Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

Tugging at a strand of hair, Amelia looked down at the floor and shrugged. “Well, I waited for Jessie, like you said to. But after about ten minutes, I got kind of anxious. So I just drove around for a while.”

Karen bit her lip. “You, um, you didn’t by any chance track me down at the Sandpoint View Convalescent Home? I thought I saw you there about twenty-five minutes ago.”

“I have no idea where that even is,” Amelia replied, wide-eyed. “What are you talking about?”

Karen shook her head. “Never mind. It’s my mistake. Here, I got you some water. Sit down, try to relax.”

“I can’t sit down,” Amelia said, pacing again. “I have a feeling something’s happened to my parents.”

“I understand,” Karen said. “I just got off the phone with your uncle. He called. He was worried about you. He told me that…” She hesitated.

Amelia stopped pacing, and turned to stare at her.

Jessie came to the door with the diazepam and handed the bottle to Karen.

“Thanks, Jessie,” Karen said. “Could you close the door, please?”

Jessie slid shut the big, bulky pocket door that came out of the wall. Karen shook two pills into her hand. “Amelia, I want you to take these. They’re like Valium. They’ll chill you out a little.”

But Amelia didn’t move. She just kept staring at Karen. Tears welled in her eyes. “You want me to take a sedative? What did Uncle George tell you?”

“Take the pills, Amelia.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, wincing. A shaky hand went over her mouth. She sank down on the sofa. “Then it’s true. Aunt Ina…my Mom and Dad…they’re all dead, aren’t they?”

Karen swallowed hard and nodded. “I’m so sorry….”

No one said anything in the car while Karen drove across the West Seattle Bridge toward Amelia’s uncle’s house. Amelia sat on the passenger side, pensively gazing out her window. Jessie was in back with a grocery bag full of food from Karen’s fridge. She’d insisted on fixing dinner for Amelia’s uncle and his family.

A bit taken aback by the idea, Karen had wondered out loud if they’d be intruding on the family’s grief.

“Nonsense, they gotta eat, don’t they?” Jessie had replied while loading up the grocery bag. “You have all the fixings here for chicken tetrazzini-chicken, noodles, Parmesan cheese, sour cream. I’ll whip up the casserole, stick it in the oven, and then you and I can beat a path out of there if it looks like we’re wearing out our welcome.”

Amelia had been inconsolable, sobbing hysterically for twenty minutes until the diazepam had kicked in. She finally slumped back on Karen’s sofa. “I should go see Uncle George,” she murmured, wiping her eyes. “Poor Jody and Steph…”

Sitting beside her on the couch, Karen handed her another Kleenex. “Your uncle asked me to drive you over. I said I’d be glad to.”

Amelia nodded. “Thanks.”

Biting her lip, Karen studied her for a moment. “You-you still haven’t asked how it happened.”

Silent, Amelia stared down at the wadded-up Kleenex in her hand.

“Your Uncle George said you had some kind of premonition.”

Amelia shrugged helplessly. “It was just a feeling-an awful, awful feeling that something was wrong.”

Karen’s heart was breaking for her. “Honey, there’s no easy way to tell you this. They haven’t confirmed it. But it’s possible your dad shot your mom and your aunt, and then he killed himself. They don’t know for sure yet.”

Amelia said nothing. She merely gave out an exhausted sigh, and closed her eyes.

Karen stroked her arm. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

While they’d gotten ready to leave, Amelia had just sat quietly on the sofa. Her voice hadn’t even cracked when she’d left Shane a phone message, explaining she was spending the night at her uncle’s house. She’d told him he could pick up his car at Karen’s. She’d said nothing about her parents’ deaths. “I’ll call you later tonight,” she’d finished up listlessly.

Once they’d climbed inside Karen’s Jetta, Amelia had suggested they take Highway 99 to the West Seattle Bridge. But after that, she hadn’t said anything else.

Karen took her eyes off the road for a moment to look at her now. She was still staring out at the Seattle waterfront and skyline. There was a tiny, sad smile on her face.

“How are you doing, Amelia?” she asked.

She kept gazing out the window at the view from the bridge. “I was thinking about all the trips we took here to Aunt Ina and Uncle George’s house-the Christmases, Thanks-givings, and birthdays. It’s a long drive down from Bellingham, almost two hours.” She traced a horizontal line on the window with her finger. “This bridge was always the landmark, the sign we were almost there. I remember when we were kids, Collin and I used to get so excited crossing this bridge. We loved going to Ina and George’s.” She let out a little laugh. “Last Thanksgiving on our way here, I noticed Collin had way too much product in his hair. He had his window open, but his hair didn’t budge an inch. I could have broken off a piece of it. I remember teasing him, and Mom and Dad were laughing. Collin’s face got red and he started cracking up too. He had the funniest laugh. You should have heard it….”

Still staring out the window, she said nothing for a moment. Then the smile ran away from her face. “That was the last time I drove here with my family. I can’t believe they’re all gone now. I can’t believe I actually could have…” She trailed off and shook her head.

From the backseat, Jessie leaned forward and patted Amelia on the shoulder.

Karen glanced at her on the passenger side. Amelia had her head down. She absently twirled a strand of her hair around her finger-the same nervous tic Haley had had.

Karen remembered Amelia doing that during their very first session.

Someone from Student Health Services at the University of Washington had referred the 19-year-old to Karen. Karen didn’t have much information on her potential new client, except that her track record with therapists hadn’t been too marvelous. She’d been having problems with alcohol and joined this campus group, Booze Busters. That had worked for a while, but she’d fallen off the wagon when her kid brother had drowned three weeks before.

When Karen answered her door for their first session that warm Friday afternoon, she was surprised at how beautiful Amelia was. The soft-spoken, polite girl had wavy black hair and blue eyes. She wore a pink oxford-cloth shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. She said, “Yes, thank you,” to a bottle of water, and sat at one end of the sofa in Karen’s study. “So-what do you know about me?” she asked.

Karen settled in her easy chair with a notebook and pen. “Not very much, just what they told me at the U’s Student Health Services. Do you know anything about me ?”

“Not very much,” Amelia echoed her, a tiny smile flickering on her face. “But I Googled you. Under ‘Karen Carlisle, Counselor, Seattle,’ there were a few links. I found out that you’re thirty-six years old. You graduated with honors from UCLA. You have a master’s in Social Work from the U, and you were a counselor at Group Health for five years before you started counseling on your own. Your name kept coming up in articles about that girl who got killed last month, Haley Something. Was she a client of yours?”

“She was a friend,” Karen answered carefully. “But we’re not here to talk about her.”

“I guess you’re right. This is my hour.” Amelia sipped her water. “Well, I suppose you know I’ve been through a lot of therapists. I’m like a one-session wonder with them.”