Before the situation could deteriorate, the woman who seemed to be friendly with David, and was now seated across from Jordan, spoke up: “I’ve been trying to make myself talk about my family, too. Thank you, Jordan, for giving me the courage.”
All eyes turned to her.
“I’m Kay,” the woman said.
A little taller than Jordan, her naturally red hair with some streaks of white, Kay was about the age Jordan’s mother would have been. What had once very likely been a striking figure had plumped up some, and her pretty face bore lines that gave it a perpetually melancholy expression that smiling didn’t entirely erase. Her eyes were big and blue behind bifocal lenses with dark-blue plastic frames.
“My sister, Katherine, and brother-in-law, Walt Gregory, died two years ago.”
The group listened in respectful silence, the keen interest and sympathy of everyone quite obvious to Jordan.
“I went over to their house for dinner,” Kay said, “but when I got there, no one answered. The doorbell just rang and rang...”
Though she occasionally glanced around the circle, her eyes briefly drifting past Jordan, Kay didn’t seem to see any of them. Her voice never changed pitch. She might have been reciting a poem or sharing a recipe.
“When I tried the door, it was unlocked. I didn’t think anything of it, really — Katherine might have been in the kitchen, using a noisy appliance or something, and Walt could have been watching the TV in the den. So I just went inside. But Katherine wasn’t in the kitchen, Walt wasn’t in the den, they weren’t anywhere downstairs.”
Next to Jordan, David fidgeted. No one else here had heard this story, she felt, but he had. The toe of the writer’s sneaker was grinding at the tile floor like he was trying to stub out a cigarette butt.
“I called and called, but no one answered,” Kay said. “Just my own voice a little bit. They had a huge great room with a vaulted ceiling and the echo just seemed to bounce around in that big empty space. But after that... just silence. There had to be an easy explanation. They’d forgotten I was coming over, maybe, or got called away. No reason, really, to be uneasy, or scared. But I was. I was.”
This woman had felt the same kind of fear that Jordan had, on her own terrible night.
“Finally,” Kay said, swallowing, “I worked up the nerve to go upstairs...”
The tissue box made its way around to the speaker. She nodded thanks, took one, and instead of using it to dab at tears, wound it around her index finger, unwound it, and wound it again as she continued.
“They were on the bed, holding hands. They each had a single bullet hole in their temple, and a pistol was on the floor, next to Walt’s side of the bed.”
Kay was shaking a little now, the tears coming, the tissue finally finding its purpose.
“The police called it murder slash suicide,” Kay said, then, with a nervous, embarrassed smile, seemed to have found her composure. A moment later, she began weeping uncontrollably.
Jordan rose and crossed to the woman, vaguely aware that all eyes were on her, but for the weeping woman’s, whose face was buried in her tissue-held hands.
“Jordan...” Dr. Hurst began.
The sound of the doctor’s voice caused Kay to look up. When she did, the younger woman bent over and awkwardly wrapped her arms around Kay and held her close.
The older woman, still crying but less savagely now, clung fiercely to Jordan, who hugged her back, even harder.
When the tears subsided, still in the young woman’s embrace, Kay looked up at her. “That was... was very kind, dear.”
After a tiny smile and tinier nod, Jordan straightened and walked back to her seat and resumed her previous rather stiff posture, as if nothing had happened.
Dr. Hurst said, “Jordan, as Kay said, that was a very kind gesture... no, not gesture, but impulse. What prompted you to... express yourself in that way?”
The look Jordan gave the doctor was a withering one. “If I knew, it wouldn’t be an impulse, would it?”
This seemed to momentarily stun Hurst, but a few small smiles blossomed in the circle, including David and Levi.
Later, outside in the sunny coolness of the early spring afternoon, David — with Levi tagging along — approached Jordan. Kay was lingering nearby as well, but didn’t join in.
“Sometimes Hurst just doesn’t get it,” Elkins said.
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “Not everything has to be discussed. You saw somebody crying, it touched you, you showed a little support, end of story. Not everything needs to be analyzed.”
“Or,” Levi said, hands in his jeans jacket, “psychoanalyzed.”
“I guess she’s just trying to help,” Jordan shrugged, not quite believing she actually said that.
“We’re gonna get some coffee,” Elkins said. “Wanna come?”
“I don’t think so. Thanks.”
Levi said, “Aw, come on. You kind of owe me one.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. You scared the ever-lovin’ piss out of me last week. I thought you were gonna tear my head off.”
Jordan smiled a little. “Sometimes I overreact.”
“Not that you aren’t cute enough to hit on. If I was into that.”
David gave her half a grin. “Come on, kid. You’ll love the place.”
The coffee shop, a couple of blocks away, had been renovated from an old bakery. The counter where Jordan ordered her coffee was a display case that dated back to that original purpose, filled with baked goodies that once upon a time would have called out to her. She used to have a terrible sweet tooth. The night she lost her parents, it left. Jordan figured Dr. Hurst would have some windy explanation about the meaning of that; but to her it just meant empty calories she didn’t have to worry about.
She took her coffee over to David and Kay, who were already sitting at a high-top table near the shop’s front window. The writer gave her a nod, and Kay added a warm smile, as Jordan sat down. Of the dozen or so tables and booths, maybe a third were full. Levi had been just behind Jordan in line, and caught up with them.
David, she assumed, wanted to talk to her about the similarities between the murders of his family and hers. Maybe not tonight, maybe this would be socializing to lead up to that, but she felt that was what this was about.
She didn’t know anything about Levi’s situation — similarities between his tragedy and theirs, she wondered? — but she assumed that Kay was joining them only because David seemed to be her ride.
Jordan was glad they had avoided a booth. Sharing a side with somebody might make her uneasy. Having her own chair, her own space, made this easier. The skinny skater boy sat down next to her, the aroma of his caramel-Frappuccino-whatever invading her space in a much more welcome way.
Levi managed to find room to open his laptop on the small table and fire it up.
“First, let me introduce myself,” he said. “Levi Mills.”
There were no last names in group — she only knew David’s was Elkins because of his status as a best-selling thriller writer.
Levi was holding out his hand.
Jordan didn’t take it. “Sorry. Germaphobe. But my last name’s Rivera, if that helps.”
Kay said, “Isenberg is mine,” and nodded and smiled.
“I think you know who I am,” the writer said.
“Right.” She bounced her eyes from David to Levi. “We’ve been in group together three weeks. Let’s skip the b.s. What’s this about?”
Levi, his fingertips resting at the bottom of his keyboard, said, “I think you know. Your case.”
“My case? You mean, my family getting butchered?” The words came out with a little more attitude than was probably necessary.