Free Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery by Tatiana Boncompagni Page A

almost at the FirstNews building when my phone rang again. It was my father. He’d seen the news. “Why didn’t you call me?”
    Eight years ago, after I moved out, my father sold our old apartment in the city and bought a house upstate, about two hours north of Manhattan. It was a sweet hundred-year-old colonial with exposed wood beams, stone fireplaces, and a kitchen overlooking a cornfield. I visited him as much as work would allow, which wasn’t often enough as far as he was concerned. “I was busy,” I said. “They put me on the story.”
    “Do you want me to come down? I’m worried about you.” I could hear his dog, Milton, yapping in the background, and the concern lacing his voice. He knew Olivia was my rock, and was probably worried that her death would cause me to fall back on some old bad habits. That wasn’t going to happen.
    “Dad, I’m fine. Or I will be. But I wouldn’t be able to see you anyway. I’m going to be working this case 24/7.”
    “I don’t mind if you’re out all day. I can keep myself busy during the day and just be there for you when you get home.” There was a long pause before Dad sighed. “All right, Cornelia. Let me know if you change your mind. Email me when I can expect to see you again. I want to see my daughter. And Princess,” he said, pausing briefly, “promise not to make this about your mom.”
    “OK Dad, I promise,” I said before saying goodbye.
    My father’s not-so-secret opinion was that I’d chosen my profession because I was still determined to solve the unsolvable. In a way, he was right, because here I was, once again looking for clues I’d probably never find. The first time was thirty years ago.
    My mother never picked me up after my first day of kindergarten. She’d gone home that day, run a few errands, and killed herself by jumping off the fire escape. A neighbor found her body on the concrete slab in our building’s courtyard and called the police. I’d arrived home before they’d had a chance to remove her body and, barreling through a sea of adults, thrown myself on top of her.
    Several weeks after her funeral, once time had worn down the sharpest edges of my grief and I’d finally grasped that she hadn’t fallen, but deliberately thrown herself off our building, I started asking questions. I wanted to know how people could kill themselves, knowing what pain they were causing the people they left behind, and why my mother would possibly do that to us, to me. Nothing my father said satisfied me, and the counselor at school was no better, so I began going through my mother’s drawers and papers, hoping to figure out why she’d done what she had. Why she’d hated her life, why I hadn’t been enough to keep her happy, why plunging to her death seemed like the only or best option. If my mother had left a note, it would have been easier to accept her choice, but she hadn’t, and all I was left with was a succession of horrifically clear memories: the sight of all those police cars outside my building; the feel of her still-warm hand—chafed and red—in mine; the look on my father’s face when he pried me off her dead body.
    What ended up haunting me most about my mother’s death were not these things, but the afternoons I spent alone in her room, turning every pocket inside out, emptying every drawer, and always, without fail, coming away with nothing. At some point I must have realized she’d left us no answers, just aching loss and the vicious anger I’d eventually turn on myself.
    Despite what I’d just promised my father, I wasn’t going to let that happen with Olivia.
    The Monday morning meeting was the bane of my existence. I slumped down in my chair and did my best to get comfortable for what was sure to be another hour-long confab in the cheerless chamber that was Conference Room B. Barely big enough to accommodate the oval Formica table and twelve chairs it held within, there were no windows in the room, just a pair of