He stood facing a shelf of boxes, a hand covering his face.
“Matt?” I touched his back. He didn’t move. I slid my fingers up his spine and kissed his shoulder blade. “Hey, that’s a lot of people out there, huh?”
Matt’s silence frightened me—always. We’d been living together for just a month and a half. Matt spent most of his time writing. My job at the agency absorbed me. In so many ways, we were still strangers, circling the mystery of one another. And when I was alone with Matt, as I was in the storage room that afternoon, I sensed I was alone with something volatile.
Finally he said, “Do you think my editor did this?”
“Did what?” I moved to get a look at his face.
Another long silence.
I waited it out.
“You don’t know what it meant to me,” he said.
Matt pulled me in for a quick hug and walked out of the storage room.
The signing ran for another half hour, during which Matt sat with his hand half covering his face. Pam gave me a few puzzled looks. I shrugged.
Matt said I didn’t know what it meant to him. He was right. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know what the hell it was.
But now I know. It was his privacy. And now I know how he valued his privacy. Above me, above his family, above everything.
*
Two months after the book signing, I stood in a phone booth in New Jersey, just outside my motel.
I listened to the ringtone on the line. I listened to the rain, a steady frigid patter.
What I am doing, I thought, is wicked. How can I?
And then I pictured Matt.
The scenes of our last days together were surreal.
Matt moving money into the wall safe in our condo.
Matt pacing, talking excitedly about freedom and his writing.
Matt vanishing onto a snow-choked trail in the mountains.
Watching him go—watching him smile back at me. Real fear in my heart. Confusion. And now this: a facsimile of grief that I would present to Matt’s family. Who had I become?
“Hannah?”
The voice sounded far off. I crushed the phone against my ear.
“Matt … hi.”
“Hannah. Are you okay? I miss you. Fuck, I miss you.”
My eyes began to sting.
“No, I’m not okay. How can I be? How can I be okay?”
“Listen, Hannah. This is as hard as it gets. Everything will get easier after this.”
“No.” I clenched my teeth. “I don’t think so.”
“It will. Baby bird, trust me. I don’t even want you there. Why are you going? Tell Nate you can’t go. Call him now and tell him.”
“No. I’m going. I deserve this.”
“Hannah…”
I swallowed thickly and closed my eyes. A car passed, crunching over old ice and snow.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered. “If I seem guilty or sad, if I can’t look your family in the eye … however it goes. Maybe that’s what grief looks like. I don’t even fucking know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know why I agreed to this.”
“Is that how it is?” Matt’s voice chilled. “Then tell them I’m alive.”
“Matt, no. I—”
“No, go on. Tell everyone the truth. I won’t do this. I won’t be made to feel like I’ve conned you into this, like I’m manipulating you. Mm, I know … it was all well and good when we were together, but you get away from me for a few weeks and suddenly you can’t remember why you did this? I thought you wanted this for me.”
“I did. I do. Stop it. You can’t get—”
“What can’t I get? Angry? I’m not angry, Hannah. Do whatever you want. I told you not to go out there. I told you to stay away from it all.”
I stayed quiet then and so did Matt. He was right. He told me not to get involved with his family. He knew how it would hurt and how guilty I would feel. And I, a self-saboteur of the first degree, did it anyway.
I helped my lover fake his death.
I lied to my family, Pam, the police.