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sight kind of guy. It took
a long time to seal the deal. I had to be sure she was the one, positive that I
knew everything about her and could trust her completely.”
    Cindy
noted the bitter edge in his voice now. It was understandable. People responded
in all kinds of ways to the suicide of a loved one.
    “You
feel fooled?” Cindy continued, trying to get him to go deeper.
    That
stopped him, though. Doug looked at Cindy with a murky look in his eyes.
    “I
wouldn’t put it that way.” He seemed to be thinking about it. “I’m not a guy
who’s easily fooled. Do I feel stupid though? Maybe. Do I feel I missed
something and might have let Shari down? Yes, definitely.”
    Cindy
nodded. Doug had to be suffering lots of guilt, for sure. That would be
inevitable.
    “I
was always good to Shari, though.” Doug’s voice got louder. “You can ask
anyone. Everyone in her family loved me. Talk to anyone you want, there’s not
one person who would say I didn’t love her.”
    “I’m
so sorry, Doug,” Cindy said, realizing the terrible self-accusations he had to
be feeling.
    “Not
only did I love her,” he went on, “but I gave her everything any girl could
want. I never held back or stinted. When she wanted an emerald necklace I could
barely afford I bought it for her on the spot.”
    “Her
death is not your fault.” Cindy tried to calm him.
    “It’s
easy enough for you to say that.” Doug’s voice got lower and his hands turned
into fists. “But what do you think people are going to say? They’re going to
think that something went wrong between us.”
    “Why?”
asked Cindy.
    “Why
wouldn’t they?” asked Doug. “A girl kills herself while she’s looking for
wedding venues with her fiancé? This is the time she’s supposed to be on cloud
nine. Even though she acted like it, obviously, she wasn’t. What else are
people going to think?”
    “There’s
lots of reasons people kill themselves,” said Cindy. “Shari obviously had a lot
going on inside that you didn’t know anything about. She might not have known
about it herself.”
    Doug
raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Not true, I knew her like a book,” he muttered.
“If anything bothered her she came to me with it. She wasn’t the kind to hide
what she was feeling.”
    “Did
Shari have a history of depression?” Cindy turned the questioning in a
different direction. “Did she have mood swings?”
    Doug
nodded slowly. “Yeah all of that,” he replied. “But the mood swings weren’t
bothering her now.”
    Cindy
was surprised to learn about this. “Did anyone ever warn you about Shari’s mood
swings?” she asked.
     Doug
reflected briefly. “Yeah, my sister Kate mentioned it to me, once in a while.
She was the only one who was concerned about it. But I thought she was making a
big deal about nothing.”
    Cindy
found that fascinating. “What did Kate say?” she asked.
    “Kate
told me she found Shari hard to be with, that she wasn’t right for me. Shari
would blow off appointments she and Kate made, for a million different reasons.
I thought it was cute, but Kate didn’t. Kate’s a personal trainer and doesn’t
have much room for people making excuses, or not doing what they say.”
    “What
kind of excuses did Shari make?” Cindy was intrigued.
    “Shari
would say she wasn’t in the mood, or that someone just called and she had to go
see them. Or sometimes she just wouldn’t show up. Kate thought that was creepy,
it bugged her. But other people accepted it, just took it as a matter of
course.”
    “Did
Shari do that with you, too?” asked Cindy.
    “I
guess,” said Doug, rubbing his hands along his thighs. “It didn’t matter so
much to me, though. It was worth it when we were together. Shari was wonderful
to be with in every way, most of the time.” His voice started to crack. “I
didn’t need her to be perfect. I figured there’s something off in every
relationship. I could take her moods.” Doug put his fists up to his