“How do you know that isn’t your own hubcap?” he asks, but without waiting for my reply, “Would it lessen your concern if I spoke to the owner of the vehicle?” he asks, and I say it would. It would help immensely. Detective Kaufman finds the closeup of the license plate number on my phone’s photo album, and jots it down on a sheet of scrap paper. He tells me he’ll contact the owner and let me know what he finds.
“One more thing,” he tells me before I can rise from my chair and leave. “It came to my attention that Mr. Solberg had an Order of Protection filed against him,” he says, words that I find utterly farcical and so I laugh. It isn’t a lighthearted laugh, but an unsettled laugh, one that gets the detective’s attention.
“A restraining order?” I gasp, knowing how impossible this is. There’s no way in the world that someone would file a restraining order against Nick. Nick is gentle, kind, a pacifist. He can’t even raise his voice to me when he’s mad. The detective is wrong. This can’t be.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, staring at me in a way that suggests he isn’t wrong. “A restraining order. You didn’t know?” he asks, and it’s mockery the way he says it. He’s mocking me. I shake my head; I didn’t know. “An Emergency Order of Protection was filed against Mr. Solberg. He and the accuser were awaiting a date for the hearing for a plenary order, which would decide whether or not the Order of Protection was going to stick.”
“The accuser,” I say, more to myself than to the detective, a loaded word in and of itself, accuser, which would make Nick the accused. This can’t be. “This has to be a mistake,” I tell the detective. “This is simply ludicrous. Nick couldn’t hurt a fly,” I say.
“Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t,” says the detective, “but that was up to a judge to decide,” explaining to me that in three days’ time Nick and this accuser were to attend a hearing to decide whether or not the emergency order had any merit or if it was a frivolous claim.
“I suppose we’ll never know now,” he says, though in my mind I’ve already decided.
Nick would never hurt a fly.
“Who did this to Nick?” I ask, needing to know. When I think of restraining orders, I imagine maniac men with violent tendencies threatening their wives and children. I envision battered women in shelters, and scared kids who cling to their mother’s gaunt legs, crying. I don’t see Nick. My mind is reeling as I ask again, more preemptory this time, less polite, “Who did this to Nick?”
It isn’t a question this time. I demand to know.
The order is public record. I could go to the courthouse and request a copy of the filing if I wanted to, which is maybe the only reason why Detective Kaufman gives me the name. It’s one I’ve never heard before, a woman who I soon plan to know anything and everything about. At the mention of her name, I feel a stabbing sensation in my chest because it is a woman. My mind recalls the receipt for the pendant necklace. Was the necklace for this woman?
Was Nick having an affair?
All the air suddenly leaves the room, and I find it hard to breathe.
I gather Felix and begin to leave, but not before the detective stops me one last time. “There’s something else,” he says, and I pause with my hand on the doorknob and turn. “It’s standard protocol to check the cell phone records in the case of a vehicle collision. See if the driver was on the phone at the time of a crash. Browsing the internet. Texting. Illinois is now a hands-free state, which I’m sure you know,” he says, and I know what he’s getting at well before he says it.
“Your husband was on the phone at the time of the crash,” and though I want to quibble with him and claim that it’s not possible, I see the expression on the detective’s face and know that he’s telling the truth. Nick, who never speaks on the phone while driving, was on the phone. And he wasn’t speaking to me because before he left the ballet studio, we’d already spoken.
I’ll pick up something for dinner. Chinese or Mexican?
Chinese.
Who was Nick speaking to at the time of the crash? I wonder. I ask the detective about this. “He was on the phone,” I say, “with who?”
The detective stares at me for an extended minute or two before shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I believe you were given Mr. Solberg’s personal effects already. The items we were able to gather from the car. His phone should be there,” though already I’m telling myself that whoever it is, was simply a wrong number. It was a wrong number, and Nick, ever obliging and gracious, took the time to answer the call, to tell the caller politely that he or she had misdialed. And for this he died.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Detective Kaufman says prosaically, rising from the table and collecting my abandoned Styrofoam cup in his hand as I leave, bound and determined to figure this paradox out. Who was Nick speaking to at the time of the crash? Who filed an Order of Protection against him and, perhaps more important, why?
What secrets has Nick been keeping from me for all this time?
NICK
BEFORE
Most nights I go home with the best intentions of telling Clara exactly what’s going on. It isn’t that I’m purposefully trying to keep it from her. There aren’t secrets in our marriage; that’s a promise we made when we said I do, and one I plan to stick to.
It’s more of an omission.
I think to myself as I drive home, Tonight’s the night I’m going to tell her, but then I come in through the door to find Clara with a belly swollen three times its size and feet so inflated she can barely walk, setting the table for dinner. Maisie is sitting before the TV, surrounded by glue sticks and crayons, evidence that she didn’t watch TV all day, but rather spent the day creating, and when I come in she runs to me, and I hoist her into my arms and tickle her as she laughs. She wears her leotard still, this pastel-pink thing with fluttery sleeves. Wrapped around her waist is a dainty pink skirt, with flouncy edges that remind me of lettuce leaves. Today is Tuesday, the day Maisie takes ballet. “Where were you?” Maisie asks as I bring her back down to earth, the same question she asks every day though she knows good and well where I was.
“At work, silly,” I say, and she asks why.