Last to Die

closed against the night chill. The tray with the teapot and china cups and covered sugar bowl was on the side table, where it had been the morning that Jane and Maura had sat in this office. The teacups were clean and stacked, the pot empty. Anna had taken the time to rinse and dry the teapot and cups before she’d ended her life. Perhaps it was a final act of consideration to those who’d have to tidy up in the aftermath.
    Then why had she chosen such a messy way to die? An exit that had splattered blood on the path and forever stained the memories of students and colleagues?
    “It doesn’t make sense. Does it?”
    She turned to see Julian standing in the doorway. As usual, the dog was at his feet, and like his master Bear looked subdued. Weighed down by sorrow.
    “I thought you’d gone to bed,” she said.
    “I can’t sleep. I went to talk to you, but you weren’t in your room.”
    She sighed. “I can’t sleep, either.”
    The boy hesitated in the doorway, as though to step into Anna’s office would be disrespectful to the dead. “She never forgot a birthday ,” he said. “A kid would come down to breakfast and find some funny little gift waiting. A Yankees cap for a boy who liked baseball. A little crystal swan for a girl who got braces. She gave me a present even when it wasn’t my birthday. A compass. So I’d always know where I was going, and would always remember where I’ve been.” His voice thinned to a whisper. “It’s what always happens to people I care about.”
    “What does?”
    “They leave me.”
They die
was what he meant, and it was true. The last of his family had perished last winter, leaving him alone in the world.
    Except for me. He still has me
.
    She pulled him into her arms and held him. Julian was as close to a son as she’d ever have, yet in so many ways they were still strangers to each other. He stood stiffly in her arms, a wooden statue embraced by a woman who was equally uneasy with affection. In this way they were sadly alike, hungry for connection, yet untrusting of it. At last she felt the tension go out of him, and he returned the hug, melting against her.
    “I won’t leave you, Rat,” she said. “You can always count on me.”
    “People say that. But things happen.”
    “Nothing will happen to me.”
    “You know you can’t promise that.” He pulled away and turned toward Dr. Welliver’s desk. “She said we could count on
her
. And look what happened.” He touched the roses in the vase; one pink petal dropped off, fluttering down like a dying butterfly. “Why did she do it?”
    “Sometimes there are no answers. I struggle with that question far too often in my own job. Families trying to understand why someone they love committed suicide.”
    “What do you tell them?”
    “Never to blame themselves. Not to feel guilty. Because we bear responsibility for our own actions alone. Not for anyone else’s.”
    She didn’t understand why her answer made his head suddenly droop . He ran a hand across his eyes, a quick, embarrassed swipe that left a glistening streak on his face.
    “Rat?” she asked softly.
    “I
do
feel guilty.”
    “No one knows why she did it.”
    “Not about Dr. Welliver.”
    “Then who?”
    “Carrie.” He looked at her. “It’s her birthday next week.”
    His dead sister. Last winter, the girl had perished, along with their mother, in a lonely Wyoming valley. He seldom talked about his family, seldom talked about anything that had happened during those desperate weeks when he and Maura had fought to stay alive. She thought he’d put the ordeal behind him, but of course he hadn’t. He is more like me than I realized, she thought. We both bury our sorrows where no one can see them.
    “I should have saved her,” he said.
    “How could you? Your mother wouldn’t let her leave.”
    “I should have
made
her leave. I was the man in the family. It was my job to keep her safe.”
    A responsibility that should never fall on the shoulders of a mere sixteen-year-old boy, she thought. He might be as tall as a man, with a man’s broad shoulders, but she saw a boy’s tears on his face. He swiped them with his sleeve and glanced around for tissues.
    She went into the adjoining bathroom and unspooled a wad of toilet paper. As she tore it off, a sparkle caught her eye, like glittering bits of sand scattered on the toilet seat. She touched it and stared at white granules adhering to her fingers. Noticed that there were more