I fall silent, because it’s true. That’s exactly what I was wondering.
Will looks away, his gaze landing on the framed Rolling Stones photograph I gave him last year for his birthday. “You preach about nature and nurture and those poor little rich kids you work for, and yet you can’t put yourself in my shoes. You can’t imagine what it’s like when your dad’s too busy whaling on you to hold down a job and your mom’s too drunk to care. Or what it feels like to scarf down a sandwich of rotten mayonnaise and moldy bread and feel relief there’s something lining your belly. Your life is so far removed from that kind of hell, you can’t even picture it.”
His words weigh heavy on my heart at the same time they harden it. Yes, experience has taught me to not blame the child for their parents’ questionable behavior. Children are the product of their parents, and crappy or nonexistent parenting skills load down a child with baggage that’s no fault of their own. I’ve said it often enough that Will knows I believe this to be true. He knows I won’t think less of him for his parents’ failures.
But he also knows I teach my students to move past their baggage by becoming accountable. I teach them responsibility for their own actions and behaviors, to follow the rules and live up to expectations. I told Will this part, too, but just like I had been able to pick and choose what I wanted to believe about him, he was able to pick and choose what he wanted to hear.
“I didn’t know about your life because you never told me. You didn’t even try. How can I imagine something I don’t know anything about?”
Now, for the first time today, Will grows defensive. He lurches to the edge of the couch, and his forehead creases in a frown.
“Come on, Iris. Get real. What would you have said if I’d told you? What if I’d taken you for coffee that very first day and told you Huck and I had a plan, a brilliant, foolproof plan to walk away with more money than we ever dreamed possible. Would you have given me your number? Would you have agreed to a second date?” He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“What you and Huck did was wrong, Will. To your parents, to those poor kids and their mother, to AppSec, to me. To our marriage. And what if that plane hadn’t gone down? You were just going to fly off to Florida and disappear? Did you stop for a second to think about what that would be like for me?”
“I only thought about you. You are all I thought about, even after I left. I wanted to make babies and grow old with you, Iris. I wanted us to last forever. But I couldn’t rewind things with Huck. He threatened to tell you the truth about me, and then Nick found out about the stocks, and he knew I was the one who moved them. I couldn’t stay.”
“Because you wanted the money.”
His hands fist into tight balls, his knuckles hard and white on top of his thighs. “No! Not because of the money. It had nothing to do with the goddamn money.”
“Then, why? Why couldn’t you stay?”
Will’s jaw clenches, and he looks away.
“Tell me why, dammit!”
“Because I’d rather you think I was dead, okay?”
He slings the words like weapons, looking just as surprised to have sent them flying as I am to be on the receiving end. He’d rather I think he was dead than what? I wait for him to explain, and his defiant expression collapses into anguish. It distorts his features like a hosiery mask pulled too tight.
“I fucked up so many things, but my legacy was the one thing I wanted to do right. I wanted you to think I died on that plane, so that you’d never know the truth. I wanted you to have honorable, happy memories of the man you fell in love with, the man you saw every time you looked at me. I wanted to be that man in your memories.”
His words break my heart, and I’m as confused now as I’ve ever been. People are dead. Millions of dollars went missing. What Will did is wrong on so many levels, and I know I should be boiling over with fury. I know I should feel blame and anger and confusion and, yes, hatred, too.
And yet, looking into my husband’s beautiful, wrecked face, I can’t seem to summon up anything other than sorrow. An overwhelming sadness for a man who would rather fake his death than reveal the truth.
A sob elbows up my throat, startling us both. “I should hate you. I want to hate you. I want to be physically ill because I’m sitting in the same room as you, but I’m not. I don’t. I still love you and I despise myself for it.”
Will moves closer. He scoots down the couch until he’s on my side, sitting right here, less than a foot away. “I’ll always love you.”
This is the one thing, the only thing, I know is true. Every person has a redeeming quality. Will’s is that he is capable of love.
“So, now what?” The tears have started up again, because I already know the answer: Now he leaves. Now he disappears.
He loops a finger around mine, running the pad of his thumb over the Cartier he put there, a ring that I should give back, though I know with everything inside of me that I will wear it until the day I die. “Come with me. We’ll live on a hillside overlooking the ocean and sleep under the stars. We can disappear, just you and me.”
I’m shaking my head before the last word is out. I couldn’t leave Dave, could never do that to my parents. I could barely contemplate a move to the other side of the country, much less a disappearance. I know better than anyone what that does to the people left behind.
He smiles, and it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. “It was worth a try.”
He runs his finger down my arm, and I shiver. Will is not playing fair, and he knows it. My skin has always been too sensitive.
“Stop,” I whisper, but I don’t mean it, not even a little bit.
“I can’t stop, and I can’t leave.” His hands wrap around my waist, mine wind around his shoulders. The movement is natural, like there’s nowhere else in the world our hands should be. “Not without saying goodbye to my very favorite person on the planet.”
So this is it. This is goodbye. I remind myself of all the reasons I should be glad to see him go. The money. The lies and deceit. His dying father and his dead mother. Corban and the two dead kids. Especially the kids. He is not the man I married. I want to hate him for what he’s done.