The Storm (Fairhope) (23 page)

Whew, she must have just fallen asleep,
I thought. But the assumption was forced, because the expected sense of relief I should have felt refused to follow.

Cautiously, I stepped to the freshly painted front door and rapped the knocker loudly. When no one answered, I rang the doorbell twice. Was that loud music playing?

Grace
hated
loud music.

“Grace!” I yelled. “It’s me! Open the door.”

No answer.

Instinctively, I fiercely turned the doorknob, my palms sweating. It was locked.

I flew to the backyard, panting by the time I landed at the back door. It was locked, too.

Maybe she’s not here. Calm down,
I coached myself, but a panic flooded me with a severity I never experienced before.

My eyes peered through the window, and I spotted her keys in the middle of the living room floor, but no purse. Maybe someone picked her up? She never forgot our play date…

By then, I saw spots and my terrified heart pounded wildly.

Could she have been raped? Murdered? Kidnapped? Oh, Jesus, please help me.
“No, no…” I covered my face with my hands, trying to stop sobs from erupting.

In a fleeting moment of irrationality, I thrust a splintered wooden chair through her living room window.

“Grace!” I screamed to an empty room. “Grace, are you here?”

Nothing seemed to be out of place, except for the throbbing music that blared loudly from the television, the bass booming.

Cringing, I immediately turned it off.

The familiar ring of Grace’s cell phone filled the air. I froze in place, momentarily wondering what I was going to say to her if she stepped out of her bedroom to a living room littered with broken glass.

My eyes fell on her weathered Coach purse in the corner. Her first anniversary gift from Gavin, she wore it the week before to dinner at my house.

Her purse
was
there.

I rummaged through it and grabbed the pulsating phone. “Gavin,” I gasped. “It’s Jana. I’m in your house. I don’t think Grace is here. The doors were locked, and this loud music was blaring, and her purse and keys are in the middle of the floor—”

“What? How did you get in?”

I gulped. “Don’t be mad at me. I broke a window. I will pay to replace it.”

“Have you checked all of the bedrooms?” I heard the terror in his trembling voice, squeezing my eyes shut tightly. I needed to be strong.

“No, I haven’t … only the main area. I just got inside, but I will—”

Before I could finish my sentence, the battery died, shutting out Gavin and leaving me all alone.

My body pumping with adrenaline, I burst open the guest bedroom door. Nothing.

Nothing in the guest bathroom.

Nothing in Emma’s room.

Nothing in Grace’s bedroom.

“Oh, thank God, “I said aloud, sobbing tears of relief as I sank into Grace and Gavin’s bed. “Grace, where are you?”

My relief was premature. For reasons unknown, my eyes fell on Grace’s journal laying open on her vanity. Guiltily, I picked it up and opened it to the last page. My eyes scanning the words, I stopped breathing. What I read nearly ripped the light out of my soul.

She fucking looks just like me, but I bet she’s not crazy like me. He deserves someone normal. Sometimes I still want to die, and I want it to work this time.

A debilitating dizziness sucked the breath out of me, and I grabbed the corner of a chair to steady myself.
This time …
she had tried to kill herself? I couldn’t breathe.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the master bathroom was open. The vent was humming loudly.

No matter how much time passed, no matter how many prayers I prayed, no matter how many pills I swallowed, I would never, ever forget the horror that unveiled before my eyes at that moment.

When the dizziness ceased, and my vision cleared, I saw the dark red blood dripping from the bath tub.

I knew she was gone.

I can’t remember much of what happened next. I remember the terrible sulfur stench, her fair arm hanging lifelessly from the side of the shower curtain, her blond curls tinged with blood, and the rushing sound of the running water … the sound that made me lurch at even the waves of my beloved Orange Beach, because they brought me back here…

I can still see the blade lying on the cold travertine tile, and hear the awful song playing that would haunt me forever.

And then I stumbled into her bedroom, gasping for breath, and a part of me died with her as I lost control of my senses.

No pit of everlasting fire could burn any worse than this living hell.

GRACE’S FUNERAL FELL on a dismal Friday morning. The clouds threatened and the winds taunted us, hissing with fury. The birds screeched with fright, taking refuge from the ominous weather that approached in the old, thick oak trees shading the cemetery. I tried to think that God was angry at what happened to Grace, and was showing His emotions with a horrifying storm, hopefully holding His thunder until her funeral was over. My survival depended on believing whatever—whoever—caused her to make the final decision to kill herself would have to pay for it.

Gavin called the police station after her phone died that day, and his fellow officers—his friends—found me half lucid on the floor. Vaguely, I remember their anguished tears as they processed the suicide of the love of one of their own. Gavin’s partner walked beside my stretcher, and I told him my story, broken, as he wailed with me. They kept the press away.

Andrew held my hand tightly as the preacher began to speak, his words describing Grace’s unique character and spirited life as much as the spoken word could. I stared at the crumpled leaves on the ground. Frozen with despair I couldn’t communicate, my spirit haunted with the girl who knew me better than I knew myself.

My best friend was gone forever, stolen from me like a thief in the night.

I would never be the same.

“Grace was beautiful inside out, with a dynamic flair that made her stand out,” the preacher exclaimed passionately. “She would do anything for anyone. Although she rests in heaven, we will miss her dearly.” He cleared his throat, and I forced myself to look through the crowd.

Andrew cringed at the broken-hearted wails of Grace’s family and friends, and I squeezed his hand. Her mother, frail and shattered, could barely stand as she shook with overwhelming grief. Grace’s father steadied her, the death of their daughter bonding them in their immeasurable pain. He stared at the sky with lifeless eyes, lips furled in anger. I imagined he was questioning how God could let this happen to his only daughter.

Gavin was irrevocably devastated, his face buried in his trembling hands. The fog surrounding me thickened, and I pinched myself to make sure this was real. Grace’s journal had center stage in the story book of my mind, and I couldn’t make the first line disappear. It interrupted my line of sight, running blood red across the faces of her loved ones. Who was the woman Grace was talking about? Staring at Gavin, our friend, unrecognizable in his pain, I could not believe he betrayed Grace. His trademark loyalty, his brave pledge of love to her at The Gulf that night, the beautiful daughter they created together … No. It had to be Grace’s delusion.

Why hadn’t she just taken her medicine? The tears streamed silently down my face.

I needed to talk to Gavin. I needed to find out what he wanted to tell me about Grace on the day she died.

I shivered as Grace’s uncle led everyone in a traditional gospel hymn. The speed of the wind was rapidly increasing. I buried my chilled hands in my pockets, my fingers clasping the friendship bracelet she’d given me in second grade.

“Hi, I’m Grace. Will you be my best friend?” Knees dirty and missing several teeth, she was still beautiful then. I wanted to know this girl who looked like Skipper with her long blond hair and bronze skin.

She, the queen bee of the neighborhood kids’ clan, chose me!

I accepted the blue and yellow bracelet. “I would love to be your best friend. I’m Jana. Do you want to go to the park with me?”

She grabbed my hand and we skipped away.

I fell to the ground, sobbing.
Why didn’t you just come to the park with me, Grace? Come to the park, and tell me what hurt you. Tell me why you wanted to die. Then I could tell you that I needed you, that Gavin and Emma needed you, and that you had everything you ever needed. I could have fought your fears for you.

Behind my eyelids, pulsating with pain from the thunderous force of my tears, I could see her in my house, the last time I would ever see her, breathtaking in that yellow sundress, happier than I’d ever seen her, surrounded by her backseat bakery and plans for the future. How could she go from that place to six feet in the ground in a week’s time?

Just like that, her funeral was over, and we said our final goodbye to Grace. Andrew quickly bent down to comfort me as the last red rose fell gently over her coffin. Gently placing his thick black coat over my shivering shoulders, he whispered, “I love you.”

“I don’t understand.” Hysteria took over as he practically carried me to our car. “She was so happy last week. How could she leave Emma?” Something like anger mixed with my grief.

“Something may have triggered her,” Andrew said quietly. “A major life event can trigger a suicide attempt for people with bipolar disorder.”

“I could have helped … fix … things.” I couldn’t understand my own words trapped under my brokenhearted sobbing. Strangers were starting at me. Strangers who wouldn’t miss her like I did, people who would be able to shake their memories of her when I would never try.

“Sometimes you can’t fix people like Grace, Jana. She had a chronic illness. There may have been things we don’t know.”

I thought I knew everything about Grace.
Why, God, why?

She’s with me now
, the whisper returned.

I slammed the car door shut and closed my eyes. A strange feeling overcame me, urging me to open my eyes and lift them carefully.

“I—”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure dressed in head-to-toe black in the distance, partially hidden behind a tree. Ice spread through my veins like wildfire, stopping me mid-sentence.

“Stop,” I told Andrew, who looked at me with questions in his eyes. Without a word, I jumped out of the car.

The woman’s blond hair, her porcelain face …
was I seeing things?

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Maybe this was all a wretched nightmare, and my friend was waiting to apologize for missing our date in the park. I stretched my arms out across the distance toward the angelic apparition, but my legs refused to move.
Grace!

I blinked and she was gone.

I DON’T REMEMBER the weekend after her death. By Monday, I was relieved to be rid of the sympathetic visitors and their casseroles. Andrew’s parents camped out the whole time, and thankfully, my politically minded father-in-law did most of the talking for me while my mother-in-law tended to Calla.

The Lunesta I swallowed the night before, my last one for the month, was barely beginning its descent from my bloodstream when the doorbell rang. My semi-addiction to sleeping pills resurfaced immediately after Grace’s death, my brutal insomnia returning with reckless abandon. The little blue pill that saved my nights left my days in a fog.

I stumbled around my bedroom haphazardly, clumsily tossing on the first wrinkled t-shirt I found. Andrew was still sleeping soundly, and I did not want to wake him. He bravely endured a nightmarish night with a stuffy-nosed Calla while I slept.

The FedEx man, young and chipper in his crisp uniform, grinned. “I’m sorry to wake you so early, ma’am,” he said cheerfully, promptly handing me a package. “But you were early on my route, and I need a signature for this one. Job offer?”

Covington Company’s red logo pierced the white cover. “Not hardly,” I mumbled. “It is a reminder that my severance agreement is due.”

Calla started to cry, and the FedEx man’s face fell, his eyes wandering toward her wailing. “Oh, I am terribly sorry, ma’am. This economy is awful.”