“Then I don’t get it—Why would he take his own life?”
Sam exhales loudly and presses his hands hard to his temples. “Something else was going on with Jamie lately,” he says. “And it was eating away at him.”
7
MY STOMACH TWISTS. WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO JAMIE? Had his life started to unravel, and if so, why?
“Do you think it had to do with his business?” I ask. That’s one of the areas Megan had wondered about.
Sam shakes his head. “No, work was good for him. The matter seemed pretty personal, and I’m almost positive it related to something in Connecticut.”
“Litchfield County specifically?”
“Yup. I first realized there was a problem during lunch at the club in, I guess, mid-July. Jamie looked agitated when he arrived and told me that an issue he’d been worrying about had just come to a head.”
Since Jamie and I were no longer in any real contact then, I can’t even make a guess as to what it might have been.
“You didn’t come right out and ask him?” I say.
“I did, point-blank. But he said it was premature to discuss it. And whatever was bothering him clearly needed sorting out. About a week later, almost out of the blue, he announced he was going to stay at his new rental for most of August. When I pushed him, he promised again to tell me what was going on, but not until he knew more.”
I look off, thinking for a second. “Could it have had anything to do with the woman he brought to the party?”
“Her?” Sam shakes his head again, this time dismissively. “God no.He’d been out with her only a couple times and, long story short, she wasn’t even supposed to be at the party that night.”
“I wonder if it had something to do with his grandmother and the care she was getting. He mentioned at the party that her dementia was getting worse.”
Sam shrugs. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. He’d actually just come from seeing her that day at the club, and he made a point of mentioning how great the care facility was.”
I rise from the couch and drift toward the same window Sam was staring out of earlier. “How did he seem to you at the party?” I ask, switching gears a bit. If something was bothering Jamie enough for him to take his own life, it must have been boiling over Saturday night.
“He seemed okay to me.”
“Okay good—or just okay?”
He shrugs again. “Overall, he seemed like himself that night, but to be honest, I didn’t interact with him much. He was on the other side of the table from me at dinner, and then I had to bolt early. I ended up not even saying goodbye to him—and don’t ask howthatmakes me feel.”
Before I can raise anything more, Sam is on his feet, too, ending the discussion. This is clearly becoming too painful for him.
“That’s all I had to tell you,” he says bluntly. “I thought it was important for you to know, and I wanted to tell you in person.”
He moves so fast toward the front door that I catch up with him only as he’s reaching for the knob.
“Thank you,” I say. “For coming... for what you told me.”
It’s just the two of us bunched in the small foyer now, and I feel my cheeks redden. Sam levels his gaze at me, and there’s a sudden coldness in his expression.
“I thought you should know you’re not responsible, but thatdoesn’t mean I can forgive what you did to Jamie. He didn’t deserve to be kicked to the curb that way.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me with only the bite from his parting salvo. I probably should have expected something like that, but during the past few minutes I’d let myself believe that some of the ice between us had melted.
As I carry the mugs to the kitchen, my mind is churning. Does Sam have it right? Was something seriously troubling Jamie this summer, something beyond the fact that, in his words, I was nothing but a fraud? Jamie knew plenty of people in Litchfield County, but for the most part they were casual acquaintances, and his only close friends in the area were Sam and, to a lesser degree, Vic, so even if a problem had arisen with someone—from the club, for instance—it’s hard to imagine it getting to him in a profound way.
So that leaves his family to think about.
If I had to, I could certainly envision an issue bubbling up with one of his relatives. Drew, a successful portrait artist, can be pompous at times, and—at least from what I saw—not inclined to compromise when it comes to his own needs. Then there’s his cousin Liam. I always got along with him myself, but he struck me as fairly rigid and set in his ways and focused on only three things in life: Tori; his son, Taylor; and his company. Though he and Tori belong to the same tennis and swim club Jamie did, I rarely saw Liam hanging out there.
Yet Jamie had seemed to navigate situations with his family really well, and our times with them—birthday celebrations, summer holiday barbecues, occasional dinners—were always devoid of drama. Plus, when I force my brain to return to Saturday night, I recall Jamie saying that Tori had been picking his brain about a birthday gift for Drew. Hardly a sign of any trouble brewing among family members.
