outwardly loving and kind actually wasn’t. Maybe the fact that she was still trying to control her adult daughter’s life and to manipulate her mental state was part of the problem. Maybe she was too involved. Too ready to take the reins and control a family that was no longer hers.

Molly had told Zachary on the phone that Isabella had taken pills. The very method Zachary had been considering when he finally decided to answer the phone. Was it a coincidence? Or were they both influenced by some outside factor? Maybe it was the fact that Declan had cough medicine in his system when he died. Zachary’s focus on it had directed both of their thoughts to the medicine cabinet.

Was it his fault that Isabella had been impelled to attempt suicide?

“Why do you think she did it?” Zachary asked Molly, in the midst of a retelling of one of her cute stories. “Was it because of my investigation?”

Molly stopped and looked at him, mouth open. “What?”

“Something made her decide to take action. Was it me? Because I was asking her questions?”

“No.” Molly shook her head. Her face was chalk white. “No, I really think your investigation was helping. Giving her something positive to focus on. That maybe you would be able to find out the truth.”

Unless the truth were that Isabella had given Declan the cough medicine, knowing the reaction he would have to it.

“Then why?” Zachary demanded. “Why now, without even waiting to see what my report said? Was she afraid of what it was going to say?”

“I told her that you were going to give it to us before Christmas. That maybe it would help her to see that it wasn’t her fault.”

Zachary shook his head.

It was past midnight. Christmas Day. He’d missed his deadline. It was Christmas Day, and he was sitting in the hospital waiting room, trying to comfort the mother of the woman he might have pushed toward suicide.

“It’s a bad time of year for suicides,” Molly said.

Zachary raised his head to look at her. Unaware that he had been covering his face, in much the same position Molly had been when he first came into the waiting room.

“Christmas is a bad time of year for people who are depressed,” Molly said. “There are lots of suicides around this season. It’s not your fault.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“I don’t know why Christmas,” Molly went on. “Maybe because people expect to be happy for Christmas, and then when they’re not… the expectations make it worse… seeing other people who appear to be happy.”

“Isabella bought presents for Declan,” Spencer said, his pacing bringing him closer to them again. “I couldn’t understand why she would do that. She knew he was dead. She knew he wouldn’t be opening presents and spending Christmas with us.”

Just like she had fed the missing cat. How many years would she continue to buy her dead child Christmas presents?

Molly looked at Spencer, nodding sadly. “Isabella always loved Christmas. I was hoping maybe she’d perk up a bit for it. That it would be good for her.”

“What could be good about Christmas without your child?” Zachary demanded, his throat aching. “How could she look forward to that? How could she celebrate when her arms were so empty?”

Molly and Spencer both stared at Zachary. His reaction was over the top. It was too much. They were wondering what was wrong with him, how he could be so emotional over someone he barely knew. What