According to Google, ESP stands for Enterprise Security Platform, one of Seattle’s top twenty-five Best Places to Work and AppSec’s leading competitor. Their client list is long and varied, an impressive list of big names and major brands from the financial, pharmaceutical, aeronautical and manufacturing industries. ESP consultants speak twenty-four languages, work in fifty-seven countries, and spend their free time skiing and biking and diving headfirst off cliffs and mountaintops. It’s exactly the type of place Will would want to work if given a chance—successful and hip in an adventurous, granola sort of way. Everything about the company seems perfect for him, save the teeny tiny detail that it’s located on the other side of the country.
I click around their website for a bit, scanning employee profiles and checking job boards. Most of the positions I come across are lower level or located in one of the East Coast offices, and I wonder if they already removed the job posting Will filled. The head of Human Resources is a woman named Shefali Majumdar. I click on her profile and jot her contact info onto a Post-it. She won’t be in the office on a Sunday afternoon, and my question isn’t exactly something you leave in a voice mail. Hello, did you happen to hire my husband? Yes? Sorry, but it seems he won’t be coming.
“Sweetheart?” Mom says, and I look up to find her standing at the edge of the couch. “Dinner’s ready.”
I pull up Facebook on my laptop, thinking I’ll look through Will’s list of friends. Maybe one of their profiles can give me some indication on what to do, where to look next. “Y’all go ahead. I’m not hungry.”
“I made mashed potatoes.”
My sweet mom. She knows how much I love her mashed potatoes, and I don’t have the heart to tell her the smell of them is making me want to throw up.
She perches on the armrest. “At least come sit with us and try, okay? Just a bite or two.”
As much as I want to argue the point, she’s probably right to be worried. Beyond the bowl of instant oatmeal I wolfed down over the counter on the morning of the crash and the handful of saltines she force-fed me just yesterday, I’ve barely eaten in the past five days. The therapist in me knows my lack of appetite is the result of shock and depression, that there’s a physiological reason for why everything that touches my tongue tastes like cardboard, but still. The last thing I want right now is food. As soon as Mom turned her head, those crackers came right back up.
But now she’s watching me with an expression I know all too well, concern mixed with determination, one that says this is a fight she won’t give up. With a loud sigh, I slide my laptop to the couch cushion and follow her into the kitchen, where everyone has already gathered.
Mom shoos us to the table. “Sit, sit. I’ll be over with the plates in a minute. Boys, give me a hand, will you?”
They do, and Dad swings an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side, dropping a kiss on my temple. “How you holding up, Squirt?”
“Hanging in there,” I lie.
The truth is, I’ve called Will’s voice mail more times than I care to count just to hear his voice, even though the sound of it kills more than it comforts me. And I can’t stop thinking about what I learned from Corban at the memorial—not so much about Will’s job offer in Seattle, but more so about the two men’s friendship. Why would Will hide that from me? Dave is right; Will was more of a loner than a guy’s guy, but he knew enough people to fill a table at KR Steakbar for his thirtieth birthday party. Sure, some of them were married to my girlfriends, but still. The point is, he talked about those men, included them in celebrations like they were buddies.
So why all the secrecy about Corban? Was Will worried I wouldn’t like him for some reason? Or did Corban’s friendship mean so little to Will that he didn’t think to tell me? No, that can’t be right. They must have been friends for Will to tell Corban such personal things, things it took Will ages to share with his own wife. I try to piece it all together, to think through the links of what I know—the job, the friendship, Seattle—but I’m too emotionally exhausted. None of it makes any sense.
My gaze lands on Will’s spot at the far end of the table. Somebody—Mom, I’m guessing—placed a wicker basket, stuffed to overflowing with sympathy cards, where his plate would be. They’ve been coming for days now, flowery cards with even more flowery messages, and I can’t bring myself to read any of them. I choose a chair at the opposite end and sit down.
“Does that sound all right to you?” my father says, and it’s only when no one else answers that I realize he’s talking to me.
I look over to find him watching me. “Does what sound all right?”
“That we stay until next weekend.” He tilts his head to Dave and James settling steaming plates onto the table, and to Mom beyond them in the kitchen. “We’ve all cleared it with our work so we can get you through the first week. After that, we’ll trade off for as long as you need one of us here.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mom says, her tone a resolute mix of supreme authority and mother-hen concern. “We’re staying, and that’s that.”
She slides a plate in front of me with a serving so massive it hangs over the edges, enough food for three people. She gives me an encouraging grin, and I try not to wince when the smell hits my nose, meat and potatoes and butter. But she’s still standing there, so I swallow down my nausea and pick up a bite with my fork.
“Who was that man you were talking to at the memorial? That black guy built like a bouncer,” Dave says as I’m lifting the bite to my mouth.
I want to kiss him. Yes, he’s asking partly out of curiosity, but he’s mostly trying to distract our hovering mother. His strategy works. As soon as she shoots him a questioning look, I slide the food from my fork.
“His name is Corban. He’s a friend of Will’s from the gym. A good friend, apparently.”
Dave is the only one who catches my meaning behind that last word. “You didn’t know this before today?”
“No. He also informed me Will was offered a new job at one of AppSec’s biggest competitors.” I pause, a familiar weight pressing down on my chest. “In their Seattle office.”
Every head at the table swings to me.
“The two of you were moving?” Mom says, sinking into the chair across from me. “Since when?”
“Since never. Will and I never discussed it. I only learned of the job offer this afternoon, from Corban.”
“Will didn’t tell you he got a new job?” Dave’s voice has a snap in it, a defensive edge I’ve heard many times, but never once directed at Will.
It sharpens the edge in mine, as well. “I don’t know that the offer was ever actually finalized. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that’s why he didn’t tell me. Will knew a cross-country move would have been a hard sell, and he didn’t want to start the discussion with me until he knew for sure. The point is, this job gives him a compelling reason to be on that plane, as well as a reason not to tell me where he was going. This job was his something else.”
Dave and James exchange a look.
“Somebody want to tell me what y’all are talking about?” Dad says from the other end of the table, his gaze bouncing around, from me to Dave to James, then back to me.