Off the Deep End (30)

I let out a sigh of relief. “Can I ask how many people stay at Samaritan House with Jules?”

“There are twenty-two,” he says without needing any time to think about it.

I hadn’t expected there to be so many. “And all of them are mentally ill? Just like her?”

“Yes.” He didn’t give me more. I detected a hesitancy in his voice even over the phone.

“Have any of them committed crimes?”

“There’re twenty-two people living in that house. The likelihood of one of them committing a crime in their lifetime is pretty high.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.” My boldness surprised me. “Is Jules in the house with any criminals? Anyone who’s been to jail?”

“You know I can’t tell you who lives in that house.”

“I don’t want names. That’s not what I’m asking.” I shook my head to emphasize my point even though we were on the phone and he couldn’t see me. “Is she connected to bad people? Could one of them be helping her with Isaac?”

“Anything is possible.” His vagueness infuriated me. Why couldn’t he be more concrete? Let me know what he was thinking? What the investigative team was doing?

“But is that what’s happening? Are you looking at any of those people?” I probed, hoping he’d give me more.

“We’re examining all leads.” His voice sounded like my dad’s when he answered the phone for the reporters and media outlets: scripted and robotic like an automated recording.

“And are there leads at Samaritan House? Other people besides Jules?” Maybe if I asked it in a different way, he’d give me a better answer.

He cleared his throat. “Amber, I understand what a difficult place you’re in right now, and I’m so sorry you’re going through any of this, but you’re just going to have to trust me, okay?”

The silence stretched out between us until it grew uncomfortable, but I didn’t know what else to say. The truth was that I didn’t trust him. I wasn’t sure he was doing this right, and I didn’t know what to do.





NINE


AMBER GREER


“Amber, come on, please, just let me in.” Mark pounded on the bathroom door, trying to keep his voice low so that everyone downstairs wouldn’t overhear, but it was a little late for that after what they’d just witnessed. I pictured him on the other side of the door, leaning flat against it.

I sat on the toilet with the lid down since there was nowhere else to sit. My head was in my hands. They were still shaking. I’d finally worked up the nerve, and we’d called Katie and my mom together a few minutes ago. It went worse than I’d imagined, but not for the reasons I’d assumed it would.

“Why don’t you go back to sitting on the couch? I like you better that way,” I yelled at him.

“God, you’re impossible, you know that? I came up here to try to help. To make things better for you even though I didn’t do anything wrong.”

I leapt to my feet and whipped open the door. “Didn’t do anything wrong? You practically told Katie her brother was dead.” I started mimicking him. “‘Honey, you need to start preparing yourself for the worst.’ What the hell is that?”

His chin jutted out. “It’s called trying to take care of her and keep her from getting crushed.”

“By telling her that her brother is going to die?”

The vein in his forehead bulged. He worked his jaw while he spoke. “Yes, because that’s the truth, and despite whatever denial you’ve decided to bury yourself in during this, I’m sticking with the truth.”

He reached out and yanked the door out of my hand, then slammed it in my face before storming off. I stumbled backward and slowly sank onto the tiled floor in front of the tub as tears spilled out of the corners of my eyes. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. This was it. Right here. Why couples didn’t survive a child’s illness or death.

I didn’t know how Mark and I were going to sustain this. If it was even possible. We’d been struggling for months and at each other’s throats constantly about how to deal with Isaac. He favored a heavy-handed approach since things had gotten so dire and out of control, whereas I favored a lighter one. We hadn’t been on the same page from the beginning. We weren’t even in the same book. And now this?

I’d watched the statistics play themselves out with Jules and Shane over these past ten months. They’d been together since college and always seemed to adore each other. Not in a way that seemed fake or put on for other people, but you could see it in the way their eyes melted when they looked at each other and how their bodies softened when they were together. It was awful to see the tragedy pull them apart. They rarely looked at each other; their bodies stiffened next to each other instead of relaxing, and their smiles were forced. Even if their bodies could’ve hidden their demise, their eyes bore the truth, and you could hear the thousands of things unsaid between them.

I saw Shane and his girlfriend at the grocery store the other night. It was the first time I’d seen them out in public together, and I couldn’t stop staring despite myself. She was a twenty-six-year-old yoga instructor named Chloe. I took one of her classes last year when she first moved to town, and everyone was raving about her. She’d had her own studio in Miami, where she made it no secret that she’d worked with celebrities. I could see why everyone was smitten with her. She had the kind of figure people liked to drink in with their eyes—a flowing perfect tan, taut strong legs, and a flat stomach while still somehow managing to have amazing curves in all the right places.