"I agree." The blonde typed a few things into her computer and then hit the speaker button on her office phone before dialing a number I could dial in my sleep. It rang twice before Maggie answered.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Mrs. King?"
"This is she."
"Hi, this is Mrs. Gritzan. The sixth-grade counselor from Fremont Middle School."
Maggie sucked in a breath. "Is everything okay? Is Grace okay?"
"She's fine. But there's a reason we're calling. Ms. Winters, Grace's English teacher, brought me one of your child's recent papers and it's a little concerning. We wanted to talk to Grace about her paper and what it means, but we wanted to touch base with you first."
A soft sob filled the room. My chest shook against Luke's arms. I wasn't sure if the sound came from Maggie or me.
"Do you need me to be there to talk to her? What was in the paper? My poor girl. Oh God. I am not equipped to handle all of this."
Both women exchanged a concerned glance. Each had tears in their eyes. The redhead leaned toward the phone. "Maggie, it's Fiona Winters. Her paper was all about death and blame and wanting to die and be with her dad. She'd said it was her fault he wasn't here anymore and that if she'd been better and hadn't argued with him so much and hadn't cost him so much money for dance and competitions, he wouldn't have been so stressed all the time."
"Oh my God," Maggie choked out.
The women looked at each other again, and Mrs. Gritzan nodded to Ms. Winters to continue.
"I'm so sorry, Maggie, but I feel like you need to know the rest of this. She also put in there that because of all the financial strain, these weren't her exact words, but she said it caused all the fighting between you guys and why he was so stressed, and it was her fault. Plus, she thinks because of him dying and you not getting the life insurance policy, you're about to lose your house and live on the streets and that is somehow also her fault."
A sniff and the sound of a quivering breath came over the speaker. "How does she even know half of this stuff? I didn't tell her anything about the life insurance policy. And when we argued about money, we never did it in front of her."
"Kids pay attention a lot more than we give them credit for, and walls are a lot thinner than we realize. I have the name of a very good family therapist I'd like to refer you to. Maybe even a support group. I think it might help," Mrs. Gritzan said.
"I'll do whatever you think. Oh God. I'm a terrible mother. Here I was thinking I was protecting her, and I haven't protected her from anything."
I didn't protect her from anything either. It was my fault. I did this. My legs gave out from under me, and I went slack in Luke's arms. I slid down the front of him to the floor. There was no pep talk. He didn't tell me it was okay. He didn't say anything. The grief and heaviness weighted me to the floor. While I was wallowing in my own self-pity, I'd missed how Grace ended up at the door. How her beautiful heart-shaped face was pulled into a look of fear. Grace's dark hair was pulled back into a bun thing on her head. She had my eyes, but on her, they were big and wide, framed by dark lashes as they searched the faces of the two women in front of her.
"Am I in trouble? Mr. Trimble told me to come here."
Mrs. Gritzan gave her a warm smile and gestured to the empty chair across from her desk. "No, honey, not at all. Here, come have a seat by Ms. Winters."
She shut the door hesitantly and sat down.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest. "I'm right here, baby. I'm right here," I whispered.
"Did I do something wrong?" Grace asked and looked from her teacher to the counselor.
"No, Grace. We were concerned about something you wrote in class and wanted to discuss it with you."
Her eyes grew wide. "I…I thought that was for a journal entry. I didn't think anyone was actually going to read that."
"Grace, we want you to know that this is a safe space, and it's okay to talk about what you're feeling. We talked to your mom and—"
"You told my mom?" she shrieked
"Yes, baby. They told me," Maggie said from the phone's speaker.
"Oh my God." Grace buried her face in her hands.
I tried to lurch forward, but Luke grabbed me by the shirt collar and yanked me back.
A look of disgust crossed his face as he said, "You lost the right to protect her the minute you pulled the trigger. Now you're forced to watch other people try to parent your child."
Ms. Winters rubbed small circles on Grace's back. "Grace, we need you to know that what happened with your dad was not your fault. I understand that sometimes creative writing is an outlet for many different feelings, but we want to make sure you understand that nothing you could have said or done would have changed the outcome of what happened."
Grace lifted her head, wiping her face with her purple-painted, chipped fingertips. "Yes, it was. You didn't hear them. You didn't see how upset he always was. All he ever wanted from me was hugs when he came in my room, and I always told him to get out."
She did always kick me out of her room, and in that instant, I had so much remorse telling her that one day when I was gone, she'd regret not giving me hugs when she could. I hadn't said it to be cruel. I thought it was more of a life lesson like I missed not being able to hug my father, who was long gone. It was never a threat. But that's how she took it. I wanted to go back and kick my own ass. I struggled to stand, but it was as if Luke heard what I'd said to myself and kicked my legs out from under me. So I stayed down.
"Grace, baby. Daddy knew how much you loved him. And he knew when you didn't want him in your room you were being a preteen girl with hormones. None of that had anything to do with this. And I had no idea you heard us fighting about money or anything else. I'm so sorry." Maggie sucked in a ragged breath. "But this is not your fault. I don't know how many times I can tell you this, but you were perfect. You are perfect."
"I just don't understand. I don't understand if I was so perfect how he could leave us then. How he could leave me. I mean he fought with you all the time. So maybe it was your fault. But why did he have to leave me?"
Maggie gasped and so did Ms. Winters.
All of the air in my lungs rushed out like Luke had sucker punched me. Only he hadn't. Grace's hateful words had. I knew she was hurting and lashing out, but I never thought she'd turn on her mom.
Mrs. Gritzan kept her cool. "Grace, this isn't about placing blame. Your mom is doing her very best to try to understand what happened just like you are. This is just as much a shock to her as it is you. Instead of finding reasons to punish each other, maybe look for reasons to hold on to each other. You both have suffered a great loss. Support from someone you love is the most important thing when it comes to healing."
Grace folded her arms across her stomach as if she was protecting herself from all the hurt and the pain I'd caused. Pain she was placing on people who didn't deserve it.
"There's someone Mrs. G wants us to go talk to together, honey. I think it would be good for both of us." Maggie said.
"Whatever."
She was shutting down. I'd watched Grace do it to me enough over the years to know they weren't going to get much more out of her. All I knew was I hated how far the reach went. How deep the pain was rooted and how right Luke had been all along.
17
We were in my living room watching Maggie pace back and forth across the floor. She was biting her thumbnail the way she always did when there was about to be a confrontation she was nervous about. I glanced at the clock and back at her. Three thirteen. The middle school bus was going to be home any minute. Which meant she was worried about seeing Grace after the phone call earlier in the day.
I wasn't sure how I felt about it. All I knew was she was left to deal with the mess and all the turmoil on her own. How had I been so stupid to think none of this would happen in the aftermath? In my grief, in my desperation, all I could think about was wanting it to end. I needed it all to stop. But this was only the beginning for them. This
was a floodgate that had been broken wide open and the hinges were sheared off.
Brakes squealed out front as her bus came to a stop as did Maggie's pacing. She froze in place, her eyes wide in anticipation. The front door opened and slammed. The sound of two shoes being kicked off, thudded against the wall near the door and then thumped to the hardwood floor. "How could you do that to me?" Grace screamed.
"You need to lower your voice, first of all. And what exactly did I do, Grace?" Maggie asked in a neutral tone. If Grace would have looked carefully, she would have seen Maggie's body was betraying her voice. Her hands were curled into tight fists and her posture rigid.
Grace stomped forward and thrust her finger at her mother's chest. "How could you talk to my school about me like I'm some kind of charity case? You betrayed me to them! I wrote that stuff in private and you guys just call each other and laugh it up? I've never been so embarrassed in my life! There are these things called boundaries, Mom. Look it up!"
Maggie's nostrils flared as she blew out her cheeks in annoyance. It was her go-to facial expression for when she was ready to lose it. "Listen here, young lady. You are eleven years old. I'm doing my best to give you room to grieve, but you will not talk to me that way, do you understand me? You wrote things in your journal at school and your teachers called me. And you know what? I'm glad they did. I need to know what's going on with you. I am your mother and no matter how hard you push away from me, I'm going to hold on. And nothing you do will change that."
"Maybe I don't want you to. Maybe if you hadn't been holding on to dad so much he wouldn't have killed himself."
Maggie reared back like she'd just been slapped. My mouth fell open, not believing the hateful words that had just come out of our daughter's mouth.
"You know, there's this thing called hindsight. You don't have it right now. Because you're young. And you're hurting. And they always say the person you turn on and hurt the most is the person you feel the safest with. One day, you will have hindsight about all of this. One day you will know that I have always been here for you. I thought we could have a rational conversation about this, but I realize that is not going to happen. So I'm going to tell you a couple of things and then, I'm done with this conversation. Dinner will be ready in a little bit and tomorrow after school, you're going to see a therapist your guidance counselor recommended."
Grace's face contorted into a menacing glare. Her brown eyes narrowed into tiny slits. "No, I'm not. I'm not doing anything."
Maggie pushed her hair off her face and sighed. "You are and you will. This isn't up for debate. Until we can get some kind of traction under our feet and a new semblance of normal we're going. End of story."
Stomps echoed off the floor and the hallway as Grace made a show of her feelings. "I hate you!" she yelled before she slammed the door.
"I love you too!" Maggie yelled back before she fell forward on the countertop and heaved a heavy sob. "Just love them harder right, God? That's what you say? Even when they're unlovable? Love them harder? I hope you found peace, Jason. And all of this was worth it."
Luke nudged my shoulder with his. "Was it worth it?"
My shoulders shook with silent sobs of my own. "Not even a little."
18
Grace was led down the stairwell by a willowy woman. Long dirty-blond hair pulled into a braid swung over her shoulder as she descended.
"Here we are, Grace. Come on in." She gestured to the room.
The colorful space held a warmth, making the inhabitants feel welcome as soon as they stepped inside.
The door shut with a soft click behind us. Two cream-colored club chairs sat opposite a brown leather love seat with a funky yellow coffee table separating them.
"Go ahead and sit anywhere you'd like. I'll grab a couple of things, and then we will get started, okay?"
Grace settled into the chair farthest away from the smallish desk tucked into the far corner of the room. Covered in a colorful array of folders, it would have been what I would have considered organized chaos. The woman grabbed what she needed—one of those colorful folders, a clipboard—and crossed to my daughter.
Luke and I exchanged a glance, knowing exactly what this was and why we were here without the need to speak a word.
"As I told both you and your mom, I am Dr. Hannah Abbot, but most of my patients just call me Hannah. It makes everyone more comfortable. I want you to know this is a safe space, and your mom and teachers thought it would be a good idea if we talked for a bit. I know this can be kind of weird at first. How do you feel about puzzles?"
The haze that had settled over Grace the last few days lifted a smidge. "I don't hate them."
I hoped Hannah was fluent in preteen and translated it to mean she loved them. We had puzzles all over the house.
Hannah clapped one big clap. "Great, why don't you pick one out for us to work on while we chat?"
The far wall had floor-to-ceiling shelves of puzzles, games, and toys. A puppet theater sat beside it, along with things I would have never thought were used for therapy. Grace grabbed a box and set it down carefully between them on the yellow table.
"Ah, I see you picked the Transformers one. Good Choice."
A soft sniffle filled the space as Grace wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. "They were my dad's favorite."
"Why don't you tell me about him?" Hannah prompted and pulled the top off the puzzle box and dumped the pieces onto the table.
Luke cleared his throat and slid back onto the desk. I should have known the second he unbuttoned his suit jacket, he was in it for the long haul.
"He's dead."
The blunt way in which Grace delivered that statement pulled the air from my lungs and from the room. It seemed to take Hannah a moment to recover as she flipped puzzle pieces over and pushed them toward Grace.
"I'm very sorry for your loss. I can't imagine how you're feeling right now."
"I don't know. I'm so sad and so mad at the same time. And that doesn't feel right."
She was talking. This was a good thing. Right? I didn't feel right, being in here. Listening to her innermost thoughts. It felt like intrusion.
"You're allowed to feel more than one emotion at a time. You are entitled to your emotions, Grace, and right now, I am sure you are going to feel a lot of them, and maybe more than one at a time. Which may be confusing."
Grace had a good pile of the edge pieces going and started trying to fit them together with the help of Hannah. "Yeah, but is it possible to love and hate someone at the same time?"
"Those are both very strong emotions."
And I deserved that. For her to hate me. Maybe I didn't deserve her love, but I could see why she'd hate me.
"Well I hate my mom right now. If she'd done more. If she didn't fight with him all the time. If she could have made him happy, he would have stayed. I know it. He could have stayed for me."
Hannah's poker face was strong. She didn't so much as flinch. I didn't have that kind of inner strength. My mouth was agape in the horror and shock, which I felt to my deepest depths. Maggie did nothing wrong. Why Grace was taking this out on her, was beyond me. If she was going to be angry at someone, it should be me. This entire situation was wrong.
"Anger is a very strong emotion, and I can understand why maybe you would feel that way. In no way am I trying to diminish your feelings or tell you how you feel is wrong, okay?"
Grace nodded but said nothing as she worked the corner of the puzzle closest to her.
"Do you think maybe you're not really angry at your mom?"
"What do you mean? All of this is her fault."
"That's the thing. She isn't to blame. You aren't to blame. When something tragic happens, people typically look for someone or something to blame to help them in their grief. Your dad is no longer here, so the next closest person to you is your mom. Sometimes the people we hurt the most are the ones who are closest to us."
"So she was trying to hurt me?"
Hannah reac
hed out to still Grace's hands. "Look at me for a moment. She was not trying to hurt you. Your dad was not trying to hurt you. Your dad was hurting, and he made a decision that had a direct impact on all of your lives. What I meant by we hurt the ones who are closest to us is, maybe you aren't really angry at your mom at all, but because you are the closest to her, you are lashing out at her. She is grieving the loss of your dad the same as you."
Grace went back to the puzzle. "But all they did was fight. Maybe if they'd gotten along better, he wouldn't have done it. Or if she was nicer to him, he would have stayed. Why couldn't they have just gotten divorced like everyone else? Why'd she have to make him kill himself?"
All the air left my lungs in a whoosh. Was that what she really thought? Her mom was the cause? Oh, Grace.
"Sometimes parents fight. That doesn't mean your mom is the reason your dad committed suicide. Has anyone ever talked to you about mental health before?"
She shrugged. "They have at school before when they talk about bullying. Is that the depression stuff?"
"It's a part of it. Your dad had a lot going on that not a lot of people knew about. Your mom did her best to get him the help he needed. And she is doing her best to do everything she can for you too."
"I guess."
"What were some of your favorite things to do with your dad?"
Her face twisted into a grimace. "We used to go get ice cream together on Tuesdays after school. But that's ruined now. For so many reasons."
"What do you mean by that?" Hannah tilted her head to the side.
My interest was piqued by her last comment as well.
"The truck…"
"The truck?"
The Suicide King Page 8