Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup

Author:Kate Braestrup [BRAESTRUP, KATE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000
ISBN: 9780316007788
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2007-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

The body lay in a little hollow behind a rock. Her name was Betsy. She had short dark hair, and her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping on her back there in the yellow leaves.

Don, along with Wardens Hatch and Robitaille, went to the body. They began taking photographs of it in situ, in case the medical examiner or state police detectives would need them later.

Lieutenant Trisdale and I walked down the road through relentless sleet to keep a rendezvous with Betsy’s brother at an intersection where the road was a little less treacherous and sloppy. We would be giving official notification right there.

As we walked, I fished my black clerical dickey out of my jacket pocket and fastened it around my neck. I tucked the edges under the lapels of my uniform coat.

“Do I look okay?” I asked Fritz, turning in the sleet to model for him.

“You look like the nuns who used to whack my knuckles with a ruler when I was in school. Listen, Reverend Mother, as long as you’re here, couldn’t you pray for it to stop raining?”

“I’m a Unitarian Universalist. We don’t do weather,” I said. The lieutenant snorted.

Fritz had Betsy’s diary in his hand. The last entry was her suicide note. The diary had a bright blue cover and a bunch of little bits and pieces of paper—envelopes and whatnot—tucked in here and there, and a pen stuck into the spiral binding.

The brother’s name was Dan. Dan and Betsy, Dan and Betsy, I repeated to myself. Remembering the names seems the least I can do in a situation like this, so I try a foolish mnemonic: Da[m]n the spot in the rainy woods where we found a bit of Betsy.

We spotted the car coming and stood waiting in the roadway. Dan drove up beside the lieutenant and stopped. He rolled down the window. Tilting slightly forward, one hand on the roof of the car, water dripping from the brim of his cap, Fritz said, “I’m sorry. We found Betsy’s body. I wish there was a way to make this easier for you, but she’s dead.”

Dan nodded calmly. He didn’t say anything.

“From the evidence we have so far, we think that after she dropped her son off at daycare, she drove out here and parked at a turnout, just down this road. She had at least forty-five sleeping pills, according to the labels on the pill bottles, and if she took all of those, it would have been enough to kill her. We found pictures of the baby in the car, and we think she probably sat there for a little while, looking at the pictures, and maybe she got some comfort from that. Then she left the car, walked up the hill, lay down in the leaves, and went to sleep.”

Dan nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

“This is our chaplain, Reverend Kate Braestrup.”

I stepped forward, shook hands. “I’m so sorry, Dan,” I said.

Dan looked up at me. His eyes caught on the collar

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