He said, “You tried to kill yourself the first time after the death of your child seven months ago.”

“She didn’t just die. A speeding car hit her and knocked her twenty feet into a ditch. Someone murdered her.”

“And you blamed yourself.”

“Are you a parent?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t you blame yourself if your child died and you weren’t with her?”

“No, not if I wasn’t driving the car that hit her.”

“Would your wife blame herself?”

Elaine’s face passed before his mind’s eye, and he frowned. “Probably not. All she would do is cry. She is a very weak woman, very dependent. But that isn’t the point, Mrs. Frasier.” It wasn’t. He would be free of Elaine very soon now, thank God.

“What is the point?”

“You did blame yourself, blamed yourself so much you stuffed a bottle of sleeping pills down your throat. If your housekeeper hadn’t found you in time, you would have died.”

“That’s what I was told,” she said, and she swore in that moment that she could taste the same taste in her mouth now as she had then when she’d awakened in the hospital that first time when she’d been so bewildered, so weak she couldn’t even raise her hand.

“You don’t remember taking the pills?”

“No, not really.”

“And now you don’t remember driving your car into a redwood. Your speed, it was estimated by the sheriff, was about sixty miles per hour, maybe faster. You were very lucky, Mrs. Frasier. A guy just happened to come around a bend to see you drive into the tree, and called an ambulance.”

“Do you happen to know his name? I would like to thank him.”

“That isn’t what’s important here, Mrs. Frasier.”

“What is important here? Oh, yes, do you happen to have a first name?”

“My name is Russell. Dr. Russell Rossetti.”