“I know, Adam, I know. None of this was your fault.”
That seems to help. Adam doesn’t have anyone to talk to about these things, about his guilt. There was no Survivors of Suicide for Adam, no therapist. A guy like Adam would never go for that.
I had someone. I had Simon. Simon listened. He listened to everything I had to say. He listened to me talk about the sister that I loved more than I ever realized after her death, and how I loved those girls. He didn’t judge me when I told him why I moved to Chicago, how I had used a private investigator to find Nick, and I was waiting for him to return to Chicago so I could kill him.
He tried to talk me out of it. He told me it wouldn’t solve anything. He told me I’d cleaned myself up, I was sober now, and I should focus on starting a new life and spending time with the girls. He proposed marriage and talked about us having a family of our own. But even when I said no, he never left me. He said I should move on, move forward. He said that’s what he had done with Lauren. He’d put Lauren behind him. And I should do the same with Nick.
But he didn’t judge me when I told him I couldn’t let it go, I couldn’t let Nick get away with it. He helped me pack my stuff and move to Delavan, so I could have some distance from Chicago, so nobody could possibly connect me to Nick or Chicago when I killed him.
And I was ready to do it. I was waiting for the summer. In the summer, so my original plan went, I’d come down to Chicago, run into Nick in a bar, and hope he’d take me home with him. If that didn’t work, I’d find some other way.
And then Simon saw Lauren on the street in Chicago last May, and my simple little plan to slit that monster’s throat turned into a much more complicated plan for both of us to find peace.
Did we find peace? Did I?
“Adam,” I say softly. “Macy really wants to show you her pierced ears. You still have two beautiful daughters.”
“I know, I know,” he says, wiping at his face, composing himself. He takes some deep breaths and looks at me. “Okay. It just all kinda came flooding—I’m okay. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“You wanna know something?” he says. “And I wouldn’t say this to anyone else.”
“Shoot.”
He takes another breath and looks at me. “I wish I could have killed him myself. I really do.”
I tuck my arm in his. We head back to the house, Macy waiting inside the door, jumping up and down.
“I know the feeling,” I say.
103
Simon
At ten-thirty the following Monday morning, it’s time for my call. I can’t remember if he was supposed to call me or the other way around, but he calls at the exact time.
“Dennis,” I say.
“Simon. How are you?”
“Any better and they’d have to arrest me,” I say.
“Well, I wish I could say the same. We’re going to miss you.”
“I appreciate that. And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Dennis. I really do.”
“It’s been my pleasure. So, should we go over the allocations one more time?”
“Please.”
“Okay,” he says. “Five million to the American Stroke Association.”
“Right.”
“Five million to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.”
“Yes.”
“Five million to the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health.”
“Correct.”
“Five million to the National Runaway Safeline.”
“Yes.”
“Oh-kay,” he says. “And you took out that million a few months ago.”
Right. That’s for something else.
“So,” he continues, “that leaves only a couple hundred thousand left over. You could leave it with us, or I could transfer it to a money market.”
“Divide it up equally and add it to the five million we’re giving each of those groups,” I say.
“You don’t want to keep even a little for yourself, Simon?”
No. I don’t want one penny of that money.
104
Simon
“Thank you, Professor Southern. Professor Dobias, we’ll hear from you, now.”
The law school faculty, nearly a hundred professors, sit in comfortable leather chairs in a roughly semicircular pattern in one of the many glorious spaces at our school, a room like most others bearing the name of a magnanimous benefactor.
I stand at the front of the room, my one opportunity to make my pitch orally. Yes, I’m wearing a suit and tie.