Page 157 of Darling Venom
Hannah comes over after a call from Walter and forces me to sleep. I agree because I don’t want to look at her face. It’s a reminder of a bad decision in a long line of bad decisions.
12:01 a.m.
Regret trying to sleep. All I see is Kellan when I close my eyes. Falling from the rooftop. In slow-motion. Fast-forward. Real time. It hurts every way.
By the fourth replay, I am convinced he regrets it.
I’ll never know.
2:30 a.m.
Wake up. Slept like shit and barely functioning. Email my receptionist, asking her to cancel all my appointments for the year. Don’t care how she’ll manage that.
I try to eat, puke it up, and discover a voicemail from Kel. Later, I learn he sent it an hour before his death.
Still haven’t listened to it.
Kellan’s death had coincided with my malpractice insurance renewal. It required a psych eval with a shrink who’d decided it would be a good idea to force me to relive the day my brother died.
He’d forced me to jot down what I remembered from that night on a list, so we could tackle each timestamp. Something about reliving history in order to let it go.
As if I’d ever let go of my share of the blame in my little brother’s death.
As if I’d ever be able to.
I sat in the dark, legs tucked beneath my desk, reading the notebook I still kept from my days meeting Dr. Felton.
The existence of Kel’s letter upended my timeline.
When did he write it? When did he drop it off? Did he give it directly to Charlie? Did that happen on his Death Day?
The one thing I knew, without a doubt, was that it was a suicide letter.
If Charlie didn’t want me to see it, it meant she—they—had something to hide.
The ugliness of my relationship with Kel pretty much inked into my brain what t
hat something was. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn the letter he’d produced before his death consisted of a five-thousand-word Tate Marchetti hatefest.
But that only posed more questions.
Namely, why didn’t Terry receive one? Kel worshipped his father more than any god known to man. Seemed odd he wouldn’t write him one. Unless there was more to their story than I knew. A question I would never ask Terry, because… well, fuck him.
The intercom went off.
I pressed a button, accepting the live feed.
Sylvia’s voice echoed in my office. “Dr. Marchetti, I’ve canceled your appointments for the day as you requested. Dr. Bernard agreed to cover your three o’clock, though he seemed unhappy about it being a routine checkup and—”
I released the button.
Didn’t care to hear the rest.
All I cared about was figuring out where Charlie’s letter fit into the timeline.
I spent the next two hours trying to piece together the puzzle, knowing the only way I’d ever get answers was to actually ask her. But that required picking up the phone and calling her. The last time I did that, I’d ended up with her in my house, invading my space.
The door creaked open. I saw a leather, memory-foam loafer step into my office and followed it up to the Baldwin-brother knockoff it belonged to.
