I'm Fine and Neither Are You

This is not a test. Life is messy and sometimes tragic and often just plain hard for a woman to weather. But when you step back for a moment, the whole of it is incredibly beautiful—and that is what we must choose to focus on.

xo, Jenny

I was giving the post a last look one morning when Matt texted to see how soon I could come over. I had started to panic, thinking something had happened to Cecily, when he sent a second text explaining that Jenny’s autopsy report had come in.

I had been in the office an hour and still had approximately three hundred and twelve things to do before lunch, but not a single one of them was a fraction as important. I told Matt I’d be there in fifteen minutes.

“Meeting,” I said to Sheryl, the receptionist, as I hurried past her desk. It was the first week of August and already the month felt like Augusts often do—both idle and rushed as everyone cashed in on unused vacation time and tried to enjoy what was left of a season that they had mostly spent indoors.

She raised an eyebrow. “Enjoy.”

This was the problem with having a shared office calendar: everyone had access to everyone else’s schedule. Sheryl knew full well that I didn’t have a single meeting planned until two. I almost came up with an excuse, but then I thought about Sanjay’s second request. If my eruption at Lorrie was any indication, I needed more practice. Well, no time like the present.

“I won’t,” I said, not turning to take in Sheryl’s response. “And I’ll be back when I’m back.”

When Matt answered the door, I nearly did a double take. He was wearing a faded Cubs T-shirt and athletic shorts, and his chin was covered with days-old stubble. I’d seen him the previous week after dropping Cecily off, and he’d looked like his usual clean-cut self then. Had the autopsy sent him over the edge?

“Penny,” he said. “Come in.”

I glanced around. There were papers and toys everywhere, and an overflowing basket of laundry in the middle of the hallway. This did not assuage my fears about Matt’s mental state.

“You took the morning off?” I asked as I followed him into the living room.

He ran a hand through his hair, which was as long as I had ever seen it. “I’m working from home today.”

“Great that you have the option,” I said.

Other than the din of air-conditioning, the house was still. Jenny’s voice pierced the silence. Too bad you’re not using it to spend time with your daughter.

I no longer startled when I heard her speaking to me; if anything, it had become a comfort. The Jenny in my head was sharper and more sarcastic than she had been when she was alive, and I was glad for that, too—it felt almost as though I was finally getting a glimpse of the person she had been hiding from me all those years.

Well, she wasn’t wrong about Matt’s priorities, I thought as I sat across from him on one of the gray velvet sofas. When I’d asked Cecily how she was doing last week, she’d flat-out told me she was lonely.

Matt leaned forward and handed me a sheet of paper that had been facedown on the coffee table. “I know you wanted answers, so here they are. You’re welcome to tell Sanjay what’s in this document, but otherwise please keep it to yourself.”

“I understand.” I glanced at the paper, then looked back at Matt for confirmation I should proceed. He nodded and I began to read.

Below Jenny’s name and personal information, a box had been checked. Manner of death: accident.

Beneath that was her cause of death: opioid toxicity.

My eyes, already moist with tears, traveled down the page to the toxicology findings. I inhaled sharply as the words began to register. Jenny had had oxycodone, acetaminophen, hydrocodone, and kratom in her blood and urine at the time of her death.

“What is kratom?” I asked.

“It’s an herb. It can make you feel euphoric and energized. It’s not illegal,” he added in a way that told me this was important to him.

But everything Jenny had been taking was legal. And all of it had proved to be lethal.

“Lots of people take kratom . . .” He looked away. “When they’re trying to get off narcotics.”

Then she had been well aware she had a problem. She might have even seen death lurking in the shadows.

“There are multiple painkillers listed here,” I said to Matt.

His eyes met mine. “I know.”

“Where was she getting them all? Was she buying them off the dark web or something?”

He looked away again. When he finally addressed me, there was a bitter edge to his voice. “You’d be surprised. She was seeing a couple different doctors, and apparently no one checked to see if anyone else was giving her the same thing. I mean, why would they? She was in pain, or at least she had been at one point. And she looked so . . . normal. I probably wouldn’t have even found out the extent of it if one of the pharmacies hadn’t called me on accident to confirm a prescription I knew she’d had filled the week before. I started looking for signs and suddenly it all added up.”

“Then you knew it was serious.”

He pressed his lids shut for several seconds. “In retrospect? Sure. But she said she was tapering off. She said she was getting better.”

“And you believed her.”

“Yes and no. We had been fighting about it the week before she died.”

But he left town anyway, Jenny whispered in my ear.

Matt sighed and looked off in the distance. “The thing is, Penny, Jenny loved the idea of me. I checked off all the boxes for her perfect husband—she even told me that on our second date. But I don’t know that the reality of me ever met her needs, which is probably why we had a hard time being together for more than an hour or two at a time without fighting. After a while I started to say yes every time I had a chance to be on the road because it seemed like it was easier on both of us. Still, I wouldn’t have been gone all the time if I had known how bad it was.” His eyes found mine again. “She flushed a bottle of pills in front of me and vowed it was over. I really thought she was getting better.”

“Damn it,” I muttered.

“I know it’s a lot.”

“It is, but I wanted answers. Except the one thing this report doesn’t answer,” I said, poking my finger at the paper, “is why Jenny would hide this from me.”

He sighed, then said, “I don’t know what to tell you, except that as my therapist keeps reminding me, addiction makes liars out of people.”

Maybe. But didn’t their lies quickly come to light? My mother’s sister, Jo, had drunk herself into the grave, while a man I had dated briefly in college couldn’t function without a steady stream of various drugs pumping through his veins. One of my old editors had let bourbon destroy his marriage and annihilate his relationship with his children before finally getting sober. The editor had seemed like a jolly, high-functioning drunk. Even so, in every case, I had known the person had been struggling. How had I missed it with Jenny?

“They don’t start that way and they don’t mean to do harm, but the need takes over,” said Matt. “It was important to Jenny that you thought she was fine. She didn’t want to hurt you.”

Hurt me! Had I really seemed so fragile? Damn it, if only life came with a rewind button. I would do it all so very differently.

He stood. “I’ve got to get in the shower and get cleaned up.”

I frowned. “I thought you were working from home today.”

“Just for the morning. Our CEO is already having a conniption about how much I’ve been out of the office this summer.”

“Really? After all you’ve been through?”

“Yeah, well, there’s not much I can do about it,” he said.

Sure there is, said a voice, and for once I couldn’t say for certain whether it was my own or Jenny’s.

My underarms were damp and my forehead was growing clammy. But I had to say something.

“Cecily’s lonely,” I said. “She told me herself last week.”

He stared at me. “You know, Penny, I’m beginning to feel like you think I’m a shitty parent.”

If by shitty he meant the kind of parent who wasn’t making the best decisions for his daughter, then yes. But that wasn’t the point. “It’s not about what I think,” I told him. “I love Cecily, and if I know she needs something, then I have an obligation to speak up.”

He crossed his arms. “I’m her father . I know what she needs better than anyone else.”

“I respect that. I’m not trying to cross any boundaries. I’m just passing on what I’ve observed.”

“Fine,” he said.

I stood from the sofa. “Thank you for having me over and sharing the report with me.”

“No problem,” he said stiffly.

“By the way, I’m done with the last post for Jenny’s site,” I said.

He looked at me blankly.

“The one you asked me to write?”

“Oh. Right.” He had already started for the stairs. “Let’s talk about that some other time.” But his voice told me that we wouldn’t be talking about anything anytime soon.

I got into my car, drove a few blocks from the Sweets’ house, and pulled over to put my head against the steering wheel and sob. The last thing I wanted was to be on bad terms with Matt. What if our already tenuous relationship was destroyed? What if he took Cecily and moved across the country and I never saw her again? Was this the price of honesty? Because if so, it wasn’t worth it.

I cried until I looked like I’d just gotten a facial from a swarm of yellow jackets. Then I wiped my eyes and continued my drive back to the office.

After ducking into the lobby bathroom to splash water on my face and reapply makeup, I returned to my desk to discover that during the hour I was away, Yolanda had emailed twice and left me a voicemail. She was on vacation for the week, but had met a potential donor while traveling and needed me to speak to him. Immediately.