Chapter 8
It’s an amazing room, dark and impressive, with a marble desk and floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves filled with framed photographs—of Roy mostly, with various important people—a few precious artworks, like the blue-and-gold ceramic Fabergé egg in its cute little gold stand, and psychology books, as well as copies of Roy’s own books of course.
Then there’s the safe on the middle shelf, a small electronic black box. I asked him once what he kept in it.
“My patients’ notes.”
“Why do you keep them in the safe?”
“Because I like to work on them in the evenings, and they’re subject to patient-doctor confidentiality. They’re not to be read by anyone but me.”
“I see,” I said. I’ve been in the room when he opens it, slides in a beige manila folder and locks it again. He always asks me to turn around when he unlocks or locks it. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, babe; it’s that nobody but me can have access to those. You understand?”
“Yes, yes,” I said.
And then, of course, there’s the rifle.
The very rifle that Deborah used—supposedly—to kill herself.
It’s in a glass-fronted cabinet, nestled in its dark-purple velvet cradle.
I told Roy once that he keeps his gun in a casket, or that’s what it looked like, and as a renowned psychologist, did he think there was a message in that?
He looked at me, his face trembling, like I’d grown an elephant trunk.
But let’s face it. There is something very, very wrong with a man who keeps the gun his wife used to kill herself—supposedly—in his office, where he can look at it every day.
I shudder as I go over to the shelf where he keeps his books, fingering their spines as I go along. The Broken Mirror: There’s Nothing Wrong with You, So Why Can’t You Love Yourself? Fixing Us: How to Heal Together When You’re Both Hurt. Rebuild: A Survivor’s Guide to Starting Over Emotionally.
I open them one by one and shake their pages loose. Nothing. I put them back.
I sit at his desk, which is pristine. There’s our wedding photo in an elegant silver frame.
We’re standing by a pond with a weeping cherry tree behind us.
There’s a small ceramic dish with paper clips, a yellow notepad, and a blank white note cube, one of those square notepads where you jot something and tear off the top page.
I slide the cube across the desk. I can see Roy wrote something down recently, then tore off the page so that only the faint pressure of the pen is left behind.
I grab a pencil from the pen cup and use it to highlight what was written:
Allen & Boyd – 3PM, Priv Conf Rm. Fri 6th flr.
I don’t know what that means, but I will look it up later. I tear the top sheet off, fold it, and put it in my pocket. Then I turn my attention back to the shelves. At the bottom of those shelves are long drawers with sliding doors.
I open the first one and pull out a square brown box with a lid.
It’s full of documents, and I go through them quickly, aware that Marie is going to be back soon and, really, I should have tried the door as soon as she was gone instead of wasting time upstairs.
I go through files of what looks like medical reports that mean nothing to me and a stack of old appointment books.
They all belong to Roy, and every page is full of names and times, probably referring to appointments with clients.
None of them are current, or even from last year, so I put them back in without looking too hard.
There are so many more drawers, so many more shelves and books to go through that it makes my heart race from the stress.
I pull out the next box and my heart soars and breaks and gallops and skips a beat, all at once.
This is the sentimental box, and it’s full of memories of Deb.
Stacks and stacks of photographs that maybe didn’t make the cut for the photo albums, but are still gorgeous and tender and funny.
In all of them, she didn’t quite make the frame or turned her head at the last moment.
I bring one to my face and smell it, my eyes closed.
Her hair always smelled of flowers and I can smell it now. Frangipani.
I swallow back tears. Don’t be silly, I tell myself.
I don’t have time for this. I put the photos back and stick the lid back on.
I’m about to push the box back in, but I stop myself.
I need to be thorough. I need to look through to make sure I haven’t missed anything.
And right down at the bottom, I find a small black leather notebook.
It’s an appointment book, and this one is dated last year, and it belongs to Deb.
And then I hear the front door close.
My heart does a somersault. I shove the box back, slide the door closed and push the appointment book under my shirt.
I left the office door open, just by a sliver, and I rush to it and look through the opening just as Marie appears down the hall.
I pull back and press myself against the wall.
Her footsteps echo on the stone floor. When she reaches the office, she stops. I scrunch my eyes shut, hold my breath.
She pulls the door shut.
I wait a couple of minutes until I hear her walk into the kitchen. Then I take off my shoes, slip out of the office, and run upstairs.
I set the appointment book on my desk in our bedroom.
I turn the pages slowly, studying each one carefully, my heart bouncing from the excitement of seeing Deb’s handwriting.
I make notes in my little notebook of everything I find, which is mostly hair appointments and charity boards and lunches with her friends.
There’s an appointment with a Dr. Kowalski a week before she died, and I make a note of that too.
Then, three days before she died, there’s a strange note. It’s in her handwriting, but not quite. The letters are shaky, bigger than her usual precise writing, and she pressed the pen so hard that in places it went through to the page below, like she was holding the pen in her clenched fist.
ITS…H…M…DO NG…T