Second Chance Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
last chapter yet, but he'll be a large part of it—and so will her
father and her brother, Ethan. You see, Kirsty believes in living out
what she writes—or writing what she lives. Sometimes it's hard to
tell which."
    "Did she mention Stein when you talked on
Thursday?"
    "Yes." The man stood up, walked over to the
armoire, and poured himself a stiff drink. "You already know
that she became involved with Jay last year."
    "He had an affair with her?"
    "I don't know," he said, turning back to me
with the bottle in his hand. He splashed a little more Scotch in my
glass. "She was pretty damn attached to him—I know that. I'm
afraid she still is. She told me on Thursday that she was seeing him
again."
    "Seeing him meaning sleeping with him?"
    "I think so."
    The man pursed his lips as if he'd bitten into
something rotten. Or maybe he just caught a whiff of what I was
thinking about Stein.
    "Look, I care for that girl deeply," he
said. "And I'll do
anything I can to
help you find her. But Jay isn't the reason she's disappeared. There
isn't one reason."
    "Stein blamed it on genes."
    Heldman blushed. "I realize he can be an
obnoxious ass. But you've got to understand that he stepped into a
situation he wasn't equipped to deal with—a situation very few
people could deal with. Kirsty's life has a pattern to it that
predates Jay—a pattern that has slowly solidified into something
like a fate. Events have conspired to make her believe that no matter
what she does, she is bound to end as her mother did—crazy or a
suicide. Her brother has apparently done a lot to reinforce that
belief by constantly obsessing about the mother's death. And of
course, so has her father, whose overprotectiveness kept Kirsty a
child in many ways. But the point is-so has Kirsty herself.
    "For years now, consciously or unconsciously,
she has been making choices that will lead her in the direction of
suicide. The Stein thing is just one more instance. The fact that
she's infatuated with Jay is beside the point. In a way, Kirsty
understands that herself. Deep down she's chosen Jay Stein precisely
because she knows he will reject her. "
    "It's a theory," I said.
    The man gave me a rueful look. "You don't
believe me?"
    "I believe the girl is deeply troubled, but I
think it's a bit too damn enlightened to blame Kirsten for Jay
Stein's callousness. Or to a need for affection as a death wish. "
    Heldman blushed. For a second I thought he was going
to get pissy, but he surprised me. "I didn't mean for it to
sound that way. All I meant to say is that Kirsty honestly believes
we are trapped by our pasts. Our childhood pasts. And no one gets a
second chance at childhood?
    He wanted it to sound profoundly sad. It only sounded
sadly adolescent to me. But most literature professors I'd known
developed that same lump in their throats when they spoke of life's
inequities—kind of like narrators in PBS documentaries.
    "Was she depressed when you saw her on Thursday
morning?" I asked him.
    "Not depressed so much as agitated, excited."
    "About Stein?"
    "Yes, and about seeing her brother, Ethan. It
was almost as if she felt she had to choose between the two of them,
if for no other reason than to find an ending for her book."
    "What does the book have to do with seeing Stein
or Ethan?" I asked.
    "As I told you, she is living out what she
writes. Stein and Ethan represent different paths to her—present
and past, roughly. Frankly I'm afraid they lead in the same
direction."
    "Suicide?"
    He nodded. "She thinks it's her destiny."
    "I don't believe in destinies," I said,
getting to my feet. "Could I use your phone? I need to make a
couple of calls."
    The man pointed to a phone on the desk. "I'll
leave you alone," he said, standing up and walking to the door.
"If there's anything I can do . . ."
    "I'll let you know,"
I told him.
    * * *
    I had only one contact in the Chicago area—an
ex-FBI agent named Brandt Scheuster, who had opened his own P.I.
agency in Skokie. I found