But that is assuming he was killed by a stranger, that is assuming he did not, for example, stumble and hit his head on the rocks below—an unlikely and unfortunate blow but not necessarily an impossible one, stranger things have happened, the autopsy had shown that he had been drinking, that he was inebriated at time of death. In the middle of the night, this possibility is infinitely worse, a death completely without dignity, perhaps what we had feared most during the course of the investigation—an outcome worse than the final, inconclusive one—was the confirmation that there was no killer, that he had died wandering drunk and alone.
An empty and ridiculous death. That is why I sometimes prefer, perversely, the notion that Christopher’s death had in some way been brought about by his own actions, unintentional and unknowing as they were. Sometimes it is comforting to think that his death was a result of his being in the world, rather than his death having occurred entirely at random, as if erasing a presence that had already failed to leave its mark, that had not insisted sufficiently upon its life; then it would truly be as though he had vanished into thin air.
No doubt that is why, late at night, other scenarios occur to me—that there was indeed a vengeful and cuckolded husband to some unknown woman who was not Maria, who followed him out of the village—there were rumors that there was a woman involved, a jealous husband would have solved the case for us. Wasn’t it possible that the investigation failed not because the husband did not exist, but because the village had closed ranks against the police and, by implication, against the idea of justice for the stranger, the outsider, for Christopher? Or perhaps the police themselves had known the parties involved, and had chosen to protect them.
Of course, by morning, these ideas are absurd, and the conjectures that seemed plausible enough by night fall apart. In daylight, I can admit that my imagination was only seeking drama in what was, what has always been, a transparent death. When someone you love dies an unnatural death it is natural to look for a larger narrative, a greater significance, the shock of the event seems to require it. But in the end this is only chasing shadows. The real culpability is not to be found in the dark or with a stranger, but in ourselves. Of all the suspects—scattered among disparate bodies, existing in separate narratives—no one had more motive than I did. I had motive, several motives in fact—a huge sum of money to gain, a philandering and careless husband who had, at least according to appearances, all but abandoned me, another man I wished to marry. The motives had coalesced around me, a mantle manifested by my guilt—the guilt of the living, for which it is impossible to atone.
And yet it appeared to be a matter of indifference to everybody else. We sold the apartment about eighteen months after Christopher’s death—I did not want to live there, and Mark and Isabella thought this much the best course—and shortly after, I purchased a house in the same neighborhood, a fifteen-minute walk from where Christopher and I had lived. Yvan and I are now engaged, and we live in this house, which is too large for us, but which we say we will grow into, perhaps, if we have children, or at least a child. The money Christopher left to me—I still believe inadvertently—sits untouched, something that I think Yvan understands, although I do not know if he thinks this will change with time, in a matter of a year, perhaps two.
I cannot be certain it will change, or even if the relationship with Yvan will last, not out of any reluctance on my part, but on his. Something about the terms of the contract—the agreement that we entered into, unwritten and unspoken but no less binding—have changed, he finds himself living with, and also now engaged to, not a woman newly divorced, but a woman who has lost her husband, and who continues, while trying to conceal it from him, to grieve this loss. Sometimes, lying in bed beside Yvan, I remember being in Greece with Isabella and Mark and worrying that they would spot the rift of my pretense, the artifice of my widow’s grief.
But there was less difference than I thought, between the grief that I experienced and what I thought of as the legitimate grief of a legitimate wife—the grief that I attempted, while with Isabella and Mark and then before the world in general, to emulate. The emulation became the thing itself, in the end there was not that much difference between the grief of a wife and the grief of an ex-wife—perhaps wife and husband and marriage itself are only words that conceal much more unstable realities, more turbulent than can be contained in a handful of syllables, or any amount of writing.