“If you think that’s what she’d want,” Jenny said, reading his mind.
Of course Kate wouldn’t want that, but Griff wanted it on her behalf. She should’ve graduated. It was a travesty that she didn’t. Let her at least have a Carlisle funeral.
“She wasn’t an alum,” Jenny said, “but Keniston could probably arrange it. He’s getting released tonight, and Benji’s driving him up here in the morning. It’s only—”
“What?”
“The press has their teeth in the story, Griff. If you hold the funeral in the middle of campus, it could turn into a circus. I’m even worried they’ll show up here.”
“I’ve been through worse,” he said with a shrug, thinking of his father. “You just ignore it.”
“Kate’s in there,” Jenny said, nodding toward a side room. “I’ll wait in the lobby. I’m sure you want some time alone with her.”
It was the only thing he wanted.
As Griff stepped into the room and caught sight of Kate lying on the bier, his breath left him. They’d dimmed the lights, so the space seemed candlelit, almost romantic, and she looked so beautiful. He approached her reverently. The undertaker had done a remarkable job. She was herself, except with a heavy sheen of pale foundation makeup, which Kate never wore, and carefully brushed hair, where Kate’s hair was free and wild. Otherwise, it was just Kate, looking fast asleep. Jenny must have selected the outfit. She wore her favorite dress, a chic black sheath by a famous designer that hugged her figure, from the days when they could afford to spend thousands on a single item of clothing. Griff gazed down at her, ignoring the faint chemical smell that pervaded the air. He’d expected to want to throw himself on her body, to rant and rave, but instead he felt calm and light. He felt peace and joy. Until he touched her.
He drew his hand back as if he’d had an electric shock, but it was just the opposite. The life force had left her. Her flesh felt cold, plastic, inert. Like a refrigerated doll. Like she was dead. Only in that moment did it become real, and he sank to his knees beside her and sobbed.
“Why?” he shouted, through his tears, then remembered where he was. This place could be bugged. The cops might be listening.
“Who did this to you?” he said aloud. “Was it him? Or did you do it to yourself?”
He went to sit in a nearby folding chair, staring at her in the oppressive silence as an Eagles song played in his head. And the storybook comes to a close, gone are the ribbons and bows. Their love affair had been a storybook, to Griff at least. But if he was honest, they’d only had four or five good years before things went downhill, followed by nearly a decade of a slow, agonizing unraveling. But Kate was Kate. What could you do? He never stopped loving her.
Their best times were in New York, those first few years. There was a moment, after rehab, after they got married, when he truly believed she’d changed. Her guilt over Lucas was the cause, but if it helped manage her demons, he’d take it and be grateful. At some point in Paris, Kate had added a fourth star to that tattoo inside her wrist. Griff would come upon her sometimes, sitting quietly with a faraway look in her eyes, tracing that fourth star with her finger. He never asked her if it represented Lucas; he never let on he noticed it at all. But he knew. The guilt seemed to do her good. Kate took Griff up on his offer of an introduction to his friend who ran the charity, and for a while she volunteered in a shelter for homeless kids. She went so far as to write away for brochures on master’s programs in social work.
But then … what? It was hard to say what went wrong. The corrosive effect of his money surely played a role. It took willpower to instruct your driver to bring you to the homeless shelter in the Bronx when you could be sitting in the front row of the couture shows instead, and willpower was never Kate’s forte. Griff felt partly responsible, for setting a bad example. His job on Wall Street was a charade, his duties limited to playing matchmaker between his own firm and various powerful clients who were associates of his father’s. It was an endless round of lunches, drinks, and dinners—contentless, well suited to a charming schmoozer who wasn’t smart with numbers, which was how he thought of himself. He should’ve resisted the path laid out for him and done something else, something he liked, though he’d never liked anything much. He’d been a devotee of the gentleman’s C at Carlisle; call it the gentleman’s B-minus with grade inflation. The only classes he ever aced were Intro to Marine Bio and Literature of the Sea, because he loved boats and the ocean, and he loved to sail. Maybe he should have made a meaningful career out of that somehow, instead of being content to cruise the BVI in his yacht, watching the sun set with a mojito in his hand. Although boats turned out to be part of the problem: he took Kate away from New York when she didn’t want to go, so they could spend time on the water.
Around the time of her thirtieth birthday, Kate had begun to slip away from him. It started with a trip they made to Belle River, after Griff was asked to serve as financial chair of his tenth-reunion committee. They were only in town for a few days. She was excited about it at first, planning girl time with her old roommates, but at some point, something went awry. He never found out exactly what, or even if there was a particular triggering incident, though he imagined it had to do with Lucas Arsenault. In any event, depression overwhelmed her, and Kate fell into a deep, dark hole. He got her doctor to prescribe antidepressants, but Kate claimed they made her bloated and stupid. She stopped taking them, and turned instead to her old friends drugs and booze. He hated to see her to get wasted alone, so he joined her, as if that made it better. Pretty soon, they were both partying too much.