Excerpt of Included!

JOHN HARTme. She’d chosen her moment for reasons we can never understand. Shewasn’t trying to punish anyone. I have to believe that.”I felt the blood leave my face. “This does not seem like the time to talkabout it,” I said.“Adam—”“Why did she do it?” The question tore itself free.“Depression does strange things to the mind.” I felt him looking at me.“She was lost.”“You should have gotten her some help.”“I did,” he said, and that stopped me. “She’d been seeing a therapist formost of that year, for all of the good that it did. He told me that she was improving.That’s what he said, and a week later she pulled the trigger.”“I had no idea.”“You weren’t supposed to. No kid should know that about his mother. Knowthat dredging up a smile took everything she had.” He waved a hand in disgust.“That’s why I never sent you to see a shrink.” He sighed. “You were tough. Ithought you’d be okay.”“Okay? Are you serious? She did it in front of me. You left me there, in thehouse.”“Somebody had to go with the body.”“I scrubbed her brains off the wall.”He looked appalled. “That was you?”“I was eight years old.”He seemed to fall away from me. “It was a hard time,” he said.“Why was she depressed? She’d been happy all of my life. I remember. Shewas full of joy and then she died inside. I’d like to know why.”My father looked at the hole, and I knew that I had never seen such distressin his features. “Forget it, son. No good can come of it now.”“Dad—”“Just let her lie, Adam. What matters now is you and me.”I closed my eyes and when I opened them I found my father standing beforeme. He put his hands on my shoulders again, as he had in his study.“I named you Adam because I didn’t think that I could love anything more,because I was as proud on the day you were born as the good Lord must have108