Hugh’s mug shots in her mind.
“I think my money bought a better answer than that, don’t you?”
“I know my sister,” answered Hugh after a moment’s pause, “and she wasn’t suicidal.” He picked up his phone, again showing Nina the picture of a smiling woman at the seashore. “Does she look depressed to you?”
Nina felt a burst of sympathy for Hugh. “Depression wears many masks,” she said. “I know it’s hard to accept, but what we see on the outside doesn’t always reflect what’s going on inside.” Nina thought it highly doubtful he’d read excerpts from Emma’s diary, as she had.
“You sound just like the police,” Hugh said bitterly. “They jumped right to suicide because Emma was seeing a therapist. But she wasn’t in therapy because she was depressed. Simon was making her crazy. She never saw her friends. She stopped seeing me, our parents, all of us. There was always some issue, and Simon was at the center of it all.”
Nina had a theory: Hugh needed someone to blame for Emma’s death and found the perfect scapegoat in his former brother-in-law. It gave him a motive for his accusations. What she still didn’t have was evidence to refute his claims.
“He controlled her,” Hugh continued. “What she did. Where she went. Everything. He took her over, completely, even what she looked like.”
“That doesn’t prove anything, Hugh.”
“Yeah, and neither did her suicide note. It was short and sure as shit didn’t explain why she did it. All it said was: I’m sorry. I can’t take this anymore. What the hell is that? It could have been a note she’d written after a fight. For all I know he had copied her handwriting.”
“Seems like a bit of a stretch to me,” said Nina.
“Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that Emma had never talked about taking her life. It happened out of the blue. One day she’s fine, and the next she ODs intentionally on her pain meds and Ambien.”
But Nina knew all this. Just as she knew that the police had questioned Simon after his wife’s death. They’d done a deep dive into his computer, looking for affairs, incriminating Google searches, illegal drug purchases on the Dark Web, contacts with nefarious individuals, recently purchased life insurance policies, finding nothing to make them remotely suspicious. They had talked to friends who said Simon was a wonderful, attentive husband. There were no signs of abuse, no reports of domestic violence.
“Had your sister overdosed at any other time?”
Hugh returned a grim nod. “Yeah, it happened a few times. Her chronic pain was getting tough to manage.”
“Why was she on pain meds?”
Hugh shrugged. “I don’t know what started it. Emma had a good career as an accountant before she quit her job. That was about a year after she and Simon got married. Simon blamed the job for her downfall; said it was too much pressure on her. You ask me, I don’t think he ever wanted Emma to work. Didn’t like her having her own money. You know that’s one way abusers try to control you. Like pushers, man, they make you dependent.”
That revelation would have alarmed Nina, but Simon was extremely generous with his money, even putting her on his checking account, and he’d been excited when she got the job, only voicing major concerns after Maggie started having troubles.
“He was always going on about how he could provide,” Hugh continued. “Then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, Emma starts suffering chronic pain. Work pressures, she said, but I think Simon somehow put the idea in her head so he could get her hooked on pain pills. Next thing you know, she’s popping opioids like they’re Pez candy. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated her habit.” Nina caught the glint in Hugh’s eyes. “Back then, man, it was like any unexplained twinge got an oxy prescription and refills to go with it. Eventually, she ended up leaving her job. She couldn’t function anymore.”
Nina knew one cause of chronic pain was depression, which aligned with Simon’s story. As a whole, though, despite decades of research, the condition was still poorly understood and notoriously hard to control.
Work pressures. Depression. Chronic pain. Drug abuse. Interesting, thought Nina. Was Simon afraid that Nina, too, would become overwhelmed with her job and stop functioning, as Emma had done? Maybe Nina’s career was a reminder of all he had lost. A part of Nina relaxed because she believed that yes, indeed, that was exactly the case.
“What can you tell