When my cell phone rang that November 4, I was in bed, tucked between clean white cotton sheets, my mind roaming the museum of sleep. It wasn’t yet 8:00 p.m.—I went to bed early—and my cell phone’s chime alarmed me. Long after this, I will still wonder why I forgot to switch off my cell that night and why I answered, instead of sending the call to voicemail as I usually do.

“Is this Joey Garcia?” a woman asks.

I blink at the phone number. I don’t recognize her voice. “Who is this?”

“Placer County Sheriff’s Department. As a result of a robbery investigation, we’re in custody of your cell phone. I need your address to drop it off.”

I scoot to the edge of the bed, swing my bare feet to the wood floor, adrenaline quickening my breath.

“Who is this?” I ask again.

“Deputy Flores.”¹

“You have the wrong person. I’m talking to you on my cell phone, so you couldn’t have recovered my phone in an investigation.”

“We’re certain it’s your phone.”

She sounds certain. My mind conjures an image of the drawer where I had placed my old cell phone. Did someone break into my house and steal it? If they had, wouldn’t I have noticed a jimmied door lock, a broken window, other items missing?

“I don’t know what kind of scam you’re running, but I’m hanging up.”

Stepping into my tiny bathroom, I flick on the light and pull open the second drawer. My old cell phone stares up at me.

“Ma’am, we do need to come by and bring you your phone. We are certain it’s yours. This is part of an ongoing investigation.”

A naturalized U.S. citizen, I’m mindful of being an immigrant woman who lives alone. I hang up, find the sheriff’s department phone number on the internet, and call back.

Deputy Flores picks up on the first ring. “Do you believe me now?”

“I have six cousins who are cops.”

This is true, but I rarely tell people unless I feel unsafe.

“I just need your address.”

Wouldn’t a real cop have my address? Maybe this is an elaborate scheme cooked up by friends. Despite their offers to hang out, I had celebrated my birthday alone on November 2 by taking my first-ever flying trapeze class.

“I’ll meet you at the Starbucks on Folsom and Sixty-Fifth,” I say.

“I’d rather come to your house.”

“Come in a squad car.”

“I have to go back to the yard and check one out,” she says, and sounds annoyed for the first time. “It will take longer.”

“I’ll wait.”

I get dressed and drive to Starbucks. It’s in a strip mall alongside Office Depot, a nail salon, a GameStop, and a burrito place beloved by the students at the high school where I teach relationship education courses. In the thinning light cast by the closed shops, I count three cars.

My phone rings.

“I’m here,” the deputy says. Headlights flash once, and again. The squad car is parked in a pool of darkness, engine off.

I walk over and lean toward the passenger window, crouching a little because I’m nearly six feet tall. The deputy resembles Selena, the Queen of Tejano music, if Selena had ever played a cop. I squint past her to give the back seat a once-over. I don’t want any surprises.

“My phone?” I extend an empty hand, palm up.

“Get in.”

I straighten up. There’s only one other car in the parking lot now, an older Honda that looks abandoned. I lean down again, eyes locked on the shotgun mounted between the seats. I glance frantically around the parking lot—there’s nothing to hide behind, no way to zigzag past a spray of bullets. Why didn’t I text a friend about this meeting?

I take a deep breath and slide into the passenger seat, leaving the door open, my right foot percussive on the asphalt.

“Listen, I don’t have your phone. I just need to talk to you, and I didn’t know what to say when you answered so I made the phone thing up.”

I place my hand on the door handle. My body edges toward it, heart thudding in my throat.

“I have bad news. Rob Watson² is dead. He jumped off the Foresthill Bridge yesterday.”

My stomach punches my spine, lungs deflate, bowels threaten to betray me. My mind, a net. Thoughts sieving through.

“A woman saw him sitting on the bridge. She said he turned his head and pushed himself off. We were going through his personal belongings at his home and I saw your emails to him. I know that you broke up, but it was clear you had cared for each other, so I thought you would want to know. I’ve just been through a breakup myself.”

An animal-like moan erupts inside the car. Everything goes blank. I’m sobbing. I’m choking on mucus, fumbling for my inhaler. A flame of pain in my head. Why didn’t she tell me this on the phone while I was safe at home?

I shove the inhaler toward my face, smack my cupid’s bow. Where does an inhaler go? I stare at the hand gripping the inhaler. My gums throb. Jaw hinges crackle, the inhaler slides into my mouth, sprays albuterol down my throat.

Did Rob decide to jump because I told him trapeze had set me free?

On Saturday, as I was leaving Trapeze Arts after class, Rob called to wish me happy birthday. I gushed about leaping from a 25-foot platform into the air. I told him that after repeated, awkward solo attempts, I improved enough to try the catch—swinging out from the platform, both hands gripping a bar that I released midair. There was a sensation of floating, and then, as gravity intervened, a catcher grabbed my wrists. We swung as one, faces lanterned, bodies bright, as though we had just been spoken into being. And when the catcher let go, I fell softly into a net. That visceral experience of trust unlocked and liberated something in me—that’s what I told Rob.

The deputy hands me a cloud of tissues. I bury my face.

“Wait! Did you check his driver’s license?” I ask. “Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was someone else.”

“We checked,” she says gently, her arm sliding behind me. “Close the door.”

I yank the door handle.

“Did he try to kill himself before?” she asks.

“Not that I know of, but he was depressed about money.” The previous year’s economic crisis had gained momentum in 2008, gutting Rob’s finances, as it had, or eventually would, for millions globally. The stress of unemployment and the recession led to more than 5,000 men in North America and Europe dying by suicide—although I didn’t know that yet. I did know this: Rob was facing jail time. I didn’t mention that to the deputy, though. All I said next was: “I didn’t think he was so depressed he would—”

Someone opens the passenger door. My scream hurtles across the inky parking lot.

“You’re okay,” the deputy says, patting me on the shoulder. “This is the chaplain. She’s going to drive you home.”

The chaplain is bird-boned with a Marine Corps voice. “Is there anyone at home?” she asks.

I shake my head. She takes out her phone, calls another chaplain to come to the parking lot and drive my car back to my house.

“You need to have someone meet us at your house,” the chaplain says. “Do you have someone you can call?” the chaplain asks.

“It’s late. I don’t want to bother anyone.”

“They will understand,” she says.

I think I’d be better off driving myself home, but every time I imagine putting a key in the car door, my thoughts eddy.

The chaplain wings her thin arm beneath mine and guides me out of the black-and-white and into her Honda.

I dial Chris, an old boyfriend who lives in my neighborhood. When he answers, I struggle to form the words.

“Joey? I can’t understand you.”

The chaplain takes my phone and speaks to Chris. She checks my driver’s license, taps my address into her GPS, hands back the phone. I call Vee, who lives thirty minutes from my house; Christy, who lives twenty minutes away in West Sacramento; and Tim, fifteen minutes away in Land Park. No one answers. I leave garbled messages.

“I’ll be okay,” I assure the chaplain when we pull up to my house. The other chaplain is parking my car behind us.

“I’ll stay with you until someone comes,” she says firmly.

Inside, I collapse on the living room floor behind the couch.

“Would you be more comfortable sitting on the couch?” the chaplain asks.

“Why didn’t I know he would kill himself?”

I met Rob on Match.com. He was smart and well-read, with an infectious joie de vivre and a physique constructed by the seasons: baseball, golf, basketball, and football. On our third date, after I foiled his advances, he nicknamed me Miss Moneypenny and began sending me silly greeting cards by post, every envelope addressed to her, each card signed, “Love, 007.” He sent thoughtful emails and text messages daily, and organized weekends in Napa for wine tasting. We debated politics while making dinner side by side in the kitchen of his luxe home, his Labrador retriever puppy frolicking underfoot. And after the brakes locked on a borrowed bike and I slammed to the asphalt concussed, Rob took care of me. He seemed like a catch.

And yet, it didn’t last; barely six months in, everything went sideways. And then one night he was arrested on a DUI. That’s when I learned it was his second, possibly his third. I had asked Rob on our first date whether he had a rap sheet. It’s a question I always ask men I meet online, my version of an honesty test. Rob had assured me he had no criminal record. A lie told too easily.

Headed to jail on a ninety-six-hour hold, Rob asked me to go to his house and feed his puppy. Although we were broken up, I agreed, knowing he wasn’t ready to tell anyone else about his arrest. As I refilled a water bowl, Rob’s answering machine clicked on. A woman’s voice, thick with concern about her unanswered emails, clouded the kitchen air. Shortly afterwards, another call from another woman. That’s how I discovered Rob had two ex-girlfriends who had never let go, one of whom he had dated for seven years while working in Silicon Valley. “She loved my lifestyle more than she loved me,” Rob said later when I asked why he had never proposed to her.

After his arraignment, Rob told me that while dating his Silicon Valley ex, he had occasionally hooked up with another ex who lived in New York. We quarreled. He appeared unmoored, arguing frantically that I was the first woman to whom he had been faithful. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, he said. Our relationship was over, and I knew he had just been sentenced to 120 days in jail, but a sliver of my ego was hooked. I wanted to believe I was someone’s soul mate, although I couldn’t dismiss human history: the concept of a soul mate first entered culture through ancient Greek comedy. It was meant as a joke, one that would most certainly be on me if I chose a soul mate I didn’t trust.

After our breakup, Rob forwarded an email he sent to his New York ex stating that his relationship with her interfered with his ability to have a healthy relationship with me. He also forwarded her response. I remember thinking it was too late, my trust had been severed, but whomever Rob dated next might benefit.

Crumpled on my living room floor, unable to reach friends, I begin sobbing again, my mind flashing on the terrifying way the deputy chose to tell me about Rob’s death. How is it possible that I can guide my students smoothly through life-determining choices or dispense advice in the weekly relationship column I write for a local newspaper and yet fail myself and Rob so completely? Unbidden, my hand lifts to my heart, and steadies my breath.

The front door creaks open. Vee enters, then Chris, Tim, and Christy, in rapid succession, each easing into a loosened circle facing me on the floor behind the sofa. I open my mouth, a syllable begins, vanishes. The chaplain finishes my words, tying them into sentences, translating pain into language.

“My mom died by suicide,” Vee says.

The chaplain’s windbreaker rustles as she sits. A hush descends on the living room, as though we’ve entered a church the hour before midnight Mass.

“I never told you. I don’t talk about it,” says Christy. “My dad killed himself.”

In college. A buddy of mine did it,” Tim says.

And Chris, thirty years sober, has talked countless alcoholics out of ending their lives.

More than a decade later, I still marvel at how I managed, unknowingly and in my grief, to call in the four friends who had survived the death by suicide of people they dearly loved. When the door opened that night, they swooped like starlings, wrapping me into the flock, assuring me that I would survive the shock of Rob’s death—and whatever might follow.

A week later, I ask Chris to drive me to the Foresthill Bridge. I’d go alone, I tell him, but my mind insists on withholding the basics of driver’s ed. I tried to drive to the grocery store the previous day but forgot what to do after turning the key in the ignition. I draped my arms over the wheel and sobbed, then walked back into the house and put myself to bed.

There’s a long silence on the phone. “You sure you want to do this?”

He promises to take me in three days if I still want to go. I know he wants me to change my mind. Actually, that’s exactly what I hope will happen when we cross the bridge—my mind rising to embrace the profound sense of trust I felt on the trapeze.

On the appointed day, Chris’s white truck rattles along Foresthill-Auburn Ravine Road. The cab smells like granola bars and dried banana peels, which is somehow both comforting and cloying. He knows me well, so he doesn’t expect a conversation, and doesn’t use the radio to fill the silence. We’ve driven without speaking since he arrived at my house fifty minutes ago.

The Foresthill Bridge is a few feet ahead. At 730 feet, it’s one of the highest bridges in the world. In the film XXX, Vin Diesel’s character drives a stolen red Corvette off the Foresthill Bridge, jumping from the car mid-flight and parachuting to the bottom of American River Canyon.

“One jump and he killed it,” Rob said as we watched XXX on TV, curled into each other on his couch, back when we began dating.

After Rob jumped, I turned his words over in my mind, wondering if he had intended them as a hint, a cry for help, a warning I should have caught.

Chris and I walk along the two-lane wooden bridge, peering over the edge of the railing. The top plank is cracked, sloughing blue paint, exposing desolate, rippled wood. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, although I have a sense that this visit will be healing.

With effort, I raise my head, plant my feet firmly on the Foresthill Bridge, and survey my surroundings. On my left, the sparkling river. A meadow dotted with oak trees and lichen-bedecked boulders, just opposite. And here, a gravelly path where Rob’s body lay unmoving, before the police arrived.

My breath seizes. “Chris!”

There in the railing, my name, “Joey,” carved into the wood.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Chris says.

“He carved my name?”

“Maybe someone else did it. Maybe it wasn’t him.”

“It looks new. He was thinking about me when he died?”

“Don’t,” Chris says. “Don’t.”

He takes my left hand and holds it on the railing between us. On the horizon, a scattering of starlings spin like ecstatic dervishes. With pilgrim fingers, I trace the sturdy squarish letters of my name, each gash about the width of a quarter. Sky-blue paint radiates from the carving. My fingernails slip into the groove of the “J” as though entering a wound.

A few years later, a friend and I were driving to a hiking trail near Lake Clementine and crossed a bridge with a nearly seven-foot-tall mint-colored steel fence. My stomach clenched. Where are we, I asked, squinting through fence slats at the spectacular view of the North Fork American River. Foresthill Bridge, he said. A $74 million dollar retrofit in 2014 had transformed the bridge, making it earthquake safe and adding $1.5 million dollar fence to prevent suicides. Now people bring ladders. More than 90 people have died by suicide at the site since the bridge was built in 1971. The blue railing no longer exists, although its scarred wood still haunts me.

So does this: Days later, I watched a cloud of starlings dialing their sleek bodies into breathtaking aerial stunts over the Yolo Causeway. I read somewhere that each bird flies in sync with its six closest neighbors in the flock, every bird calling others in until hundreds, even thousands of starlings quicken the hour. Undeterred by weather, predators, or the noisy chatter of the flock, starlings pulsate as one body, shapeshifting in the sky. Before Rob, I expected that experience of union with a man. Starlings taught me to see another possibility, one that sustains me. In a murmuration, each starling has solitude and communion, a place to belong to itself and to the whole. That’s true for us, too. No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, no matter how dire, we are never alone. Thousands of others are in the thick with us, friends and strangers, some hurting, others reaching out to soften our fall.

¹ Not her real name.

² Not his real name.

Joey Garcia is a writer in Sacramento, CA. Her work has appeared in Mslexia, Hippocampus Magazine, the Caribbean Writer, and the anthology (HER)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic, among others. A retired teacher and former advice columnist, she’s now an author platform coach. Born in Belize, Joey founded the first-ever fellowship for a Belizean writer and leads retreats for writers: joeygarcia.com.

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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