Suicide
What had Mac said? Tomorrow everything would be gone. Did she mean herself too?
Every hand I shake, I look into the person's face and wonder what they know. It didn't say in the announcement in the paper. Maybe they think my dad had a heart attack while he was driving. I don't want anyone to know. Because it's not like we really know for sure. I don't want people talking about him and thinking he did something when nobody knows for sure that he did.
Dodie Dunstan died last night," she said.
Strangely, my first thought was that Dodie had a last name. Other than Doorknob, that is. Was that how you talked about a dead person? You used her full name?
Ms. Samuels' voice caught, but she continued. "The police don't suspect foul play."
"That means what?" I asked, confused.
"She offed herself. Suicide," Jaz said, turning his intense stare in my direction for the first time all morning. He pursed his lips, considering. "She seems like the pill type to me. She wouldn't want to see blood.
She began dreaming about him in the dark dream, the one with the endless tunnels, stone walls that slid by cold under her fingertips, invisible because it was too dark to see. Hand outstretched, she would move forward, never knowing if she was progressing toward an exit or if at some point she had turned around and begun moving back toward the place she had come from, a place she could not remember.
We had the top down on our old Le Baron and the sun was beating from a sky that was nothing but blue. It was my mom's turn to drive, so I was stretched out in the passenger seat, watching Saskatchewan slide by, thinking there must be a couple dozen different ways for a guy to kill himself.
