I’d caught her in the act twice before and the silence from the upstairs bedroom was louder than the TV broadcasting the news tonight. Any other night, I could hear her footsteps against the floorboards, the opening and shutting of doors, cupboards, closets, but tonight when I muted the TV, all I heard was quiet.

I walked cautiously up the stairs, always unprepared for what I might find. I kept my ears open for any hint that she was simply sleeping. The light glowed underneath the closed bedroom door and I knew that she was inside; asleep or passed out from an overdose, I could never be sure.

Pushing on the door, it didn’t budge; a little harder and I could tell she’d put the chair to the vanity under the doorknob to keep out intruders such as myself. I could hear the clicking of an object and I couldn’t be sure what it was.

“Seely, open the door,” I said to her through the crack I’d formed between the door and the frame.

She was out of sight, which left me still unsure of what the clicking I’d heard before was.

“Babe, come on,” I said, “open the door.”

I pushed harder and the barrier opened a tiny bit more. One more push and I’d broken through her barricade. She was standing with her back facing me, her hands playing with the object in front her chest, but still out of my sight. Her long, brunette hair hung to the middle of her back and she was wearing a slimming backless, black dress that had no occasion to be worn for tonight.

“Seely,” I whispered, entering the room more cautiously than I had while climbing the stairs.

Edging closer to her, I suddenly recognized the clicking coming from between her fingers. I gently touched her shoulder and she turned to face me, tears streaming down her face. Her mascara was a mess over her rosy cheeks and the circular indent from the barrel of my small handgun was imprinted against the side of her forehead.

She’d dressed up to die and I’d interrupted her date with death.

“I can’t figure out how to load it,” she said with her eyes glazed over in tears, mascara continuing to streak down her face.

“Jesus Seely,” I said and quickly grabbed the weapon from her. “What the hell are you doing?”

The safety of the gun had been switched off and she’d placed one bullet inside the chamber. I unloaded the weapon and placed it in the closet, making a mental note to get rid of it in the morning. Returning out of the closet, Seely had sunken against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest, tears steadily streaming down her face and landing on top of her legs.

I ran my hand through my hair, tugging on it out of frustration. I sighed in anger and closed my eyes in an attempt of thinking what I should do next.

“Why do you do this?” I asked her from across the room. “Why?”

She only shook her head and I knew she held the words on the tip of her tongue but could never tell me what exactly was going on inside her mind.

“Why can’t you see that it’s not your time?” I said a little louder, “why can’t you accept that?”

“Because I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said with the same tone of voice that I had. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Well God doesn’t want you yet; it’s not your time,” I was almost yelling at her now. “Don’t you think if it was your turn he’d have taken you the first time I found you with three bottles of pills swallowed? Why would he let you live long enough to have your stomach pumped and survive?” I paused, letting my words sink in. “Or the second time when you wrapped your car around that tree and you hadn’t been wearing your seatbelt. The suicide note was taped to the dashboard and your body was ejected from the car a few feet away. You should’ve died, Seely, but you didn’t. He doesn’t want you yet.”

She was sobbing now as I dug up her skeletons from the past. I sighed loudly and knelt down beside her, grabbing her hands and holding them in mine. The truth was, I didn’t know if it was her time or not. I didn’t know if God wanted her right now, tomorrow, the next year or in fifty years, but I knew that she couldn’t get lucky three times. She’d upgraded to the gun I had stashed in the closet and I knew there’d be no coming back from the bullet she was preparing to take to the side of her head.

“Seely, talk to me,” I whispered to her. “Tell me what’s going on inside.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she whispered.

And I knew that I wouldn’t but it didn’t stop me from trying.