“I’m Clara Solberg,” I say, and he says to me, “I know who you are,” as I slide sideways into the blue plastic chair.
This could make me blush, and yet it doesn’t. I’m beyond that point in my life when being embarrassed comes with ease. My husband is dead. I feel nothing anymore but grief.
“My husband,” I go on, as if I didn’t hear him at all, “is the one who was killed out on Harvey Road. Seven days ago.”
“I know.”
We’re a town of nearly forty thousand people, not the kind of town where everyone knows everyone. But in the age of social media, news spreads quickly. The newspaper had asked for a photo of Nick to include with their report: Crash on Harvey Road leaves one dead. I tried unavailingly to find a photo of Nick alone, but all I could dig up was Nick and me. Nick and me standing on the limestone bluffs of Peninsula State Park, overlooking a frigid Green Bay; at the top of Eagle Tower, enjoying the view; kayaking. The newspaper had asked for family photographs, the kind of image that would trigger sympathy and boost ratings and sales, but I wasn’t too keen on having Maisie’s face splayed across the black-and-white newsprint to make someone else feel sad. I wasn’t too keen on having Maisie’s image made public for any reason, but especially not to trumpet the fact that her father was dead.
I chose a photo of Nick and me. The next day it appeared in the local paper and online. By afternoon, it had been spread around the internet a bazillion times. It appeared at random on friends’ Facebook feeds—my tragedy quickly becoming theirs, people I didn’t know leaving commentary on friends of friends’ status updates about how they were so sorry for so-and-so’s loss, as if my high school pal Amanda and Jill, the woman I spoke to at the gym on occasion, had lost a spouse and not me. So very sorry for your loss, Jill, said one Facebook friend to Jill. What a horrible tragedy, followed by the obnoxious inclusion of a cyber hug. Jill had never once met Nick. She didn’t need a hug, and I found I was appalled by this cyber hug, truly and utterly aghast by the left and right curly keyboard brackets coming together in a warm embrace on my laptop screen, an anger that spiraled into the decision never again to speak to Jill.
And then that evening Nick’s and my blithe faces aired on the news, and I watched in awe and disgust as Nick’s story spread far and wide.
It doesn’t surprise me that Detective Kaufman knows who I am.
“I wanted to talk to you about my husband’s case,” I say, and at this his mouth parts in questioning. There is no case.
“You mean his accident?” he asks, and I shrug my shoulders, but I don’t say yes or no. Accident implies that something has happened unintentionally and without deliberate cause. I’m no longer sure that’s the case.
“I have reason to believe that foul play was to blame.”
I watch the expression on his face. A single eyebrow elevates, the other droops. He doesn’t smile. For a long time, he doesn’t say a thing.
And then, after a while he asks, “And why is that, Mrs. Solberg?” His eyes never once wander from mine, as he sips lingeringly from a mug of coffee, taking his time. The room is cold, the air conditioner working overtime to counter the temperature outside. I feel suddenly awkward in the detective’s eyes, repulsive and fat, the extra baby weight stuffed into the elastic panel of a pair of maternity pants. The dried sweat clings to my skin; my underarms begin to reek.
“My daughter has been having nightmares,” I say, trying to return his sustained stare. It’s not so hard to do. “She’s been having nightmares about the accident. Flashbacks. Except that in these flashbacks there’s a bad man following her and Nick. A bad man in a black car,” I say, taking the liberty of consolidating the stories and filling in the missing details. “Perhaps there was another car out on Harvey Road that day, one that pushed Nick and Maisie off the road. Perhaps this car,” I say as I set my smartphone on the table between us and find the image of the car and a closeup of its license plate. Detective Kaufman narrows his eyes at the images on the screen, but they don’t look for long.
“Your daughter told you there was a car following her and Mr. Solberg on Harvey Road?” he asks, and I nod my head and easily commit perjury.
“Yes,” I say, believing in her own way that Maisie did say these words to me. I asked point-blank if the man was in a car, and she said yes. When I asked if the car was black, Maisie let out a howl and ran, unlike when I asked if it was red or blue, to which she shook her head and said no.
“Why do you think this is the car?” he asks, and so I tell him about the scene in the grocery store parking lot this afternoon, my Maisie running helter-skelter through the cars in fright. I tell him how she wet her pants, how she screamed over and over again no, no, no, no, no. The detective seems disinterested in this. He doesn’t write any of it down, nor does the expression of his face change.
Only when I stop talking does he speak.