“I have.”
“So, within what? Twenty or thirty minutes of Polly?”
“That’s right. But we rarely saw one another. We were never close. She’d call every now and then but that was about it.”
“And when you learned she had cancer, you didn’t offer to help in any way?”
Kevin didn’t answer, though he was no longer staring at his fingers. In fact, he looked rather upset. He gave both agents a smirk and then got to his feet. He walked into the kitchen, where he opened the fridge and got out a beer. He sat at the bar area with his back to them and started drinking.
Melissa seemed heartbroken over his actions. She looked at him in both disgust and sadness and then back to the agents, as if embarrassed. “Kevin has been hurt for far too long,” she whispered. “When Mom died, he changed. He shut down and closed himself off to everyone. And when he found out Polly had the very same cancer that killed our mother…he became hopeless. The most he’s done is reach out to a local end of life foundation and got us set up to start the paperwork.”
“End of life foundation?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, it’s a non-profit that does what they can to help ease expenses on things like travel, bills, groceries, things like that. We’d just now started the paperwork and…well, I guess we won’t be needing them now.”
Rachel found herself looking over to Kevin, sitting in the kitchen. She knew that Melissa was probably right; he was hurting and simply dealing with it the best way he knew how. But there were also several signs of guilt present in the way he was behaving. It was almost like he might be hiding something.
Without looking away, she leaned over to Jack. “You good here for a second?”
“Yeah…” he said. She could tell that he was aware of what was on her mind and was not a fan of the idea.
“Excuse me, would you?” Rachel said to Melissa.
She got up and walked into the kitchen. She walked to the other side of the bar area rather than sitting in the stool next to Kevin. Standing across from him with the bar between them created a scene that was reminiscent of an interrogation room. She’d used this little trick before, knowing that it brought the person in question around to a more agreeable way of speaking. It subconsciously made them feel as if they were a subject of great interest rather than being questioned.
“You mind if I talk with you away from your sister?” she asked.
“I’d really rather not.”
“You understand that we’re only trying to help, right?”
“Of course I understand that. I just also understand that I am the very last person you’d want to be speaking with right now.”
“And why is that?”
He allowed himself time to think by taking a long swallow from his beer. When he set it back down on the bar, Rachel saw emotion passing across his face. “Because it makes me seem like a monster when you hear the truth…the truth that I’m relieved she’s dead. I’d rather have had her die like this, quickly and unexpectedly, than to have to suffer through her final days like our mother did.”
“That doesn’t make you a monster. If anything, I think there might be some sympathy buried inside such a sentiment.”
“You’d be the only person to think so, if that’s the case.” He got to his feet, still holding his bottle of beer, and headed for the back door. “Please understand…I’m just not up to this right now.”
He opened the back door and stepped out onto a small porch, closing the door gently behind him. Rachel remained where she was for a moment, letting what he’d said sink in. At its core, it was fairly suspicious, but there had been real hurt and pain in what he’d said. And if he was truly wrestling with such a thing, it made sense that he would not want to talk about it.
Going out in an unexpected blink as opposed to a slow, painful death, she thought. Makes sense.
More than that, given the last few months of her life, she also found that she could relate a little too well.