I give our parents a quick recap of my search through Will’s closet, and how it turned up nothing but lint. “But if I’m right, if Will really was holding off on telling me about the new job, it would explain why we didn’t find anything in his pockets. He didn’t want me to come across a business card or receipt and wonder what was up.”
Mom shakes her head. “Still, it’s not like Will to be so sneaky. Why would he apply for a job without telling you?”
“He wouldn’t. I’ll bet you money he was approached for it through LinkedIn or by a headhunter. Either way, ESP’s head of HR will be able to tell me. I’m calling her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Why?” Mom says. I give her a confused look, and she quickly amends. “What I mean is, her answer won’t change anything. There are more pressing matters you should be concerned about right now.”
“Your mother’s right,” Dad says. “There’s a funeral to plan and a ton of paperwork to be done. The banks will probably work faster if we swing by in person.”
“No, Stephen, I meant grieving. Iris needs to concentrate on the grieving process.” She turns back to me, reaching over the table for my hand. “Job or no new job, sweetheart, Will got on that plane. He’ll still be gone. And as unpleasant as it is, you need to work through your pain now, not push it aside to deal with later. You know this better than anyone.”
Her words burn in the corners of my eyes. Logically, I know they’re true. But I also know Will’s lies are chasing me. I feel their sour breath in my neck and their oily hands on my shoulder blades, shoving me forward, pushing me in a search of the whys. Maybe Mom’s right. Maybe my need to map out Will’s last moments is a defense mechanism to delay having to deal with the pain. But still. I can’t move forward until I fill in the most pressing blanks.
What else do I not know about my husband?
What else did he not tell me?
How many more lies?
Mom gives my hand a squeeze. “I’m just worried about you, sweetie. That’s all.”
“Thanks.” Her concern sends up another surge of tears, one that this time I can’t blink away. “I’m a little worried about me, too.”
*
Later that night, after the kitchen is clean and Mom and Dad have headed upstairs for bed, I carry my laptop over to the couch and pull up Will’s Facebook page.
My husband was not a big fan of social media. “Why bother?” he’d always say. “It’s just a place for people to brag and lie about their lives. Like I’m supposed to believe the biggest asshole from high school is now dating a supermodel? Sorry, but I call bullshit.” But like pretty much everybody else on the planet, Will had a Facebook page; he just largely ignored it.
Dave plops down beside me on the couch, throwing his bare feet up on the coffee table and shoving aside a flower arrangement with his toe. Now I know why so many obituaries include the line in lieu of flowers... They’re literally everywhere, solemn springtime arrangements lined up across every horizontal surface, spilling over kitchen counters and mantelpieces, clogging the air with their heady scent.
“Maybe we should donate some of these. What do you think?”
I glance over. “Fine by me. There’s a church around the corner and a dozen shelters within five miles.”
“Cool. I’ll get James to give me a hand.”
“A hand with what?” James says, coming into the room with a bottle and three glasses. He holds the glasses by the stems in one hand and pours with the other with a surgeon’s steadiness, not spilling a drop. Dave tells him about the flowers, and they agree to distribute the first load in the morning.
“Thanks,” I say, taking one of the glasses from James. With my other hand, I gesture to my laptop screen, to the sea of shocked condolence posts jamming up Will’s wall. “When did people start treating Facebook as a tool to communicate with the dead? Like this one. Will, man, so sorry to hear of your passing. RIP, buddy. Do they really think he’s going to see it? He never checked his page when he was alive, much less...” Unable to finish, I bury my nose in my wine.
Dave drapes a palm over my wrist. “Stop torturing yourself, sweetie, and turn off the laptop.”
“I can’t. I’m looking for clues.” I open a screen for Will’s list of friends. There are seventy-eight of them, and more than sixty of them are mutual. I scroll to the bottom, to the friends we don’t have in common, find a handful of colleagues, one of my girlfriend’s exes, a neighbor from down the road, the barista from our neighborhood coffee shop.
Dave leans in, reading over my shoulder. “What kind of clues are you looking for, Inspector Gadget?”
“Clues of the Corban Hayes kind.” Dave frowns, and I add, “You know. The banker-slash-bodybuilder I met at the memorial today. The one who told me all those things about Will.”
“Because of curiosity, or suspicion?” James says.
I pause to consider my answer, but it doesn’t take me long. Yes, curiosity is driving me, but after meeting Corban, I can’t shake the feeling there’s more I don’t know. If there are more people like Corban Hayes out there, I want to speak to them.
“Both.”
But I’m not going to find anything here. Will hated Facebook, and there’s nobody here I don’t recognize or can’t place. I slam the laptop closed in frustration.
James leans back into the couch, resting his wineglass on his flat stomach. “Have you checked the cards?”
“What cards?”
He sweeps a palm toward the arrangement on the table and beyond, to vases standing like soldiers at attention on the kitchen bar. “You must’ve gotten flowers from everyone you know. Maybe there are a couple here from people you don’t know.”
Of course, the cards. The ones Mom arranged in the basket on Will’s place mat, the ones I couldn’t bear to read. I pop off the couch and fetch the basket from the table.
James refills the wineglasses, and we sip and sift through the condolences, pausing only to point out a painfully bad illustration or an extra corny text, and there are a lot of both. There must be close to a hundred cards here, saccharine messages and religious missives from my and Will’s colleagues, old friends and neighbors, aunts and cousins and college classmates, people I haven’t seen or heard from in years.
Dave holds up a note card covered in green glitter. “Who are Terry and Melinda Phillips?”
“Aka Melinda Leigh,” I say. “Our cousin.”
His eyes go wide, and his face spreads into a grin. “The one who came to your wedding in a prom dress?”
I smile at the memory of my brother’s face when Melinda walked up the church steps in her frilly blue concoction. “Terry is her third husband. Or is it fourth? I’ve lost count. And it wasn’t a prom dress.”
“It was definitely a prom dress, and it was hideous, not to mention two sizes too small.” He starts describing the dress for James, the lace and the ruffles and the seams stretched to screaming, while I return to the pile.
A few cards later, I come across something—a name I’ve never heard of before, printed underneath the generic florist’s card message. I twist to face James. “Did you go to Hancock?”
He gives me a funny look.
“This card says Deepest sympathies for your loss, Hancock High School, Class of ’99. Is that where you went?”