"Dear Sara, I am sad that you are so unhappy and angry. And sad that you require a validation of your feelings that I cannot give."
She stared at the email for the umpteenth time. Weighed the knife in her hand, pricked her finger on the blade.
Last year, she was slicing watermelon for a party and nearly severed a fingertip before she felt the sting. Four stitches for that moment of carelessness, the scar almost invisible, the cut was so clean. That was why she had chosen this weapon; it was a "demonstrated success," her former boss would say.
Pills had always been her first choice, the painless eternal sleep. Well, except for that time she stood on the Golden Gate Bridge and stared into the cold depths, thinking the impact would take care of things. But she never liked to make a scene in public, so she just stood there shivering, watching the fog drift in and obscure the Marin headlands.
Then she worried that pills – even a full bottle of Vicodin mixed with Valium and Flexeril and vodka – would only turn her into a vegetable, drooling her life away in some long-term warehouse. So now, it was pills and vodka and a knife. No margin for error, although a bit messier to clean up.
If Julia were to find her, she wouldn't mind so much; Julia deserved to see it. But her cousin was two thousand miles away. It was her friends, those who stood by her, who would be the first responders. It was really unfair, but she had done her best to spare them, scheduling an email to the police after an appropriate interval.
That only left the cats. She hated to leave them most; their unconditional love had sustained her when all else failed. They didn't like being separated from her, crying at the door if she closed herself off. She still had some sedatives left from Mollie's last days, so she put them to sleep and closed the bedroom door. She knew the neighbors would take good care of them.
