Too Near the Edge (18 page)

“No worries.” Narmada jumped up, hugged me,
and headed toward the door. “Just do what you have to do and know
we’re there for you.” And she was gone.

I had to rush out to my appointment with
Bruce, the donor who funds my Contact Project. I felt nervous about
the meeting. Plus, thanks to Narmada, I was a little late. As I
sped along the highway between Boulder and Longmont to Bruce’s
office in a Longmont business park, I noticed a truck that looked a
lot like Erik’s very close behind me. Even when I slowed down, the
truck stayed in back of me. I didn’t want him or anyone following
me to Bruce’s office, so I turned off at Niwot.

Downtown Niwot is a tiny unincorporated
village dating back to 1875. Today it’s mostly an old-fashioned
main street lined with antique stores and art galleries, which has
been declared a national historic district. The truck turned off
behind me, so I stopped in front of Niwot Antiques on Second
Avenue, thinking if someone were following me, it would be hard for
them to hide in such a small town. The truck sped on by and turned
the corner before I could make out the driver or identify the
truck. I waited about ten minutes to see if it would reappear. When
it didn’t, I went back to the highway and continued on to
Longmont.

By then I was definitely late. It’s easy to
get confused in the winding streets of the office parks out there,
which added to my anxiety. After a couple of wrong turns, I was
about to get out my cell phone and call Bruce, when I finally
spotted the place. I wasn’t as cool and composed as I would have
liked when I rushed in. I also felt I had somehow let him down, and
was worried he would lose trust in me.

When I got to his office, I found Bruce
working on one of the four computers in the room. The other three
machines plugged away on their own, perhaps testing some high-level
formulas. Bruce didn’t smile when he saw me, but I didn’t take that
to mean anything, because he’s normally reserved.

As usual, he got straight to the point. His
mind works so fast you feel like you’re on speed just talking to
him. He wanted to know all the facts, but was several steps ahead
of me all the way along. Like many techies, Bruce is brilliant, but
a bit lacking in the social skills department. He’s not much for
listening—just slaps the facts into a pattern he can scan, and
proposes solutions.

“Okay Cleo, you need to respond through the
appropriate channels and process, and see if the complaint will go
away.”

“I agree. That’s exactly what I’m planning to
do.”

“We need to put a stop to this newspaper
hype. Don’t give them any comments. In fact, don’t talk to them at
all.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“Can you get Waycroft’s daughter to stay away
from the press too? And tell her to keep her Contact Project
experiences to herself. We don’t want to attract more
publicity.”

“I’ll talk to her. But I can’t make her keep
quiet. It’s her experience, after all. So it’s her choice.”

“If she doesn’t understand the importance of
not sensationalizing this project, maybe she’s not right for
it.”

Whoa—that was unexpected! But I didn’t just
shoot back. I took a few moments to think about how to respond. I
was torn between my loyalty to Sharon and my desire to live up to
Bruce’s expectations. As my client, Sharon deserved and was
entitled to my support. As my benefactor, Bruce could certainly
expect his opinions to carry some weight. But bottom line, I
couldn’t let him dictate who I accepted as my clients.

“I think this will blow over,” I said. “How
about we give it a week or so and see where we are?” I decided to
try to keep it vague so I wasn’t locked into any promises.

“Okay, today’s Thursday. The complaint was
filed Monday. Have you written your response yet?”

“I was planning to work on it this weekend. I
have 20 days to respond.”

“The sooner, the better, I’d say. Could you
email or fax me a copy when you get it done?”

I agreed, mostly to buy myself some time.
While I wished he hadn’t asked for it, I couldn’t think of a good
reason not to give him a copy. He’s discreet, and I trust him
completely not to share the information with anyone. Nevertheless,
I felt strangely anxious about agreeing to send it to him.

Sharon was scheduled Friday afternoon for
another try at contacting Adam. I called her Friday morning to see
if it was still a go. While I had no intentions of being bullied
out of working with her, I wanted to make sure she hadn’t changed
her mind. But despite Waycroft’s brouhaha, she wanted to keep
on.

We skipped looking through Adam’s stuff this
time. Like before, I had Sharon bring a picture of him as well as
his favorite tee shirt from the annual Bolder-Boulder 10K race.
Before getting her set in the apparition chamber, we walked over to
the creek again to relax, talk about Adam, and explore her
motivations for trying to contact him.

“I miss him so much. It’s like this huge
cloud of sadness that hangs over my head,” Sharon said as we
strolled along the creek path among joggers, mothers pushing
strollers, and dogs pulling their guardians by leashes. “Look—all
these people enjoying their lives. But in here inside my cloud
everything is dimmer and grayer than out there. I find myself
wondering how the world can go on as if nothing had changed—when
Adam is gone from it forever.”

“Of course you feel that way, Sharon. Most
people have that experience after a loss. It’s hard to look around
and see life moving along when you feel depressed.” We came to a
bench on the creek bank, sat down and gazed out at the rushing
water below.

Sharon sat quietly for several minutes, and
then continued softly, almost as if talking sadly to herself. “I
know I have a lot to live for—Nathan, my job, good friends. But I
don’t have Adam. All the thoughts and joys and little jokes I want
to share with him go unshared. My daily life has a hollow feeling,
a big space that he used to fill. Nothing is the way it was when we
were together, and it will never be that way again.” She sobbed
inconsolably. “I loved him so much, and he loved me. I’ll never
find anyone else I can love so totally and who loves me that
much.”

I knew she needed to grieve. There’s so much
bottled up inside after a loss. “It’s true that your life won’t be
the same,” I said, thinking to myself that if Sharon could actually
reach Adam, she might feel a lot better. I thought about one of my
former clients who couldn’t stop blaming herself for not having
somehow noticed warning signs of her husband’s fatal heart attack.
She had nightmares where he was drowning and begged her to save him
but she couldn’t help him. When she finally contacted him in the
apparition chamber, he told her how much he loved her, what a
wonderful wife she had been, and that she couldn’t have prevented
his death. After that, she was able to accept his death and her
nightmares stopped.

“Somehow I have to move on, build a new
life,” Sharon went on. “Sometimes I don’t think I can do it. It’s
just too hard. But I know I have to do it for Nathan. So I try to
find things we can do to have fun together. Then sometimes when I
do find myself enjoying something, I feel guilty that I’m having
fun with Adam gone.”

I wanted to normalize her feelings and build
on any positive emotions she might have, so I said, “That’s a
common feeling people have. But you know Adam wouldn’t want you to
feel miserable all the time. Are there times when you don’t feel so
sad?”

“Sometimes anger takes over the sadness. I’m
angry that I don’t know what happened to Adam, that maybe someone
pushed him over the edge and I’ll never find out. But if I do find
out someone pushed him, I’ll kill that person for taking Adam away
from me.”

Blaming someone for a loss is a strategy
grievers sometimes use to avoid facing their feelings. This can
interfere with their healing. But in Sharon’s case, there was a
real mystery to be solved—possibly someone who deserved blame. So,
I didn’t try to redirect her back to her grief.

“Do you have any ideas about anyone you think
might have pushed him?”

“Not really. He didn’t have enemies.” She
looked off to the left as if mentally checking a list of suspects.
“Well, there is the voice on the answering machine. And of course
Natalie—Narmada—whatever. But I don’t see how she could have
actually pushed him. I think I need to know more about what was
going on before he died, what was bothering him so much. So today
I’m hoping to reach him and get some information.”

We went back to my office, where I set her up
in the apparition chamber. While she was in there, I tried another
web search on Dr. Ahmed. This time, I followed a bunch of the links
that came up. I ignored the ones where Ahmed was the first name,
and the ones where the Dr. Ahmed was a Ph.D. rather than an M.D. I
found an oncologist in California, a gynecologist in Illinois, and
several natural healing specialists, but no one that sounded like
he’d been running a drug scam.

After about an hour, Sharon came out looking
confused and not nearly as delighted as she had after her last
session. I handed her a big glass of water and nudged her into the
counseling room.

“How did it go this time?”

“I kept thinking about how you said not to
try to make something happen. I was sitting there struggling with
wanting so much to reach Adam. I felt like I was trying to force
him to show up, and it wasn’t working. So finally I decided that
today wasn’t going to be the day. When I sat back and relaxed, I
suddenly got a powerful sense of Jenny—and I heard her voice. I
didn’t see her clearly, only a shadowy figure in the mirror, but I
could feel her right there close to me. She said she knows I’m
having a hard time.”

Sharon took a break for a long drink of
water. I waited quietly.

“I told her that Erik was being a wonderful
help to me and Nathan and was like part of our family. She asked me
if I remembered her telling me that Erik sometimes tells lies.”

“Interesting. What did you say?”

“I told her I did remember her saying that,
but that Erik has never lied to me. Then she said I should ask him
about Amber and Melissa

and about his brother Harry.”

“Has he ever talked to you about any of those
people?”

“Never. I asked Jenny to tell me more about
them, but she didn’t answer me. Or if she did, I couldn’t hear her.
I began to feel her fading away, so I called out, ‘Jenny, don’t go
yet. I need to know about Adam.’ Then I felt her presence strongly
again, and I heard her clearly. She said ‘I didn’t come about Adam.
It’s about you. You have to stop the scam before more people get
hurt.’ Then, before I could ask her what she meant, she just
evaporated. I couldn’t feel her presence at all, and I couldn’t get
her back.” Sharon looked despondent.

“What scam do you think she meant?”

“It could be about Dr. Ahmed, something about
drugs. I know she sometimes took Xanax and other drugs she got from
him. And after what you overheard him saying, it looks like there
could be a scam. But I don’t have any evidence. How can I stop
it?”

“That’s a problem. I haven’t been able to
find out anything more about him either. Maybe I can get my
boyfriend to do some checking. He’s a detective with the Longmont
Police Department. We haven’t been getting along all that well
lately, but I’ll give it a try.”

Sharon reached over to get her watch from the
table where she put it before she went into the apparition chamber.
“I have to go in a few minutes. Nathan’s with Maria, but she has to
leave at 5:00. I don’t know what to do about what Jenny said about
Erik. None of it makes sense to me. Erik’s never said anything
about a brother.”

“That’s strange. Erik told me he had planned
on going to the Grand Canyon with Adam, but he had to visit his
brother for some important family thing instead.”

“He said he was going with Adam? I never
heard anything about that! Adam never said anything about Erik
going with him. Erik hasn’t ever mentioned it either.”

“That is odd.”

“I do remember I couldn’t reach Erik right
after the accident. I was going to ask him if he’d fly down there
with me and drive Adam’s car back, but it turned out he was away
somewhere. I thought he told me later that he had to go to Chicago
on business. It was a confusing time, but I think I’d remember if
he’d said anything about a brother.”

“So how did you get Adam’s car back?”

“Oh, my dad arranged to have someone there
drive it here. It was no big deal.” She glanced at her watch again
and jumped up. “Wow, I have to go. Maybe we can talk more this
weekend?”

“Sure. Call me,” I said as she rushed out the
door.

What had I gotten myself into? I started to
wonder whether I was helping Sharon or making her life more
difficult. I didn’t want to back off and give Waycroft the
satisfaction of believing he’d scared me off—but I wasn’t sure
where to go from here. At that moment, I felt a need for comfort,
reassurance, or at least some peace and quiet.

I went into the apparition chamber to tidy
up, but instead I plopped into the chair and gazed off into the
mirror. My head felt heavy, my eyelids drooped, and I had just
begun to doze off, when I heard, “Yo, Cleo.” Tyler appeared in the
mirror—the first time I’d seen him there in a while.

Suddenly I was wide awake and determined to
get some answers. I sat up straight and gave him my best
no-nonsense look. “Tyler, I need some help if you expect me to play
detective. Can you give me some direction here?”

“Check out what Jenny said. She’s no airhead.
It’s all about the 411.”

“Ok, the message. So we should ask Erik about
Amber and Melissa and his brother Harry? What do they have to do
with all this? And what scam was she talking about?”