Chapter 13 #2
“Some of it’s junk mail, but I’ll let you decide. Have you had any luck chasing down your troublemaker?” he asked.
“Not so far,” Sachie said.
“Let me know if you need anything else. I’ll be here another hour before I call it a day.” He walked into his office, calling out over his shoulder, “In the meantime, I need to make notes and prepare for my next patient.”
“Thank you, Dr. Janek.” Sachie gathered her mail and left the building.
Teller opened the car door and waited for her to slide into her seat. Then he closed the door and got in the other side. “We still have all day before we have to be at the bar. Are there any other patients who might be angry with you?”
Sachie shook her head. “My patients are usually happy to see me. It’s the family members of the children I recommend to be removed from their homes who have the biggest beef with me.
Luke was an anomaly—a tragic one at that.
I feel compelled to discover his reason for feeling like he had to die to find peace, and compelled isn’t the right word. I’ve moved on to obsessed.”
“Like you, Mrs. Randall felt a strong sense of responsibility for what happened with Luke,” Teller offered.
“Guilt is a huge emotional factor for me. I should’ve done more.”
“You couldn’t have guessed what he was about to do. Just like Mrs. Randall. How many of her foster kids have committed suicide?”
“None, until Luke,” Sachie said.
“And how many of your patients have committed suicide?” Teller asked.
“Luke was my first.” She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands together. “Please let him be the last.”
As he sat with his hands on the steering wheel and no direction to go, Teller nodded toward the stack of mail in Sachie’s lap. “You want to go through those letters while we stew on where we’ll go next?”
“I almost forgot.” Sachie sat up straight and flipped through the junk mail, tossing some envelopes onto the dash, unopened. The sender of the next letter had handwritten the street, city, state and zip code, and addressed the envelope to “Miss Sachie.”
A faint smile lifted the corners of Sachie’s lips as she carefully opened the envelope. Inside was a card that appeared to have been drawn by a child using colorful crayons.
A big heart graced the front of the card, colored in with red.
Sachie opened the card. THANK YOU was spelled out with large capital letters in blue crayon. The author and artist had added for being my friend and then signed it Emma.
“A fan of yours?” Teller asked.
“Apparently.” Sachie stared at the card, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
“Emma was having nightmares when her mother brought her to see me. In fact, her mother and father weren’t doing much better.
Emma’s little brother had gotten off the bus before Emma.
He ran across the street without looking first. A car hit him. Emma witnessed it.”
“Did the boy survive?”
Sachie shook her head. “They went from being a cute little family of four to a family of three heartbroken people. I saw Emma for several months, helping her work through her feelings.”
“She felt responsible, didn’t she?” Teller guessed.
Sachie nodded. “She was the older sister and should’ve been holding his hand.
However, Dalton was a force to be reckoned with—headstrong and in constant motion.
If the driver hadn’t been looking down at his cell phone, he would’ve seen the bus had stopped and the lights were blinking red.
Vehicles are supposed to stop when school buses are loading and unloading. ”
“Poor Emma,” Teller commented. “That’s a horrible thing for a child to witness.”
Sachie nodded. “I’m glad she’s doing much better.” Her lips pressed together. “And yes, I see the parallels to what happened with me and Luke. I know it takes time to get past the horror.”
She flipped through more junk mail, laying the letters with the others on the dash, and then stopped to read a glossy postcard depicting boys playing in a gym.
“This is the Boys’ Club where Luke worked after school.
They’re having an open house...” she turned the card over, “today, actually.” Her forehead wrinkled as she tapped the card to her chin.
“When I was asking Luke what was wrong, he wouldn’t tell me.
I asked him if something had happened at school.
He said no. Then I asked him if something had happened at the Boys’ Club. ”
“Did he say yes?”
Sachie shook her head. “No. But he didn’t say no. He avoided answering the question.”
“I say we go to the Boys’ Club next.” Teller entered the address in his map application on his cell phone. As he pulled out onto the road, Sachie’s cell phone rang.
She answered with, “This is Sachie. Kylie?” She glanced toward Teller. “Hold on.” She lowered the phone and placed it in speaker mode. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry I couldn’t answer your earlier call. I’ve had so many crank calls that my mother doesn’t want me answering any. She turned off my phone. I just happened to turn it back on to see someone had left a message.”
“Thank you for returning my call,” Sachie said.
“You were the counselor Luke was seeing?”
“Yes,” Sachie said.
“Wow,” the one word sounded choked with emotion. “You were there... You saw...” An audible sniff sounded over the line.
“Yes. Probably like you, I’ve been struggling to process it all.”
“Struggling,” Kylie said, the word breaking on what sounded like a sob. “Yeah.”
“Before he...” Sachie stopped.
Teller glanced toward her.
Her eyes were filled with tears.
Teller found an empty parking lot and pulled in. He reached for Sachie’s hand and held it.
She gave him a weak smile, swallowed and continued. “Luke asked me to tell you he was sorry for dragging you into his shitty life, and that he was sorry he hurt you.”
“Oh, God,” Kylie whispered. “He said that?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry I didn’t deliver the message sooner,” Sachie said softly, tears slipping down her cheeks.
Teller gently squeezed Sachie’s hand, wishing he could take away her pain, knowing he couldn’t.
“Now that I can think more clearly,” Sachie said, “I’m trying to understand what drove Luke to that...day.”
“It’s all my fault,” Kylie said. “We had a terrible argument.”
“What was the argument about, Kylie?” Sachie asked.
“He was so angry,” Kylie’s voice caught in a sob, “it scared me.”
“Angry with you?” Sachie persisted, her voice calm, controlled and so gentle that Teller would have told her anything she wanted to know just to keep her talking.
“Not at me. At something that happened where he worked. He said they were pushing him to do something he didn’t want to do.”
“Did he tell you what that was?”
“No. He wouldn’t say, no matter how many times I asked. I asked him if it was illegal. He wouldn’t say. I asked him if it would hurt the kids. He said not at the club, but that if he didn’t do it, they would hurt his best friend.”
“Did he say who they were?”
“No. He wouldn’t tell me anything. That’s what made me mad.
” She paused. “The last time he saw me, I was mad. And I wasn’t even mad at him.
I was mad at whoever was pushing him to do whatever it was he didn’t feel right doing.
But I took it out on Luke. I didn’t get to tell him I loved him. ” Her voice faded off.
Teller bit down on his tongue to keep from firing off all the questions that crowded his mind.
Kylie didn’t know another person was listening in.
He couldn’t be certain how she’d react if she did.
And Sachie was the professional counselor and doing a good job of wading through the heartbroken teenage girl’s emotions to get to the facts.
“Kylie, what friend was he worried about?” Sachie asked in that same, soft, caring tone.