Will leans forward, his elbows on his knees, straightening a stack of magazines on the table. Busywork while he gathers his words. Next to the pile, two bottles of icy water sweat onto their coasters in a slice of afternoon sunshine. I watch a drop gather on one of them, growing fat and heavy at the bottom, and track it on its downward descent.
“I told myself it didn’t matter you didn’t know the whole truth about me,” Will says, still looking down. “About that part of my life, I mean. Rainier Vista. My parents. I thought it was okay to keep all that from you because I got out. I put it all behind me.” He checks my expression, trying to calibrate my reaction, and he must not like what he sees, because he frowns. “You have to know, I’m not that person anymore.”
I hold my face and tone steady. “Who set the fire?”
“I had nothing to do with the fire. The fire was all Huck.” When I don’t respond, Will looks away, pausing as if to give himself a silent pep talk. “But, okay, yeah. I knew what he was up to. I knew and I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t go around beating on doors, either, warning people to get out.”
“Oh, Will...” My voice cracks into a long silence.
He watches me, and there’s guilt in his expression. “I know. I know, okay? And for the rest of my life, I will hear that mother’s screams. I will see those two kids coming out in body bags. But, swear to God, I’m not the one who lit the match.”
“Your mother died that night, too.”
“That woman doesn’t deserve my tears, not after what she did.” He doesn’t sound angry or bitter, just resigned to the fact that his mother wasn’t much of one. “Ditto for the man she married.”
“I saw him in Seattle, Will. Your father’s not well.”
“Do you want to hear that I feel bad for him? Because I don’t, and neither should you. And you shouldn’t be paying for his care. Any man who’d wake up their kid in the middle of the night just to give him a busted lip doesn’t deserve a penny of your money. I’ve washed my hands of him, of everyone in Rainier Vista.”
“Everyone except Huck.”
Will shakes his head, and he leans forward on the sofa, planting his elbows on his thighs. “No. I don’t know how he found me, but our reunion was not a happy one. He didn’t give me much of a choice. He told me I had to move those stocks for him or he’d tell you everything. He was one crazy son of a bitch, but he was brilliant at knowing a person’s Achilles’ heel. He knew you were mine and how much you meant to me.”
I close my eyes briefly, the words coming back to me in a nauseating rush. Let’s smoke that rat out of his hole. What do you say? Corban may have been the one pulling the strings, but it was Will who committed the crime. First, when he stole from AppSec, then again, when he squeezed the trigger. Just because someone was threatening him, my husband is not without blame.
An old, familiar ache blooms in my chest, but I swallow it down. “Go on,” I say, opening my eyes. “So, what happened?”
“You know the rest. Nick found out. I left.”
“No, I meant, what did you think was going to happen after you moved those stocks? There’s no happily-ever-after with five million stolen dollars sitting in your bank account, Will.”
“I know, but... I had to move the stocks. There was no other option.”
“You could have told the truth.”
“No. I couldn’t.” He shakes his head, quick and vicious. “You don’t understand. I’d never been with a girl like you. So smart and funny and kind. And so damn beautiful.” He looks at me, and his face cracks open. “How could I not fall for you? If for no other reason than the way you looked at me.”
“How did I look at you?”
“Like I was good. Like I was worthy.”
I nod, because it’s true. I did think he was good. I thought he was worthy. It never occurred to me he was a thief or a liar or a murderer. What part of the man I loved was real? What part of us?
I’m crying now, the tears coming hard and fast. I’ve held it together for long enough, and there’s no one here but us. There’s no reason to hold them in any longer.
“Huck sent me texts pretending to be you.”
“I know. It’s how I knew he was losing it. It’s why I came back.”
“You didn’t send any of them?”
“Only the first couple, when I tracked you and Dave to Seattle. I knew what you were doing there, and I needed you to stop. When you didn’t, when I found out what Huck was up to, I put that note in your drawer because I was worried, but otherwise...” He shakes his head. “All from him.”
“But why?”
“To fuck with your head or to feel out how much you knew, who knows? Most likely some combination of the two. He wasn’t exactly the most rational person on the planet.”
“And the crash?”
At the accusation in my tone, Will sits up a little straighter. “I had nothing to do with the crash.”
“Then how did your name get on that manifest?”
“I was going to Orlando, remember? I—”
I stop him with a palm. “I talked to Jessica. There was no conference.”
“No, but there was this guy.” He winces. “For fifty thousand bucks he’d give me a new identity, make me disappear. I was meeting him in Key West.”
I think about that morning in bed, the way he surprised me with the ring, his expression as he slid it up my finger, and the tears well up all over again.
I gesture for him to keep going.
Will inhales long and deep, blows it all out. “Anyway, I’d missed my flight, so I was waiting at the gate for the next one when the Liberty plane went down. It was almost too easy. You’d be surprised how many holes there were in Liberty’s firewall, how easy it was to buy myself a ticket and get my name on the list of passengers. I didn’t realize until afterward that a plane headed to Seattle would open up a whole other can of worms.”
I think of Susanna, clutching Emma to her chest as that plane fell from the sky, of Evan’s haunted eyes at the memorial. “Those poor people! Their poor families. And for two whole weeks, I thought you were one of them, spread in a million pieces across a cornfield. Do you know what that did to me?”
“I do, and I’m sorry. I can’t begin to tell you how much.”
I look down, at my hands wringing on my lap, at the two rings my husband slid up my fingers. And then I press a palm to my chest, where his ring still hangs on a chain under my shirt. “What about your ring? What about your briefcase and computer?”
“Planted.” He winces. “People will do pretty much anything for money.”
People like you, I think, and pain lodges like a spiky boulder in my chest. I demanded the truth, but now I want to slap my hands over my ears and unhear his words. I want to press control-alt-delete and force a restart. The truth is too much. My husband is a monster.
“See?” he says. “You’re already doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me differently. Like you’re wondering how you ever could have loved me.”