The Mother-in-Law(8)

Harriet’s concerns were a little different. As I tucked her under the covers, she shifted and squirmed at my side. “Why would the police come to our house about a bike that isn’t even ours?”

“Well . . . they thought we might know where it is.”

“Why would they think that?” There was something all-knowing in her unblinking blue eyes. Harriet often caught me off guard with this all-knowing look. “Maybe,” she said, before I could answer, “they are just saying they are here about a bike, but really they are gathering information about something else?”

Harriet had watched Spy Kids at a sleepover last weekend and I suspected that was responsible for all this gathering information talk. But who knew? Harriet had always been a perceptive little thing. Too wise for her four years.

“There’s only one way to find out,” I told her. “I’ll go speak to them and I’ll let you know tomorrow. You get some sleep.”

She nodded slowly and slipped under the covers, looking anything but sleepy. She actually looked a little rattled. Which was odd, considering she didn’t even know that her grandmother had died yet.

I look up as Ollie emerges from the hallway, his phone in his hand. He thumps down on a kitchen chair and I slide down from my bar stool and sit beside him at the table. “How was Nettie?” I ask.

Ollie rests his elbows on the table, rests his forehead in his left hand. “She’s on her way over.”

“Nettie is?”

“And Patrick.”

I inhale, ignoring the tiny flutter of panic this kicks off in me. For goodness sake! Of course Patrick and Nettie were coming over. Nettie’s mother has just died, after all. It’s a good thing, us being forced together like this. Hadn’t I been hoping for weeks that Nettie would reach out to us?

Simon brings my cup of tea to the kitchen table, and he and Stella pull out chairs and sit. We all square up, preparing ourselves. Any informality we’d adopted while the kids were awake is gone and we’re ready for business.

“So . . . ?” Ollie prompts.

“I’ll get straight down to it,” Simon says. “We don’t have all the information yet; the cause of death is still being investigated. What we do know is that a neighbor alerted police just after five P.M. this afternoon, reporting that she’d seen your mother’s unmoving body through a window. By the time the police got inside it appears she’d been dead for several hours.”

“Yes, but what caused it?” Ollie can’t keep the frustration out of his voice. I reach out and place a hand over his.

“We won’t know for sure until the results of the autopsy,” Simon says, “but some materials were found, as well as a letter, which appear to indicate that your mother may have taken her own life.”

In the silence that follows I find myself aware of everything, the faint sheen of rain or sweat across the police officer’s temples, the fly caught between the curtain and the window, the blood pulsing wildly around in my head.

“I realize this must be a shock,” Stella says.

“Yes,” I say.

I turn my attention to Ollie, who is oddly still. I put an arm around him, rubbing his back in swift rhythmic circles, like I do to the kids when they fall over and hurt themselves. Still, he doesn’t move.

“Are you sure?” he asks finally. “That she . . .”

“The note was quite clear about what she’d decided to do. And the . . . materials must have been purchased in advance, which indicates this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act.”

Ollie stands suddenly and begins walking with purpose in one direction, then back the other way. Then, abruptly, he plants his feet.

“What materials did you find?”

“Unfortunately, we’re not permitted to tell you that at present. Until the coroner rules it a suicide we have to treat it as a potential homicide—”

“A potential . . . ?” Ollie’s mouth hovers open, but he can’t seem to finish the sentence.

“It’s just something we can’t rule out until we’re told to. I understand this is difficult to hear.” Simon’s demeanor is competent and professional, yet I find it difficult to take him seriously. He is just so young. How much could he possibly understand with that youthful, unlined face?

“Can you think of any reason your mother might have wanted to take her own life?” Stella asks. Her focus is on Ollie, but her gaze flickers to me every so often, as if surreptitiously. “Maybe she was depressed? Did she suffer from mental or physical illness?”

“She has breast cancer,” Ollie says. “Had breast cancer. But it was in the early stages. She wouldn’t take her own life. I don’t believe it.”

Ollie drops his head into his hands. But a moment later, when light beams in the front window he looks up again. Patrick’s car is pulling into the driveway.

“They’re here,” I say needlessly.

“Go ahead,” Stella tells us.

Ollie and I walk to the door. Patrick unpacks himself from the driver’s side, standing a full head and shoulders above the vehicle. He walks around the car to open the door for Nettie, but she is slow to emerge. When she finally appears, it’s a shock. Her face is gaunt; her eyes are sunken. It’s only been a few weeks since I’ve seen her, but in that time, she must have lost a stone.