All the Things We Never Knew

by Sheila Hamilton

  Diedra’s face was puffy and blotchy from crying. “Would you like to look for him?” she asked me.

  We stood on her porch. I was at least a foot taller than she. Her property was thick with trees and lush fields and acres of places to hide. I tried to think like David might. “Did you two ever walk together?”

  She nodded, pointing to the left. “Yes. This way.”

  We walked down the gravel driveway, past his truck, another five hundred yards or so to an open meadow, with long grasses and oversized sunflowers slowly dying after a long summer run. “He told me you were in an open marriage,” she blurted. “That you’d both decided to stay together for Sophie, but you weren’t together any longer.” I bit my tongue. There was enough truth in that version that I could imagine David promoting it. None of it mattered anymore—somehow I knew he was gone. I could feel loss as thick and heavy as each breath I took.

  I was out of my own body, shivering from the shock of what I believed. I stepped over a log. I watched myself make this awkward walk with a woman I didn’t know and listened to her talk about a man I thought I knew so well but realized I barely understood. I stepped over another log and then under a rusty barbed-wired fence. What would we do if we found him? I couldn’t come up with a plan. We continued walking, confused, shocked—two strangers who had once fallen for the same man.

  Into the gulley. Up again, down again, through another barbed-wire fence into another meadow. This land went on forever, thousands of acres of wilderness. He could be anywhere.

  “He was just so lonely,” Diedra said. “He told me how much he loved you. That he’d screwed it up. That he couldn’t start over. He’d done too much damage.”

  I turned to look at her but didn’t speak. Over her shoulder, a view of the Columbia Gorge opened up that took my breath. The river cut through the gorge with a line so jagged and perfect only nature could have made it. The shadows cast down from the deep canyons were vast. There were at least six different shades of green, gold, and red before me. I imagined David looking out at this view, his arms folded across his chest, at rest.

  “I’m glad he found you, then,” I said. “I’m glad he found this place.”

  Her face softened, some of the grief released or at least tempered. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t know why you are being so nice to me.”

  “Because you helped him,” I said. “Can you show me where he was that first night?”

  We walked to the abandoned home where the police had found David’s bloodstains the night he was admitted to the hospital. It was a 1920s house, long abandoned. Vandals had spray-painted the side of the home and chopped away portions of the wood exterior.

  I pulled back yellow crime scene tape and squeezed myself through the broken door to get inside. It was dark and dank; the sour smell of methamphetamine permeated the wood walls.

  The home was destroyed; it now looked more like a barn, or a clubhouse for wayward bikers. I imagined the drunken demolition parties people had thrown here. The dirty floor was littered with bottles and broken glass.

  “This is where he tried to cut his wrists,” she said, pointing to dried blood on the dirt floor. There was barely enough light to see. A white wooden chair—the chair where David had sat alone with a rusty razor blade—looked like a bad prop for a horror movie. I imagined him alone that night, sawing away at himself with another dirty, rusted razor blade—angry at his own incompetence for not being able to get the job done, disgusted by himself and his surroundings, all the while reveling in the dark drama.

  My eyes stung from the smell and my tears, and I could not breathe in this sickness anymore.

  I ran as fast as I could out the door, past the crime scene tape, out past the long yard that had been abandoned years earlier. I stood in the center of the road looking back at this stranger of a woman walking calmly toward me. I did not know if I would ever wake up from this horrible nightmare. “I’m going for help,” I said. “I don’t care what Alice says. We’ve got to find him. We’ve got to get help.”

  Alice stayed with Diedra. I jumped in my car and drove as fast as I could toward Portland. And I called Pat Kelly, a detective I’d known for years.

  THE CONTINUUM OF MENTAL HEALTH

  Think back on your own mental health history. Have you experienced a divorce, the death of a loved one, a financial setback such as the loss of a job? Have you moved several times or experienced physical disability? All of these stressors can have a significant impact on mental health. We may move from feeling quite optimistic and forward thinking to a period in our lives when we are anxiety ridden, unable to concentrate, and less willing to spend time with friends and family.

  A friend asked me the other day, “Do you think anyone can get a mental illness?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “In the same way anyone can get liver disease from drinking too much.” Our brains are a living organ, which need to be cared for just like our hearts, our kidneys, and our livers. Providing early education on keeping our brains healthy is one of the most important steps we can take in acknowledging the continuum of mental health. As one doctor told me, “Putting the head back on the body where it belongs.”

  In 2013, Tom Insel, the director of the National Institute for Mental Health, told a TED audience, “Thanks to early detection, there are 63 percent fewer deaths from heart disease than there were just a few decades go. Could we do the same for depression and schizophrenia? The first step in this new avenue of research is a crucial reframing for us to stop thinking about mental disorders and start understanding them as brain disorders.”

  Just as we all fall somewhere along the heart health continuum, so do we fall on the mental health continuum. The promising recognition of that reality allows this question: “How is my own brain health, and where am I along the continuum?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Pat Kelly was a middle-aged Portland police officer who had risen through the ranks of his division to become commander of the Sex Crimes Task Force.

  We’d met when I was a reporter for the local television station. He’d helped me on several stories, giving me the inside scoop on which ones would break big and which would fizzle.

  Pat guided me through the maze of politics at the “cop shop” and chatted with me whenever our paths crossed, at parades or crime scenes. But the bulk of our relationship had been spent on the phone with one another, to talk news and city gossip, and later to talk about our families and friends. I supposed we were kindred souls, and both of us found comfort in knowing we cared about one another.

  His heart was almost too tender for his current job: he investigated the worst kind of crimes against children. Sometimes after a particularly rough case, he would call me from his police car and say, “I just needed to hear your cheery voice.”

  My cell signal came in as soon as I reached the I-84 freeway. Pat answered the phone on the first ring. “Well, hello, you!”

  “Pat, I need your help,” I said. I pulled to the side of the road and recounted everything I knew, from the beginning of the day to the abandoned truck to the coordinates of Deidre’s cabin. I told him why David’s mother didn’t want a search team involved—because she feared that he would be found and returned to the psychiatric hospital. I shared with him my intuition that David had taken his own life.

  “Oh, Sheila,” he said softly. “You may be right. But, right now, we just don’t know. He may still be out there.” He paused. “We’ve got to get a search team mobilized.” His tone changed from personal to professional. “Go home. There’s nothing you can do there now. Be with Sophie. I will call you as soon as I get up there.”

  I was sitting in the dark in my own living room when he called back with an update. The cell phone startled me.

  “How are you?” he said, and then he responded to his own question. “Wait, I know the answer.”

  “Hi, Pat.” My voice sounded exhausted. “Thanks for your call. Any news?”

  “I think we’ve worked out a
compromise that will work for David’s mother,” he said. “We need to start small so that she doesn’t get more upset. The search is not large enough to alert the TV assignment editors.”

  “Thank you, Pat.” I held the phone close to my ear, looking out at the darkness and loneliness of the home I’d always loved so much before this. The master bedroom television blared jarring sounds of SpongeBob SquarePants. Sophie was sitting in front of the TV in her pink pajamas, too confused to speak, her legs curled up around her for comfort. Max and Star huddled close to her.

  Pat said what I’d already been thinking. “Sheila, you need to make sure you and Sophie are safe. We really have to operate as if he’s still alive.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  “And he’s got the gun,” Pat said.

  Of course he had the gun. David had known where it was all along. I could not comprehend how someone who was mentally ill could be so calculating in planning his own death. He’d premeditated, plotted, and executed his escape. The thought chilled me to the bone.

  Pat’s voice brought me back to reality. “Do you have anywhere else you can stay?”

  Colin tucked fresh new sheets on a guest bed he’d pulled into his daughter’s bedroom. He folded hospital-style corners, pulled two comforters from plastic coverings, and finished making the bed for Sophie. He fluffed new pillows, smoothed the wrinkles on the bedspread, and said, “Will this be okay, Sophie?”

  She looked exhausted, her hands still holding tight to her backpack. We’d packed her in a rush, grabbing a toothbrush and toothpaste, two pairs of jeans, hoodies, and a couple of her favorite stuffed animals, Curly and Bear.

  She nodded and then asked, “Mama, can you sleep with me?”

  “Of course I will, love. Absolutely.” I looked at Colin, who was so eager to help, and blew him a silent kiss. “Thank you.”

  As Sophie and I lay in the darkness, looking out on an unfamiliar street below, I heard Colin locking the doors and setting the alarm.

  Before he turned out all the lights, he came back in and planted kisses on both of our cheeks. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, hugging me first, then Sophie.

  I wondered if Sophie would resist, push away, but I guess she needed that comfort too. She held on to the hug the longest, then smoothed the blanket of all its wrinkles. Colin’s unconditional love of Sophie in those first days of crisis solidified my feelings for him. I’d been longing for a partner, but I hadn’t realized how much I’d also missed seeing Sophie cared for by someone who was stable and compassionate.

  There were other people who might have put us up for a night—friends with large homes whose offers of help were genuine—but I feared this wouldn’t be for a night or two. I listened to Colin performing his nightly rituals before going to bed. The water ran as he brushed his teeth. I could hear drawers opening and closing. He was probably flossing, taking his vitamins. Even in a crisis, Colin was measured and under control. Somehow, knowing that made me feel better that night. I closed my eyes with my arms around Sophie, holding her tight until her breathing evened out and I could relax. My mind raced over the day’s events, again and again, like a car on a track. It was like watching a movie, someone else’s story, someone else’s nightmare.

  Colin woke me up by gently kissing me on the forehead. He was already showered, on his way to meet his daughters at their school, a block away. “Good morning, beautiful,” he whispered, careful not to wake Sophie.

  He had custody of his girls two weeks a month, but every day he walked to school to tell them good morning, and many days, he rushed back from the office to meet the girls for lunch. His hair was combed, his face shone brightly, and he wore a black Italian suit with a crisp white shirt. “There’s cereal or pancakes for breakfast,” he said hurriedly, kissing me again before he turned to leave.

  “Did I dream it?” I asked, already knowing the answer but unable to accept my reality.

  “No, baby. No.” He kneeled down beside the bed. “Will you be okay?”

  Colin’s tenderness swept over me, and I wept. In a few short months, he’d shown me so much of his heart, cared for me, and made me feel loved. Only in the consistency of Colin’s openness and generosity could I compare how much David and I had missed together.

  The crushing sensation in my chest reminded me that there would be countless days of waking up like this: confused, traumatized, unbelieving. I would wake up and remember David’s empty, abandoned truck, the keys in the ignition, those photos on the passenger seat underneath his coat as if to say, I don’t need these anymore. The tears that ran down my cheeks weren’t only for me; they were also for Sophie, her loss and her love. Gone.

  I tiptoed downstairs to phone my boss, Dale, and tell him what had happened. His family had suffered an enormous blow from the suicide of their son, and he was more than understanding. His tone on the phone was of a man who had been there before. We had grieved as a family for Dale’s loss just three months earlier. Now this. “Take as much time as you need,” he said, and I knew he meant it.

  We both lingered on the phone in silence, unsure of what to say to one another until I offered a simple, “Thanks, Dale. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  I hurried back upstairs so I would be with Sophie when it first hit her that her dad was gone. She woke suddenly, her green eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. “Mommy,” she said, “I didn’t even tell him goodbye. He didn’t say goodbye to me.” Her heart-shaped lips quivered, reminding me again of David. Large tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. She was breaking inside.

  I cuddled in close to her and held her tight. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  “Will they find him?” she cried, speaking of the searchers. I hadn’t told her about the search, but she must have eavesdropped on every word.

  “I hope so, sweetheart. I hope so.”

  Outside, SUVs and station wagons pulled up in front of Colin’s gracious home. Moms and dads got out and walked their kids the rest of the way to school. The children shouted to one another, happy to be in the streets on such a sunny fall day. The bell would ring soon; life would go on without us.

  “Am I going to school today?” Sophie asked.

  “That’s up to you, sweetheart. I want you to do what you want to do.”

  “Maybe not today. But maybe tomorrow.”

  “Whatever you decide,” I said, kissing her on her forehead, “that’s what we’ll do. Can you eat something?”

  She shook her head no.

  “What if we make waffles—at home?”

  Sophie sat up. Her eyes were swollen, heartbreak all over her face. “I want to see Star and Max.”

  “You’re right,” I told her. “I miss them too. What do you say we go take them on a long walk?”

  We made the bed as neatly as Colin would, packed up our things, and headed home.

  No one was home when we arrived. Sophie ran up the stairs, happy to be in familiar surroundings. I hesitated, climbing the steps.

  The reminders of David were everywhere. The pool where he floated on an air mattress, reading another book. The fridge where he pulled out big slabs of cheese and thinly sliced salami for sandwiches with a cold beer. Even the simple things seemed charged with his presence—the bathroom where he brushed his teeth in the morning, the outlet where he plugged in his phone to recharge. He was everywhere.

  I closed the door to the den and his bedroom, not able to bear the smell of his shirts inside, or the mud that was still on his oldest, most worn work boots. I could not bear any of it, because I felt so sure he was gone.

  My family came.

  A day later, my sister sat cross-legged on my basement floor, amid garbage bags full of the envelopes David had hidden. She moved efficiently, her sharp mind working like a detective, sorting envelopes in terms of urgency and importance. She’d dropped her practice for me, flying to Portland to help me navigate the legal and financial mess.

  “This pile is for invoices,”
she said with her reading glasses low on her nose. “This pile is for claims that needed your attention yesterday.” She pointed to a third pile with her finger. “And this pile is for legal action already under way against David.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Before it was just chaos—now it’s really scary.”

  Diane was two years older than I, and a hundred years wiser; she’d devoted her life to Buddhism and was now a priest. Her body looked like mine, lithe with good lines and sharp, intelligent eyes. Her cheeks were prominent, and her chin line was still smooth and radiant. She was growing her hair out after shaving it bald for her ordainment; it was a show of commitment to her holy life. I posted a sign on the fridge that said, “The angel is in,” in her honor.

  My mother was the next family member to arrive. As soon as she unpacked, she went to work folding laundry. Each new day passed with no news about David; Mom matched socks. Each day the search dogs sniffed and howled and followed bad leads; she folded T-shirts. Every tiny piece of Sophie’s underwear was folded and placed back in her drawers. The house gleamed again.

  Alice and my mother were very different people. Where my mother was emotional and wounded by my obvious pain, Alice seemed to kick into overdrive, cooking delicious meals from organic ingredients. It was like the frontier, when women would take over as the men were killed off, one by one. But I couldn’t function in the house. Once my place of refuge, now my home was a place where I knocked from room to room without purpose. I’d get up to make a sandwich and find myself staring at David’s bookshelf. I’d sit to try to answer email and stare at photographs of Sophie and David. I faced David’s mother at every turn and felt in her combination of grief and anger my own huge failings. It had been nine days, but it felt like an eternity.

  At night, I fled to the warmth and comfort of Colin’s home, desperate to find sleep and the strength of his voice. I did not question the way he made me feel, or that I relied on him for emotional support. He was as present and cautious as any human being I’d ever met, and he allowed me to explore my emotions to their full depths.