Beth’s face replaces the map a second later, her wry smile staring at me. She’s called every hour or so since our fight yesterday. She wants to know if I’m okay. To make sure I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m not sure of either answer, so I hit “Ignore” and fire off a text telling her that I need some space. I don’t mention where I’m going. Or what I’m going to do when I get there. My breath quickens as the blue dot inches closer to the checkered flag.
My phone call to Nick letting him know I was coming had been short and stilted. It was my fault. I was being cryptic because I wanted to be face-to-face when I told him I was ready to go to Maui. I also wanted to look into his eyes and see what was really there. If fear had begun to rule his life too. If we really were in this together.
Two blocks later I find myself staring up at the kind of shiny high-rise condo building that’s commonplace in Irvine. I walk through the lobby, passing a dry cleaner and a Peet’s Coffee on my way to the elevator. I try not to think about the fact that she had lived here too. That she still may have unclaimed clothes wrapped in plastic inside Nice n’ Clean.
Nick answers the door quickly, almost as if he’s been standing on the other side, waiting.
“Hey,” I offer, not sure what the right emotion is for this moment.
He smiles, and it puts me at ease. “I’m so glad you came.”
The condo is immaculate—did he just clean, or does he always keep his home this orderly? I notice it’s decorated in mostly cool grays and whites with a touch of color—a red throw pillow on the couch and yellow pots and pans hanging in the kitchen. I glance back at him as I take in the large space; I didn’t expect such modern, minimalist tastes from the buff-looking firefighter whose calloused hand scratched mine when he shook it. I instantly wonder about Dylan—had the design choices been hers?
“Don’t tell the guys at the station, but I have a serious love for decor,” he jokes, as if reading my mind. “The cheap kind, that is—it’s almost all from Ikea.” He knocks his knuckles on a white bookshelf. “Looks good now, but what a bitch to put together. I’m not sure the hours of sweat and frustration were worth the money I saved.”
“Did Dylan help?” I ask, her name sounding strange when I say it.
“No,” he says. “Decorating wasn’t her thing.”
“What was her thing, then?” Stealing other people’s husbands?
I don’t say the last part, but it’s clear I’m not really asking what her hobbies were. That I don’t really care. I didn’t mean for things to start out like this. I planned to have a civilized conversation with Nick. But I didn’t think through what being here was going to do to me. How, standing in front of a sleek black couch and a simple coffee table, I can only picture her—here, alive, lying back against the pillows and laughing. Rage swells up inside me.
Nick’s eyes are gentle. “Jacqueline.”
“Jacks. It’s Jacks,” I stutter. My mom’s steely eyes flash to mind, the sharp shrill of her voice when she’d call me by my full name as a child—only when she was as angry as I felt right now. But I shouldn’t take it out on him, even if he is the closest to Dylan I’ll ever get.
“Fine. Tell me. Was it knitting? Pilates? Scrapbooking? Is there an album somewhere with pictures of her and James with polka-dot borders and cute stickers that say things like against all odds and more than a feeling?” My voice cracks.
“Jacks. I get that you’re mad and confused and sad. I’m all of those things too.” He motions toward the couch, but I shake my head, instead taking a seat on a barstool in the kitchen. Dylan’s little pixie ass seems much less likely to have perched up there.
“I hadn’t thought about what being here was going to feel like. Stupid, right?”
“No, not at all. I should have suggested Peet’s.”
“She’d have been there too. She’s everywhere.”
Nick chews on his lower lip, no doubt having his own memories. And suddenly I feel terrible about my bratty outburst. “I’m sorry for being a jerk,” I say, and smile sincerely.
He returns my smile. “It’s okay. This is all really hard.”
Nick pours me a glass of water and sets it in front of me. “If it helps, remember she didn’t live here. She rented a room in the condo downstairs with a couple of roommates.”
I can see the deep circles under his eyes. “You aren’t sleeping,” I say.
“And you are?” He raises his eyebrow.
I shake my head. “No, not well. Even when I take a pill, which most nights I have to.”
“Every time I lay my head down on my pillow, I think of the crash. I see horrific car accidents every day in my line of work. To think that Dylan went through that . . .” He trails off.
“I know. Me too.” It’s the worst part, the movie I’ve made in my head of what I think the Jeep looked like when it exploded. “I go back and forth between being pissed off at James and worried that he suffered. I hate it.”
“That’s something I’ve thought a lot about. That going to Maui could help us not be so damn pissed off anymore. Because there’s nothing worse, right, than trying to grieve a death when you are so mad at the person. You know I smashed a picture she bought for me? Flung it against the wall and watched as shards of glass sprayed everywhere. It took me forever to clean up. I’m still cutting myself on the pieces I missed.” He looks over to the corner of the living room where it must have happened.
“I got irrationally mad at the creators of sympathy cards,” I offer, shaking my head at the memory. “I didn’t even tell my sister, Beth, this, but I actually burned some of them on the flame from the gas stove. I set off the smoke detector.”
We laugh quietly.
I take a drink of my water, trying to imagine a day when I’m not pissed off at James. For dying. For dying with a woman other than me. For fighting with me before he left. For taking the board shorts from our honeymoon on their clandestine vacation. For not knowing how to drive better on a dangerous road. For driving on a dangerous road in the first place. For marrying me. For cheating on me. So many things. And sure, there’s a possibility that if I go to Maui with Nick, I could stand on a beach and close my eyes and meditate and try to let go of that anger. But there’s one thing I worry about: that I’ll never stop being mad at myself.
“I read a lot about grieving when I’m up in the middle of the night,” he says, and I tell him I’ve done the same thing. That I’m an obsessive Googler—particularly between the hours of one and three in the morning.
“There was an article about a man who lost his wife when she was traveling abroad with her friend. Their hotel had a terrible fire . . .” He shakes his head. “And this guy, he went there. To Spain, I think it was. To the place where the hotel had burned down. And it helped him say good-bye.”
“What are you saying? That you want to go to where they crashed?”
Nick walks over to the window, turning his back to me. “No, I’m not sure I could do that—it would be so hard.” His voice breaks. “I think I would go to Maui and follow my instincts. See where my heart takes me. Where she takes me.”
I try to imagine myself standing at the place where the accident happened, looking over the edge. I found Google images of the road to Hana. I saw the winding roads, the sharp edges of the cliffs, the lava rocks jutting out from the ocean. But I could click the little x in the upper-right corner of my computer screen whenever I’d seen enough. Could I go there in person? I’m not sure.
Nick continues. “I think that man being able to go to the location of the hotel takes a strength I’m not sure I have. Going to the crash site would be something I’d want to decide once I was there. If it doesn’t feel right, I won’t go.”
“Is this something people actually get over?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. But don’t you think we should at least try?”
“I don’t know.” Forget the accident scene; I’m suddenly not sure I have the strength to step foot on Maui soil.
Nick walks around me, grabbing a stack of papers out of a drawer. “I think these will help.” He turns them toward me, and I can make out James’s email address at the top.
“Are those the emails they wrote to each other?”
He nods.
“You think reading emails between my husband and his lover is going to help me?”