Page 30 of Indigo Ridge (The Edens 1)

I spent the next fifteen minutes telling him about Lily Green and the other suicides. I’d told him how Lily’s mother had collapsed into my arms when I’d gone to her home and told her the horrific news. Her scream had been so full of agony that I’d never forget that noise.

Heartbreak was an ugly, black sound.

I’d stayed with Melina Green for hours that night. I’d held her hand as she’d called her ex-husband and told him about Lily. Then I’d waited with her as he’d driven the two hours from Missoula. When he’d arrived, his eyes red rimmed and his soul broken over his daughter’s death, I’d given him my condolences, then left them to grieve.

Yesterday, I’d stopped by Melina’s house to check on her. She’d answered the door wearing a bathrobe and tear-stained cheeks. And once again, she’d fallen into my arms, and I’d held her as she’d cried.

But Melina was a strong woman. She’d collected herself and begun to talk about Lily. For an hour, she’d told me about the bright, beautiful light her daughter had been.

Lily had been twenty-one and living with her mom to save money. When I

’d asked Melina if she’d found a suicide note in Lily’s room, she’d confessed that she hadn’t had the emotional strength to check. But her ex had gone into Lily’s bedroom while he’d been in Quincy and hadn’t found anything.

“I’m trying to be sensitive and not push too hard with the mother,” I told Cole. “But my impression was that she and Lily were very close. She’s shocked. Truly shocked that Lily would kill herself.”

“I can’t imagine her pain,” Cole said. “She might not want to think about the signs that she missed. Or that her daughter was hiding anything from her. You need to talk to other people who knew Lily.”

“That’s my plan. I started with the officers and staff here.”

“And what did they say?”

“No one knew her well. One of the officers said that her son graduated with Lily, but they’d lost touch when her son moved away for college. Most of the others just knew her from the bank where she worked as a teller. Everyone says that Lily was always smiling. That she was a happy young woman.”

That didn’t necessarily mean anything. I knew how it felt to feel entirely lost and alone but force a smile for the outside world.

“What about the other suicides?”

“The reports are thin.”

The former chief hadn’t been a stickler for details. That was something the staff here was going to have to change because I wasn’t going to let short, hurried reports be the standard.

“Last year, a seventeen-year-old boy hung himself in his basement. Before that, it’s all been women. Three, including Lily, jumped to their deaths off a cliff. Another slit her wrists in the bathtub. Another downed a bottle of prescription pills. And the first, ten years ago, shot herself with her father’s pistol. I guess he was a cop.”

No one in the station had wanted to talk about that case.

“Damn.” Cole blew out a long breath. “That’s a lot for such a small town. Especially because it’s mostly women.”

“Exactly.” Suicide rates were over three times higher in men. Yet in Quincy, it was like the statistics had flip-flopped.

“It’s not unheard of but it gives me pause.”

“Me too. It’s not necessarily out of the normal range, but the girls were all in their twenties. Typically, I would have expected them to be younger. Dealing with high school stuff, you know? These girls were all working and transitioning to their adult lives. The high school problems should have largely been behind them.”

“Were they all from Quincy?”

“Yes.”

“Even though they were older, they were probably still connected to it. Their old acquaintances, good and bad. The town.”

“True.”

“What does your gut say?” he asked.

“It’s unsettled,” I admitted. “Maybe if we had found a note or a journal or anything that showed this girl was struggling, I wouldn’t feel so uneasy.”

“Keep looking. Keep talking to people.”

“I’m ruffling feathers.”