Page 41 of Since She's Been Gone

After everyone left the room, I sat alone on Emily’s bed and picked up her feeding tube that had been removed during the unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate her.

I wondered what she would’ve thought about what had happened. And I realized she would’ve been proud. It would’ve been the ultimate confirmation that she had won her coveted title. It turned out the best anorexic was the dead one.

CHAPTER24

IHAVEN’T BEEN BACKto my old house in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles since I moved out ten years ago. When we divorced, Jay bought me out. His parents helped him because he loved this place and didn’t want to leave. I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to take my money and run from my painful memories here.

We haven’t been in touch since, but a few years ago, I heard through a mutual colleague that he had remarried and has a couple of kids. At the time, I was heartbroken, thinking how I’d been too sick to go on that journey with him.

When I ring the doorbell, I hear a child crying inside. Despite knowing he has kids now, I somehow hadn’t expected this and am tempted to run away. But I wouldn’t be here unless I had no other choice.

Jay, as my mother did, specializes in treating addiction. When we were in graduate school together, he did a deep-dive research report in his psychopharmacology class about the opiate overdose crisis. He knows more than anyone about TriCPharma and the Cadell family. And before I leave for New York, I want to be as clear-eyed as possible about what I’m up against.

He opens the door with a crying toddler boy in his arms and a girl who looks around five years old wrapped around his left leg.

“Uh … hi,” he says. His face is whatever’s after shocked to see me.

“I’m sorry for showing up unannounced,” I say. “It’s an emergency.”

The little boy in his arms wails louder.

“Can you give me a second? Barbara is out of town—” He catches himself, realizing I don’t know who Barbara is. “I’m alone with the kids.”

I don’t know how to respond other than to ask, “Can I help?”

“It’s okay, just give me a sec.”

He carts the crying boy away and drags the girl, who still won’t let go of his leg, into our former living room. He turns onPeppa Pigon a mounted television screen that didn’t exist when I lived here. Peppa seems to do her magic because the kids are quickly and quietly transfixed.

He returns to the front door. “What’s going on?” he asks me.

I tell him everything. He’s the first person I’ve told, including Eddie, Pearl, and my recovery group, that doesn’t look shocked—not even at the prospect that my mom might still be alive.

“You don’t look surprised,” I say.

“TriCPharma is a crime syndicate operation, so no. If your mom somehow got caught up in the Cadells’ crosshairs, I get why she would’ve had to disappear. You and your dad would’ve been in danger too. Faking a death is a bit … extreme, but it’s not unheard of.”

This was Pearl’s hunch too—that if Mom left, she had to do it for us.

“But was this an issue in the nineties?” I ask him.

“The Cadells started working on perfecting their drugs in the seventies, but it took them a couple of decades to carry enough weight at the FDA to pay off officials there to get their drugs to the masses. The first wave of prescription overdoses didn’t begin until the nineties,” he says.

I nod, taking in the information.

“Their only goal was to make money. Anyone who got in their way wasn’t safe. And they’ve only become more ruthless and dangerous through the years, infiltrating the government at the highest levels, paying off senators and governors to look away.”

Oh my God. How is this even possible?

“How?” I ask.

“Through campaign contributions. They also use witness intimidation to prevent people from testifying against them in Congress. A colleague of mine testified in DC a couple of months ago before the Feds filed their current charges against the Cadell brothers, William Jr. and his younger brother, Quentin. He now has to wear an armored vest to work and change his route to his office daily to avoid being followed by them.”

This must be why Cristina told me to stay away from the FBI and the police. If the Cadells have figured out how to infiltrate the US government, they’ve probably gotten to law enforcement too. For all I know, the detective that showed up at my office yesterday trying to find out information about her is working for them too. My stomach turns.

I think about Cristina’s text, how she said she’s being framed for her mother’s death, and how Eddie said that Paul mentioned her mom was a pharmaceutical rep for TriCPharma long before marrying her father, William Cadell Jr.

“Do you know anything about the TriCPharma sales reps?” I ask Jay.

---