Page 119 of Beyond Rosy Irish Twilight

45

ASHER

I was back at the fucking cemetery, the very one she took her own life at. I wanted to bring her back to Kansas with me, but knew she wanted to be with her mother. I had let her down in life. I wouldn’t do the same in death.

“How are you?” Chase asked, sitting down beside me.

Every single fucking person had asked me that since we left the hospital one week ago. How was I? I was lost, destroyed…blank. Was this how she felt the day of her mother’s funeral? It had to have been worse.

I opened my hand and showed him the pill bottle I’d hung onto since the doctor approached me in the hospital. “These were in her bag,” I croaked out.

“The pills Lock prescribed?”

I shook my head. “They’re her mother’s.”

He sat there with me for a moment in silence. I knew there were all sorts of questions running through his head. They were the very ones I’d been asking myself all week.

I swallowed hard as I showed him the label on the bottle. “Three years old.”

“Why did she have them?”

“She must have been taking them. The coroner is going to run a toxicology report. That should tell us more. But—”

I stopped talking, not sure if I could even say more. Chase sighed heavily beside me. “She was taking pills that didn’t belong to her.”

I nodded. “There was another bottle in her purse. Pain pills. She was medicating herself at night to sleep. I didn’t see it then, but…it’s so fucking clear now. She was waking up screaming at night, and then it stopped. She was sleeping longer and I thought…”

“We all missed it,” he sighed.

“But I wasn’t supposed to. I’m her husband. I should have noticed. She’s dead because of me.”

“No,” he said, turning to face me. “She’s dead because she couldn’t deal with her life, and she decided to take care of it on her own.”

“Because I was too concerned with taking out Ambrose.”

“Because you were trying to do the job you were sent in to do. The very job that was supposed to get you and Jade away from all this. She was already involved. You didn’t drag her into this mess.”

“I didn’t help her either.” I rolled the pill bottle between my fingers, still reeling from what the doctor told me. “Either she wanted to kill herself or the pills made her do it.”

“What do you mean?”

I shook the bottle at him. “These are anti-depressants, but they’re old. They’re not her prescription. The doctor said some pills have the opposite effect as intended. So either…either she was so unhappy that she killed herself, or she took pills to escape and they fucked with her head. They made her even more depressed to the point that she wanted to end it all.”

He sighed heavily beside me. For the millionth time this week, tears leaked down my cheeks and I hastily swiped them away.

“I didn’t notice, and now she’s gone.”

He knew there was nothing more he could say. There was nothing anyone could say or do to relieve me of the guilt pressing down on my chest. I played my part in this, and she paid the price.

Cash walked over and stood before me. “They want to know if they can lower the casket.”

I nodded, clenching the bottle in my hand. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. “Yeah.”

“Take some time. No one expects you back at work—”

“I’m not coming back,” I said as I stood. I met his eyes, resolved in my decision. “I’m out.”

“Asher—”

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