Suicide, The Beginning of the End - Part 5

If you haven't read Parts 1 - 4, you can find them here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When we returned from our honeymoon, I started looking for another job. I was concerned that my illegal activities at work would catch up with me. I was paranoid, and rightfully so. I had been stealing from an employer who had given me a chance when I so desperately needed one.

I found another bookkeeping position with a local chain of grocery stores. The pay was great and the corporate office was within walking distance of our condo. It was yet another undeserved fresh start, and I kept waiting for the past to catch up with us. We never heard anything from the landlord in Wisconsin, and other than nasty letters from a collection agency that were easily ignored, there seemed to be little fallout from our months of of cheating the system in Wisconsin. I should have known things would spiral again.

Just a few weeks into my new position, “A” picked me up from work. The entire front end of the Isuzu was smashed in. The radiator was leaking and “A” was in a panic. He was involved in an accident at the intersection just a few blocks from our home and he drove away. There were other vehicles involved in the crash and he thought people were injured. He had been drinking all day. He didn't know what to do, nor did I. How do you fix something like this?

As we were headed home, there were several police cars and ambulances at the intersection. We took the back way to the condo to avoid any additional attention, but it was when he parked that I noticed the front license plate was missing from the truck, most likely left at the scene of the crash. When we got upstairs we devised a plan - “A” would continue drinking so that he could claim he had only started drinking when he returned from the crash, and I would call the police, telling them I thought he might have been involved in an accident. After about an hour, I did just that.

The police arrived and found our story highly suspicious. They knew, as well as we did, that there was far more to the story than we were sharing. They charged “A” with failure to yield and hit and run – they could not charge him with DUI as it had been over an hour since the crash and they had no way of proving that he had been drinking at the time of the crash, no matter what their suspicions were. It was the beginning of the end.

“A” sank farther and farther into what I now know was significant depression. He even asked me at one point if things could ever get so bad that I would take my own life. I thought it was an odd question - that he must be really concerned about me - but I told him there was always hope. He was worried about the truck, the pending charges for the crash, but I remained positive. The truck could be fixed (we still had it insured) and we would find an attorney to help out with the charges against him. I asked him then and there if he would ever take his own life and he assured me it would never happen. He lied.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~