I thank him, and a few minutes later, Dave and I are bellying up to the library’s information desk. The woman behind it is barely visible over the piles of books and papers, a leaning tower of brown boxes and a computer screen so old it should be in a museum.
She also looks nothing like a librarian. Her hair is a wild cloud of corkscrew curls, she’s covered in leather and tattoos, and it’s a good thing this school doesn’t have metal detectors, because there’s no way she’d make it through one with all those piercings. They line her lobes and nostrils and brows, and when she gives us a smile, two tiny silver balls peek out from under her top lip.
“You’re not students,” she says, sizing us up. “Let me guess. Journalists? College recruiters? Neighborhood activists?”
I flash my Lake Forrest badge, launch into my spiel, but she waves me off before I’ve gotten through the first sentence. “Bummer, I was really hoping you were recruiters. Our seniors are at a sixty-two percent college acceptance rate and holding, and if we don’t raise it another ten percent by graduation, I’m going to spend my summer months mowing lawns. Anyhow, what can I do for you guys?”
“We’re looking for a copy of your old yearbooks—1999, maybe a year or two before.”
“Who you looking for?”
“My husband.” I swallow down a searing pain that I know must melt my features. “His name was Will Griffith.”
One of her brows arches at my use of the past tense, but she doesn’t ask for details. She pushes to a stand, gestures for us to follow her down to the right, to where an open and bright reading area darkens into the stacks. “Name’s India, by the way.”
“I’m Iris, and this is my brother, Dave. Thanks for your help, India.”
“No problem.” She walks fast, her motorcycle boots making dull thunks on the ratty carpet, talking the entire time over her shoulder. “Hancock opened its doors in the ’20s, but the first yearbook didn’t appear until 1937. I guess it took them that long to get their you-know-what together. Back then we weren’t much more than a twelve-room building with a couple hundred students, most of them Jewish, Japanese or Italian.” She gestures to the far wall of framed photographs, dozens and dozens of more recent graduating classes, a sea of brown and tan faces punctuated by the occasional light-skinned one.
I stop and scan them for the Class of 1999. The picture’s too high for me to pick out Will, but it’s the same racial makeup, more dark than light.
India takes a hard right into the stacks, stopping at a shelf packed with hard, burgundy covers, many of them held together by Scotch tape. “What year did you say you were looking for?”
“Graduating class of 1999.”
“Oh, that’s right. The year we got our first National Merit Scholar, our football team took state and a burst pipe flooded the gym right in the middle of a basketball game.” At our raised brows, she lifts a shoulder. “I’m the unofficial school historian. Comes with the territory of running a library, I guess. Anyway...” She runs a black-painted fingernail down the spines until she finds the right one, then pulls it out and hands it to me. “Here you go. There are a couple of tables around the corner. Take as long as you need. I’ll be holding down the fort up front.”
Dave thanks her, and I carry the book with shaking hands to a table at the end of the stacks. The design is classic ’90s. Fat gold letters and the outline of a wildcat on satiny maroon, and the few bites of Chex Mix in my belly push up the back of my throat. I shove the book at my brother. “I can’t. You look.”
We sit, and I study the tabletop’s ballpoint graffiti while Dave flips through the yearbook’s pages. He stops on a spread of seniors, full-color shots of kids in burgundy caps and gowns, the bright gold tassels hanging alongside smiling cheeks.
Only Will, the only white face on the page, is not smiling.
“Sorry, Iris. It’s him.” Dave turns the book around so I can see. “William Matthew Griffith.”
It’s Will, all right. His hair is lighter and his face is thinner, but his eyes are as familiar to me as my own. The sight of him there—here, in a Seattle yearbook—hits me like a visceral punch.
I press a hand to my churning stomach and try to think through what I know. “Okay, so clearly, the bit about growing up in Memphis was a lie.”
“We don’t know that. Maybe he only transferred here for his senior year,” Dave says, playing devil’s advocate. “Hang on, let me get the earlier years.” He jumps up from his chair and heads back into the stacks.
But Will’s picture is there, too, and in all three, scowling at the camera in a way I’ve never seen him do, not even when our flight back from Cancun was delayed five times in twelve hours.
Dave rests a hand on the back of my chair, leans in to inspect the pictures. “Why does he look so angry?”
“Because that’s what he was. His dad was dead, and his mom was sick. She died his junior year. On top of school and caring for her, he was working two jobs, running the house and paying all the bills.” As I say the words, it occurs to me that any or all of this could have been a lie, too. “At least, that’s what he always claimed.”
Dave sinks into his chair, reaching for the 1999 yearbook, the one where Will was a senior. He taps the white space under his picture. “How come everybody else has a favorite quote and list of extracurriculars, but there’s nothing under Will’s name. Wasn’t he some kind of wrestling champion?” Dave flips to the wrestling page, and there’s no Will.
It never occurred to me to question him, but now that I think about it, when would Will have had time for the wrestling team? I press both hands to my churning stomach and swallow down a surge of sick. Who is this man I married?
Dave leans back in his chair, running a palm through his dark hair. “Okay, let’s think this through—1999 isn’t that long ago. I’ll bet you at least one of his teachers is still working here. Maybe they’d remember him.”
“India might know someone we could ask.” I reach for my bag and stand.
Dave gathers up the yearbooks. “You go ahead. I’ll put these back and meet you up front.”
I find her behind the information desk, sorting returned books onto a rickety cart. She looks up when she hears me coming. “Did you find what you needed?”
“Sort of. I was wondering if any of the teachers who were here in 1999 are still here now.”
“Oh, sure. A bunch of them. You wanted to see if one of them remembered your husband?”
I nod.
“Well—” she leans on the cart and thinks for a moment, and then her face brightens “—I’m pretty sure the baseball coach graduated from Hancock in 1999. I don’t know if he knew your husband, but he’d be the best place to start.” She checks her watch, taps the face twice with a finger. “You have about an hour before practice starts, which means you can probably find him in the gym.”
13