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Shepherd said he’d looked at my cell phone records earlier that week and noticed dozens of calls and texts in the middle of the night.
I told him I was texting with Amber. (Her name was the only one I could come up with, probably because I’d had an appointment with her earlier that day.)
Shepherd rolled his eyes at this, not believing I was texting with my therapist in the middle of the night. I redirected the conversation to his pills, and demanded he begin taking them again.
After leaving the room, I watched from the doorway as Shepherd plucked the pills from the arm rest, hurled them against the wall, then hit himself in the head over and over.
This was right after Alyssa Kaing was murdered.
SIXTY-ONE
LETTER FOUR
You know that feeling you get before a bad thunderstorm? That weird, ominous feeling of doom deep in your gut? That’s what I felt the day Alyssa Kaing was killed. I knew something was going to happen that day.
Something bad.
It was just past midnight. I’m sure he thought I was asleep in our bedroom. I wasn’t. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was too worried about him. I couldn’t understand why he’d stopped taking his pills.
Shepherd’s mental health journey has been long and exhaustive. The anti-psychotic he’d first been prescribed made him feel lightheaded and confused. He hated it. The doctor reminded us that most patients have to go through several dose adjustments and sometimes, several different medications, to find the right one for their body.
Shepherd once told me that the only reason he took medicine at all was because I was there to remind him to do it. Because I’d threatened to leave him if he didn’t.
Because he loved me.
Living with someone with severe mental illness is a day-to-day journey. It’s not something that a pill magically fixes and then you both go on with your life. It’s quite the opposite. Dosing needs to be continually adjusted as the patient’s body changes or becomes accustomed to it. Physical changes, such as puberty or illness, or any significant life event such as moving, death, marriage, child, can trigger symptoms in which you have to supplement with other medication.
It is constant.
But so was I.
I became obsessed with Shepherd’s mental health journey. Or maybe I should say, obsessed with keeping him alive. After all, I’d be dead without him.
I kept multiple folders, tabbed, containing symptom trackers, medication information (and how each affected him), as well as a journal of “bad days” and “good days.”
Because of my commitment to ensuring Shepherd followed all necessary medical protocols, he had never fully stopped taking his medication.
Until now. I believe the loss of his job, the loss of his dear friend, and the suspicion that I was cheating on him pushed him over the edge. But I’d promised myself I’d catch him on the other side.
Careful to stay a safe distance behind, I followed Shepherd across town—he in his truck, me in the Explorer. My headlights were off, my head on a swivel, my heart pounding. He’d followed the speed limit through town, then turned onto a side road that skirts Mirror Lake, the lake next to Mirror Lakes neighborhood. I thought I’d lost him until I spotted two taillights a split second before they’d gone dark.
It was a full moon that night, just bright enough to see without using headlights or a flashlight.
Shepherd had parked at a secluded, overgrown launch point along the lakeshore that only locals knew about. Rarely ever used, and no security cameras. I know it well because years ago, he and I had used the point to kayak.
I parked in the ditch a safe distance behind his vehicle, killed the lights, grabbed my keys and slipped out of the SUV, quietly latching the door closed.
The dry, frigid air felt like knives in my lungs as I took off, jogging nimbly over the dirt road in the direction of his truck, having no idea what to expect—or what to say—once I got there.
Shepherd’s truck was empty, and he was nowhere in sight.
After shining my phone light around the cab of his truck—what was I looking for? Blood? Him, dead? Someone else, dead?—I spun around, frantically searching the surrounding area, trying to understand what the hell my husband was doing at this time of night. My eyes locked on house lights twinkling through the trees in the distance. The Mirror Lakes subdivision.
I slipped into the trees, quickly finding tracks—bent grass and popped twigs—which verified I was on the right path.
My heart was roaring by the time I reached the manicured back yards of the fancy homes.
I spotted Shepherd just as I emerged from the tree line. His tall, dark silhouette jogged along the shoreline. The moonlight reflected off a white baseball cap, and white dress shirt with a blue collar. I recognized it immediately as the uniform he used to wear when he did door to door sales for the window company, before getting promoted to project manager.
