Page 44 of Swerve
He rubs a hand across the back of my hair and says in a low voice near my ear, “I realize my coming here was a questionable thing to do, but I understand what you’re going through.”
“You do?”
He nods, and then, in a slightly distant voice, “When I was nineteen, my younger brother came to Princeton to visit me one weekend. I took him out with some of my buddies for a night on the town. He was sixteen, and I was hoping he would apply to Princeton. My mom said he’d seemed kind of down for most of the school year and thought it might help to visit me. We went to a party, and he said he had a headache and wanted to go back to my dorm room. I didn’t think anything of it and told him I’d be back in an hour or two.”
My stomach drops as his voice lowers, and I somehow know that something horrible is coming. I want to stop him, but I can feel his need to go on.
“I found him. He hung himself on my bathroom door.”
Shock rips through me, and I pull back, look into his face and see the deepest kind of grief there. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”
He studies me for a few moments, and I cannot imagine how hard it must have been to share what he just told me. “It’s the greatest regret of my life. I would give anything to be able to redo that night. Have the chance to see it all differently.”
I press my hand to his arm, squeeze once.
“In hindsight, the signs were there. He had talked to me a few times about things feeling hopeless. He said he felt like he was a burden to our mom who had raised us without my dad. I thought it was just normal teenage stuff. Problems with friends at school.” He shakes his head a little. “I didn’t see it.”
“I know how hard it is not to blame yourself, but we both know that once someone has committed to the idea of taking their lives, they don’t want anyone to stop them.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you became a psychiatrist?”
He shrugs. “Clichéd as it sounds now, I thought I could help others avoid the pain my family went through.”
“And I know you have. Countless others.”
He gives me a long look, and I recognize in him my recent thoughts of whether we can ever really help people get through the worst that life has to offer. But neither of us says it. Maybe it is too painful an admission, given our line of work.
“Are the police making any headway?” he asks.
“To be honest, I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve done every recommended thing I could find to do when someone is missing. I’ve even hired a private detective.”
“That’s good,” he says. “Smart to have one person dedicated to doing everything possible.”
As if on cue, the door to the office opens, and Detective Helmer steps out. Instantly, I slide away from Dr. Maverick, noting his questioning gaze collide with the detective’s.
“Ah,” I say, standing, “Dr. Maverick, this is Detective Helmer.”
Helmer walks across the room and sticks a hand out. They shake. Neither says anything right away, and I can see them sizing each other up.
“I work at Johns Hopkins with Dr. Benson,” Dr. Maverick says, holding Helmer’s gaze.
“Dr. Maverick is the head of the department,” I say. “He came by about Mia.” As soon as I say it, I wonder why I feel the need to explain his presence.
“Yes,” he says, taking a step back. “I should get going. I don’t want to interrupt your work on the case.”
Helmer doesn’t say anything, merely glances from Maverick to me and back again.
“Well,” Dr. Maverick says, moving toward the door. “Take whatever time you need, Dr. Benson. Your job will be waiting for you.”
I follow him out, thanking him again as we step outside onto the stoop. “It was incredibly nice of you to come by.”
He glances over my shoulder, and I resist the urge to look back and see if Helmer is watching us.
Once he backs the black Mercedes out of the driveway, I step inside and close the door behind me.
“The doctor makes house calls?”
