“Get Doctor Harris in here. Right now!” Neil barked, throwing back the thin hospital blanket as though he would get out of bed.
“Lay back down! You’re hooked up to a bunch of shit. Do you want them to come in and put you in restraints?”
He glared at me and rested against the raised head of the cart, again. “Sophie, you are going to go out there and tell Doctor Harris that you’ve changed your mind, and you want me released, do you understand me?” Neil ordered.
But this wasn’t a scene, and I didn’t have to obey him. “No. This is happening, Neil.”
“So help me, Sophie, I will call my lawyer, and I will fight this,” he threatened.
“Go ahead. But you’re a danger to yourself. They’re still going to admit you.” Was that the right word for it? Admit? Or commit? I hated the sound of the second choice. It seemed final.
“God damn it, Sophie!” he shouted, and I took a step back. “If you do this, we are over, do you understand? I’ll file for divorce in the morning!”
Those words should have shattered my heart, but we’d been through so much this year that there was nothing left to break. It was already ground to dust. “Fine. I’d rather you leave me and be alive than stay with me and kill yourself.”
He froze. Tears rose in his eyes as he realized how ineffective his gambit had been.
“I love you, Neil. More than anything in this world. But I haven’t been good to you. I’ve let this go on for way too long, when I should have intervened. This is the only way I can help you. Be angry with me. Divorce me. But I’m not going to let you kill yourself.”
I leaned down. I couldn’t leave this room without touching him one last time, especially if he did plan on going through with his divorce threat. I didn’t think he was going to, and I didn’t know if he could make binding legal decisions while he was in a mental health facility against his will. But I had to kiss his forehead, to see if I could somehow feel his love lingering on his skin.
His hand came up to sink into my hair, and he pressed his forehead against mine. A rasping sob shook his body. “I’m sorry. Oh god, Sophie, I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” I murmured, cradling him to me.
“Let me come home,” he pleaded. “Please, Sophie. I’m begging you.”
“I can’t.” I sniffed, hoping to hold back more tears. “I love you too much. You can call me, okay? Any time that you can. And I’ll visit you.”
“No, no,” he said as I straightened, and he caught my hand. “Please don’t leave me here.”
“I have to.” I squeezed his fingers, then pulled free. He let me go and covered his face with his hands.
“Don’t go,” he begged again as I shut the door.
I only got a few steps before my exhaustion and my emotions got the better of me. My knees gave out, but Mom was there to catch me.
“Come on, honey,” she soothed, steering me away from the room. “Tony’s waiting with the car.”
How many times had I left a hospital crying over Neil? How many more times could I take?
CHAPTER TEN
The next afternoon, I woke up to an entirely different life.
I was sick of doing that.
Rolling onto Neil’s side of the bed, I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of his cologne on his pillow. Even though the sheets were cold and the room was silent, I pretended he was just in the shower. I imagined him coming out of the bathroom, toweling off on his way to the closet to get dressed. He would make some crack about me still being asleep, and I would roll my eyes. Maybe I would get him to get back under the covers, or join me for a second shower.
I reached between my legs and felt where he’d so recently been inside me, after so long. He’d meant for it to be the last time. If I hadn’t found that note, maybe it would have been. The doctor had said that overdosing on Valium wasn’t often fatal. But Neil had intended for it to be.
He’d intended to die in our bed, lying beside me. He hadn’t cared that I would wake up beside his body.
Fuck Neil.
I sat up, my skin crawling at the touch of the sheets that now felt like a corpse’s shroud. I wasn’t angry. I was enraged. I buried my face in my pillow and screamed as hard and loud as I could, then came up for air and did it again.
This wasn’t fair. I was losing everyone I cared about. Emma. Michael. Now, Neil? My family, the one I’d only just gotten, was slowly being taken from me, and I wasn’t getting a say in it at all. Worse, I couldn’t opt out of the pain the way Neil had. I didn’t want to, but even if I did, it would have been impossible. Olivia needed me, and there was no way I could jump out of her life like that.
For a long time, I’d gone along with people who said that suicide wasn’t about being selfish, but it was damned hard to see it that way when your husband was willing to strand you forever in a life you’d never wanted in the first place.
That thought made me ill. Talk about selfish, my conscience scolded me. But it was the truth, wasn’t it? If I’d wanted to be a single mom, I’d certainly had my chance three years ago. I hadn’t chosen motherhood, and now, it had chosen me. No matter how much I loved Olivia, nothing could change the past.
Maybe that was why he tried to kill himself. I sat up, wiping my sweaty hair from my face. Oh god, had that been it? He felt guilty over so many things that he couldn’t change, no matter how often I told him not to. Had he thought he’d doomed me to a life I didn’t want? That was ridiculous, and I’d told him so. But Neil wasn’t just a control freak. He was the special kind of control freak who can’t trust anybody to tell him the truth about their feelings. He always doubted me, even when I reassured him.
The longer I thought about it, the more every second of my life with Neil began to feel like a lie. I blamed myself for not seeing the truth of how sick he was. I blamed him for hiding it from me. The guilt was unending, and so consuming that for a few minutes I forgot where I was.
Maybe I was losing my mind, too.
I thought of Neil pleading with me the night before, asking me not to leave him, and my hands clenched to fists. He wanted me not to leave him? What about me? He hadn’t asked me how I would feel if he left.
I checked my messages. Holli, Mom, Deja… Ugh, I would have to call people and explain this to them—if some nosy asshole neighbor hadn’t called the news. Then again, if the media reported on every billionaire suicide attempt, there probably wouldn’t be room to report anything else. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. How did I know what to share? Maybe Neil wouldn’t want everyone and their brother to hear that he’d tried to off himself.
So, I ignored the phone and went about my day as I normally would. I gave Olivia her bottle and sent her off to playgroup with Mariposa. Julia made me lunch, but I didn’t eat it. I told her Neil was in the hospital but didn’t say why.
Eventually they’ll know, I told myself as I stared at the bean and asparagus salad I couldn’t eat. They’ll all know you weren’t enough to live for.
Somehow, I could rationalize that Neil loved Olivia, that she was “enough” to make Neil want to stay, but I couldn’t accept it of myself. I liked to think of myself as a pretty modern, well-informed adult, with a clear understanding of what suicide was and wasn’t. But, when I had to apply it to my own family, all I could do was blame myself and absolve everyone else.
At least, some of the time. Because, wow, I did not feel the same set of emotions all day. I swung between anger at myself—for not recognizing the signs, for not putting a lock on the medicine cabinet the second Emma died—to anger at Neil, for putting me in this position, for not consulting me in this plan, to outright hating Emma.
With Neil’s one stupid choice, I rocketed into the anger stage of grief. I probably broke some land speed record for emotional whiplash. The night before, I’d been all love and hope and memory, and now, I was just pissed. How dare Emma die and leave me to cope with her grieving father? How dare her death almost kill Neil?
While Olivia was down for
her afternoon nap, I went back to Neil’s study. The letter he’d written me lay on the floor where I’d dropped it. I didn’t reread it. Instead, I went to his desk and looked at the manila folders stacked on the blotter.
One of them was labelled “insurance”. Another, “Internet passwords and auto-renewing subscription services”. There was one with a sticky note on the front that read, “Give to Valerie—Elwood & Stern concerns”, and another that simply said, “Will”.
I hated to even look at it, but sick curiosity drove me to it. I skimmed through the paperwork and found that I would have been the beneficiary of all of our bank accounts, investment accounts, and stock. His shares of Elwood & Stern also went to me, while his shares in his father’s company reverted to his siblings to be split among them. All of the houses went to me, including the Venetian apartment I’d never seen. He’d set up a trust fund for Olivia, and another to ensure the continuation of the rape crisis center.
There was no mention of Emma, which meant he’d worked on this after her death.
It would have taken weeks. All that time, he’d hid his intentions from me. When had he started planning?
I opened the top drawer of his desk. Since Dr. Harris had given me no indication when Neil might come home, I was going to search the house from top to bottom looking for any hidden pills or alcohol.
Because Neil was Neil, everything in the top drawer was a mess. At least his study was tidy. In our London house, his office had been a nightmare. I never understood how he could be so picky about having everything else in his life organized, but office supplies and paperwork were somehow beyond him.
I pushed through the papers and check refills that were down to duplicates, the random assorted batteries and paperclips, and found nothing resembling drugs or a flask. I moved on to the bookshelves and seriously considered opening every book to see if he’d hollowed one out.
I moved a copy of a book called Diaries of Alan Clark and out fell two small plastic bags about as long as my thumb and compressed by the weight of the books around it. Coke. Great. That would explain Neil’s peppy, “up” attitude lately. I picked up the bags and made sure none had spilled on the floor.
Then, I opened one, scooped a teensy bit under my fingernail, and did a quick bump.
I didn’t know why I did it. I’d tried coke at a party once, and all it did was give me a runny nose and a headache I couldn’t sleep off because I couldn’t sleep, at all. I sealed the bag, slipped them both back into their hiding spot, and went to the bathroom to wash my hands.
Okay. You have to make a plan, I told myself as I watched my pupils dilate in the mirror. Damn it, Sophie, why did you do that? You can’t function on drugs. What if Olivia needs something?
Remembering that Mariposa was home, so at least one responsible adult was around, calmed me back down as quickly as I’d gotten agitated.
Okay. I could do this.
First, I texted Mariposa at what could only be described as the speed of light and told her I wouldn’t be taking care of Olivia that night. The message was riddled with errors, but she would understand it. I sounded like a total one-percenter douche mom just passing her kid off, but this was important, too. Then, I called Holli.
“Oh, my god, where have you been, I’ve been texting you and calling you—”
“I did some coke, and I totally cannot handle my shit,” I blurted, pacing back and forth in the guest bathroom.
“Uh…”
“This is serious, Holli! Something bad happened. Neil…” I blinked, rolling my eyes up at the ceiling in the hopes of keeping my tears from falling down my face. I didn’t need to; my eyes were dry as fuck from my Tony Montana impression.
“What happened to Neil?” she asked, her tone switching from flippant to almost panicked. “Is he, like, overdosing again? Are you overdosing?”
“No, no. I just found his drugs, I found some cocaine, and I snorted a little bit.”
“What? Why?” she shrieked.
“Because I’m freaking out! Neil went to the hospital last night because he tried to kill himself, and now, he’s in a fucking mental hospital or something… I don’t know what they call it—”
“Sophie, slow down! This is why I told you to stick to grass. Jesus Christ!” She sighed heavily. “Any chance of getting an air lift out there?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I emphatically nodded along with the words. “Absolutely. But, no! You have a show tonight.”
“I do, but I can…” she began reluctantly. Torn between her work and her family. I could so relate to that conflict.
“No, never mind. I know who to call.” I dragged my hair back, raking my hands through it. “I’ll be okay, I’m just freaking out over this. But I have a plan, now.”
“Okay…” she replied uncertainly. “Flush the cocaine down the toilet, okay? The last thing you need is to aid your stress-induced heart attack along.”
“Right. Thank you. I’ll check back in with you tomorrow, okay?” I didn’t want to promise tonight, because after this, I was going to sleep forever.
I hung up and looked up a contact so seldom used, I worried that she wouldn’t be there.
“How can I help you, Sophie?”
These days, Valerie didn’t sound as exasperated every single time she spoke to me. That might have been because she feared my dislike of her would keep her from her grandchild. Which made me feel icky, but I would take it.
“Neil did it again,” I blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“Overdosed. Neil overdosed, again.” Those words brought me back down, a little. My face was still numb, though. “This time, it was on purpose.”
“My god,” she breathed on the other end of the line.
“It’s bad. It’s really, really bad, and…” How did I phrase this without sounding like I was asking for an impossible favor? “I think he has drugs stashed around the house. Actually, I know he does. I found some coke in the bookcase—”
“I can tell,” she said dryly.
I ignored her and intentionally fought to lower my speed. “You’re the only person I know of who knows he has this…tendency and won’t flip out about all this. You’re the only calm person I know, right now. And I need someone to help me look around the house.”
“Is he home now?” she asked, her concern spiking.
“No, he’s going to a mental health place upstate. But he’s going on an involuntary hold, so I don’t know when he’ll come back. I just want to get this done.”
“I’m at work, Sophie–” She halted with a sigh. “All right. Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You don’t think he’ll have put anything where Olivia could get it?”
“No, I don’t think that’s a concern. At all.” I put emphasis on the last words.
“All right. I’ll be there before supper time.”
“Thank you. Thank you, thank you.”
After I hung up, I fished the book off the shelf again and found the little packets. I took them to the guest bathroom, ran water in the sink, and not only shook the contents down the drain, but rinsed the bags out before throwing them in the trash.
While I did it, I tried to remember all the drugs Neil had confessed to having used over the years. I hoped I wouldn’t find heroin, and I doubted I would find meth—it wasn’t exactly a big trend among Long Island billionaires—there was every chance I would find pills or booze or more coke.
If I found any weed, I was keeping it.
My earlier idea of inspecting every book on the shelf seemed a lot less daunting now. I took each one out and flipped through the pages. I checked under dust covers and shook series out of boxed sets. When I was done, I neatly stacked them with the others, until the room became a little Stonehenge of hardbacks.
He was going to put every one of them back when he got home.
After the study, I went through our bedroom. I screwed off the base of his bedside lamp like we were in a prison movie. I lifted every watch from their glass-enclosed shel
ves and checked all of his shoes. Because I was feeling particularly angry, I forced my whole hand into the damn things, not caring if I stretched the leather.
He’d tried to leave me. Sure, he hadn’t tried to run off with another woman, but I still felt betrayed. I became a low-level version of Angela Basset in Waiting To Exhale, sorely tempted to pile all of Neil’s expensive suits into one of his cherished super cars and light it all up.
But, while the fantasy was momentarily satisfying, it was replaced by guilt. Neil wasn’t being selfish, he was being sick. How could I hold that against him? Why would I want to punish him? He was already going to feel crushing remorse, once he got better.
Wow, that was going to be a wild series of conversations.
When Valerie arrived, I was just about to go through the den. She joined me and didn’t ask many questions about Neil’s hospitalization as we worked.
“Sophie, you don’t really think he’s hiding drugs in lamps?” she asked, her voice tired.
She was tired? She wasn’t the one crashing from the first upper she’d had since college. “He hid some in a book. So, yeah, I’m going full Addams Family vault here.”
Valerie felt along the seat cushion of the leather recliner. “Aha!” she declared, triumphant as she held a flask aloft.
I don’t know what my face looked like, but Valerie sure reacted to it.
“Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat as she unscrewed the top. She sniffed it. “Okay, that is scotch. That is… Ooh, that’s good scotch.” She tossed back a drink of it, and I laughed with shock.
“Valerie!” I crossed the room to take the flask from her hand. “What is this, some sick Easter-egg hunt thing where we find all of Neil’s substance abuse hotspots and do all his drugs?”
But I took a drink, too.
Her lips canted in a smirk. “Why not? You did.”
So far, I really had been on a weird little “get high” scavenger hunt. I’d snorted the coke in the library, now I was swilling scotch in the den. No, this wasn’t a scavenger hunt. It was like the Wolf of Wall Street version of the Clue! board game.
The Baby (The Boss #5) Page 17