He also kept meticulous records of his debts. Not that I hadn’t been aware of this, but I didn’t want to get too involved. He owed far more than I had imagined. A few million. Some to the banks, some to friends. The police investigator said there was also a good chance he had gotten entangled with loan sharks. That there were all these calculations that didn’t add up. Sums that appeared in one ledger but not in another. He said it was highly unlikely a person like Dad would suddenly be careless with his records, and that he probably settled his debts on the black market before he killed himself, so we’ll never really know what happened there.

When the investigator told me that one of the motives behind his suicide was the insurance money, I told him there was no way. That Dad had told me himself life insurance companies wouldn’t pay death benefits if the person who took out the policy committed suicide. The investigator said that was only partially correct. The truth, like always, was in the fine print. Your family isn’t entitled to the funds if you take out insurance and kill yourself the very next day. The person has to be insured for at least a year for the money to be payable. But once that year is up, the family of the deceased is legally entitled to that money. Dad knew that. Of course he knew.

“So that’s why he told me about it? So I wouldn’t suspect?” I asked the investigator, but he didn’t have the answer to that one.

I like to think he had chosen that day—the day we dragged Grandpa off the roof—for a reason. That it, too, was a well-planned move. That there was a good enough reason behind his decision to leave us on such a shitty day. Grandpa thought it was because of the Tavor rifle. That he saw the opportunity and took it. But I think he’s wrong. Dad had enough ways and pills to end his life whenever he wanted. Maybe he had just tried holding on for as long as he could, but knew Grandpa’s illness was more than he could deal with. I guess that in his analytical mind, choosing suicide at that particular moment in time was simply the responsible thing to do. His way of ensuring he wouldn’t become a burden.

And maybe there is no logical explanation. Maybe plans get messed up even for people like him.

30.