Final Breath

Sydney squinted at her. 'Why are you doing this?'

'Because you and Eli are family,' Helen answered matter-of-factly. 'And my kid brother is acting like a dickhead--if I can borrow a term my boys overuse. I hope you slugged him back.'

The temporary living arrangement with Joe's sister and her teenage sons should have been awkward, but it was oddly ideal for everyone. Eli had his cool older cousins to help buffer the blow of his parents' impending separation. They'd been through it before when Helen had thrown their dad out of the house for the final time three years before. Eli asked his mother about her bruised left cheek, which makeup didn't quite conceal. She told her son that she'd run into a door, and he believed her.

Between Joe's visiting Eli at Helen's house, and Sydney's trips back and forth as she finished all the packing at North Spaulding Avenue, running into each other was unavoidable. Other people were usually around, so Sydney and Joe were civil to each other. But every time she saw him, he looked so forlorn.

'Let him suffer,' her sister-in-law advised her.

Sydney didn't tell Helen the reason she'd decided to leave Joe. She had a hunch that perhaps her sister-in-law already knew. It didn't really matter. Sydney was grateful to Helen for helping her survive that miserable week in limbo.

Sydney had moved all of her things out of the North Spaulding house--along with everything that originally belonged to her family. Eli had taken about forty percent of his stuff, mostly things he would need over the summer. Unlike her, Eli would be coming back for visits--court appointed, once they'd started divorce proceedings.

'We haven't discussed divorce yet,' Joe had written in that awful letter she'd received today. 'And I hope we can keep the situation status quo for a few more weeks. I need this break from you and Eli...'

Sydney took another sip of pinot grigio from the Speed Racer jelly glass. She stared at the headlights of cars on the 520 floating bridge in the distance. A cool wind came off the lake. She touched the side of her face that had been black and blue for several days back in May. For a while, she'd thought it would never stop hurting.

That damn letter. Eli obviously knew where she'd stashed it. She'd caught him prying into that breakfront drawer earlier tonight. It was what had started this latest fracas.

Getting to her feet, Sydney carried her glass of wine inside, then closed and double-locked the kitchen door. She stepped into her office and switched on her computer. It always took a moment to warm up; so she headed into the dining room. She dug Joe's letter from the built-in breakfront's bottom drawer, then returned to her little office and sat down in front of the computer. Her new e-mail messages popped up: a bunch of spam from Macy's, AOL, Amazon.com, and others, and what looked like a fan e-mail: 'Thank You' from [email protected].

She deleted the spam e-mail, then glanced at Joe's letter again. She could understand him not wanting to see her, but why brush off poor Eli, who adored him?

Sydney ripped up the letter. She was about to toss the torn pieces away in the trash can by her desk, but hesitated. She imagined Eli going through her trash later, finding the scraps and taping them back together again-- only to discover that his beloved dad needed a break from him.

Leaving the scraps of Joe's letter on the corner of her desk, she decided to toss them in the garbage outside after she checked her e-mail. She clicked her mouse to open up the thank-you message:

Dear Sydney,

It was so thoughtful of you to send those beautiful flowers. I m still in shock over Angela's death. It hasn't sunk in yet that my sweet older sister is gone. I got the terrible news late Tuesday night, and your flowers arrived the very next afternoon, before anyone else's condolences. The roses were perfect. They were Angie s favorite flower. Thank you for your kindness.

Yours Very Truly,

Elizabeth Gannon Grogen

PS: I found your business card among Angie s things, and it only had your e-mail. Please forgive the e-mail Thank You, but I didn't have your regular address.

Baffled, Sydney had no idea who Elizabeth Grogen was. It took her a moment to connect her to Angela Gannon, the paralegal who had talked that suicidal man in from the fourteenth-story ledge of her office building in Chicago.

'Angela's dead?' She reread her sister's e-mail, but there was no mention of how Angela had passed away.

It had happened again--another one of her Movers & Shakers people had died suddenly, and someone had sent flowers to a surviving family member, signing her name on the card.

When she'd read that note from the Dvoraks, thanking her for a flower arrangement she didn't send, Sydney had assumed they were confused. But no, obviously someone with the network must have been sending these flowers for her. It was strange they hadn't notified her about what they were doing on her behalf.

Sydney's fingers worked furiously over the keyboard. She went to Google, and typed in the keywords Angela Gannon Chicago death. Several articles appeared. 'Oh, God, no,' she whispered, covering her mouth as she read the first search result:

The Chicago Tribune - Front Page News

Woman Plunges to Death from...Victim Had Intervened...Chicago: Dominique...The victim was Angela Gannon, 31, a paralegal at a law firm on the 14th floor...www.chicagotribune.co/news/womanplunges/070908-14k

She clicked on the search engine, and anxiously read the article. The date was July 8th, last Wednesday, the same afternoon her flowers were delivered to Elizabeth Gannon Grogen's front door.

WOMAN PLUNGES TO HER DEATH FROM 14TH FLOOR OF MICHIGAN AVE. OFFICE BUILDING

Victim Had Intervened with a Suicidal Coworker at the Same Window 9 Months Ago

CHICAGO : Dominique Chandler, 26, was talking with a friend, Zackary Ross, 24, outside the Dexter Building on Michigan Avenue at 10:20 Tuesday night when they heard a scream from above. 'We both looked up and saw this thing hurtling down at us,' said Chandler. 'It took me a moment to realize I was looking at a human being, a woman. It was as if the poor thing just fell out of the sky. Then her body hit the sidewalk curb with an awful thud. It was terrible.'

The victim was Angela Gannon, 31, a paralegal at Gaines, McCourt and Weymiller, a law firm on the 14th floor of the building. Investigators on the scene discovered Gannon's purse beside an open window in the law office. No suicide note was found.

Just eight months ago, on November 14, Gannon had intervened when a disgruntled coworker had attempted to jump from a ledge outside that same 14th floor window. She managed to talk the man into climbing back inside, a feat that won her brief national attention when the story was profiled in a 'Movers & Shakers' segment for the primetime TV newsmagazine, 'On the Edge.'

'I worked alongside Angela all day on Tuesday, and she was in a great mood,' said Margarita Donovan, a coworker and friend. 'I have a difficult time believing only hours later, she took her own life.' Police are questioning another friend, Kent Blazenvich, 36, who had drinks with Gannon in the bar at a nearby Houlihan's Restaurant. Gannon left the bar alone at 9:40. Blazenvich remained there until approximately 11:30...

Sydney read the article, hoping to find something more conclusive about Angela's bizarre death. Obviously, at press time, the police hadn't yet determined if it was a murder or suicide. They'd discovered Angela's car in the Dexter Building's underground parking garage, and it had been vandalized. Sydney wondered if this business with the car might have somehow triggered Angela's suicide. Sydney had sunk into horrible moods over less; sometimes one little thing could push a person over the edge, and a vandalized car was a pretty big deal.

Sydney had interviewed Angela back in November but hadn't corresponded with her since then. Still, she'd liked Angela's sense of humor. She had a lot of panache--and probably a lot of boyfriends, too. Had one of them been angry enough about her date that night with Kent Blazenvich that he'd vandalized Angela's car, dragged her up to the fourteenth floor of the Dexter Building, and hurled her out a window?