Suddenly Read Free Page A

to compose herself. “Nothing to suggest she would harm herself. She was tired. She was upset about Tanya John. When I talked with her last—”
    “When was that?” Norman asked.
    “Yesterday morning in the office. She was on a tear because the lab messed up some tests, but that was typical Mara.” The tests had involved blood drawn from Todd Fiske, one of Mara’s favorite four-year-olds. Paige would have been angry, too. She hated drawing blood from a child. Now it would have to be drawn again.
    She couldn’t imagine telling Todd and his family that Mara was gone. She couldn’t imagine telling anyone .
    “Oh, Mara,” she whispered again. She needed to be away from this horrible place but couldn’t seem to leave. It wasn’t right that Mara was staying, not when she had so much yet to do.
     
    Mara’s family back in Eugene, Oregon, greeted Paige’s news with a silence that told none of their thoughts. Mara had been estranged from them for years. Paige was saddened, though not surprised, when they asked that she be buried in Tucker.
    “She chose to live there,” Thomas O’Neill said tersely. “She lived there longer than anywhere else.”
    “What kind of arrangements should I make?” Paige asked. She knew that the O’Neills were devoutly religious, and though Mara hadn’t been, Paige would have respected any request they made, especially one that showed caring.
    There was no request, just a short, “Use your judgment. You knew her better than we did.” Which saddened Paige all the more.
    “Will you come?” she asked, and held her breath.
    There was a pause, during which she felt an incredible pain on Mara’s behalf, then slowly, finally, a reluctant, “We’ll come.”
     
    Angie looked dumbfounded. “What?”
    Paige repeated herself, all the while reliving her own disbelief. Mara O’Neill was full of life and energy. The concept of death didn’t fit her.
    Angie’s eyes begged her to take back the words, and Paige wished she could. But denial was absurd, given what she had seen in the morgue.
    “My God,” Angie murmured after an agonizingly long and helpless minute. “Dead?”
    Paige took a shuddering breath. She had been the one to introduce Angie to Mara. They had become friends to the extent that rarely a weekend passed without Mara stopping at Angie’s, if not for Sunday brunch then for an afternoon to argue politics with Ben or sneak hot-fudge sundaes to Dougie.
    Dougie. Paige’s heart went out to him. Angie shielded him from life’s dark side, but there would be no shielding now. Death was absolute. There were no halfway measures, no reprieves.
    Angie was on the same wavelength as Paige. “Dougie will be crushed. He adored Mara. Just last Sunday they went hiking on the mountain.” She looked uncharacteristically rattled, but only for a minute, which was how long it took her to order her thoughts. Then she questioned Paige on the hows and wheres of Mara’s death. Paige related what she knew, which was far too little for Angie’s peace of mind.
    “What about the whys?” she wanted to know. “Suicide is the first thing that comes to mind when a person is found dead in her car in a closed garage with the engine running, but suicide doesn’t fit Mara any more than death does. It might have been an accident. Mara’s been looking tired. She might have fallen asleep without realizing the engine was on. But suicide? Without a cry for help? Without letting any of us know that she was even near the breaking point?”
    The absurdity of it frustrated Paige, too. She prided herself on being observant, but she hadn’t seen a thing to suggest Mara was on the edge.
    Angie barreled on. “What about her patients? They’ll have to be told. Most will hear about it through the grapevine and call us for confirmation. Should we let Ginny handle it from the front desk?”
    Ginny was an able receptionist, but juggling the appointment book was a far cry from grief counseling. Fortunately Paige