And then there’s a high-pitched squeal like interference on a microphone, and it takes a second or two to identify the sound as my own. I break under the weight of my desperation.
“It’s just that he also had a ticket on Liberty Air Flight 23, you know? But he wasn’t supposed to be on that airplane. He was supposed to be on yours. And now he’s not returning my calls and the hotel doesn’t have any record of him or the conference and neither does his assistant, even though she thought he was in Mexico, which he most definitely is not. And now, with each second that passes, seconds where I don’t know where my husband is, I’m losing more and more of my mind, so please. Take a peek in your computer and tell me if he was on that flight. I’m begging you.”
She clears her throat. “Mrs. Griffith, I...”
“Please.” My voice breaks on the word, and it takes a couple of tries before I find it again. The tears are coming hard and fast now, hogging my air and clogging my throat. “Please, help me find my husband.”
There’s a long, long pause, and I clasp the phone so tightly my fingers ache. “I’m sorry,” she says after an eternity, her voice barely above a whisper, “but your husband never checked in for Flight 2069.”
I scream and hurl my phone across the room. It bounces off the cabinet and lands facedown on the tiles, and I don’t have to look to know it’s shattered.
*
I spend the rest of the afternoon in bed, fully clothed and bundled in Will’s bathrobe, fuming under my comforter. Will lied. He fucking lied. No, he didn’t just lie, he lied and then backed up his lie with a fake conference, one he corroborated with more lies and a fake full-color flyer that’s a masterpiece of desktop publishing. Fury fires in my throat and grips me by the guts and overshadows every other thought. How could Will do such a thing? Why would he go to all that trouble? I am shaking so hard my bones vibrate, mostly because now there’s no reason for him to have been on a plane to Orlando.
My parents arrive just before dark, like they said they would. From under my layers of cotton and feathers, I hear their muted voices talking to Claire downstairs. I imagine my mother’s horrified expression when Claire tells them about my breakdown at school and the phone calls with Jessica and the Delta agent. I see Mom crane her neck toward the staircase with obvious longing on her face, the way she’d hurriedly wrap up the conversation with Claire so she could rush up the stairs to me. Two seconds after a car starts outside on the driveway, a body sinks onto the edge of my bed.
“Oh, darling. My sweet, sweet Iris.” Her voice is soft, but her consonants are hard and pointy—along with her love of meat and potatoes, a stubborn sign of her Dutch heritage.
As awful as it sounds, I can’t face my mother. Not yet. I know what I will see if I throw off the covers: Mom’s eyes, red-rimmed and swollen and filled with pity, and I know what the sight of them will do to me.
“Your father and I are just heartbroken. We loved Will and we will miss him terribly, but my heart breaks most of all for you. My sweet baby girl.”
Tears prick my eyes. I’m not ready to speak of Will in past tense, and I can’t bear for anyone else to, either. “Mom, please. I need a minute.”
“Take all the time that you need, lieverd.” You know Mom is devastated when the endearments revert back to her native tongue.
The bed shifts, and she stands. “Your brother will be here by nine. James was in surgery when they got the news, so they only just left Savannah an hour ago.” She pauses as if waiting for a reply, but when she doesn’t get one, she adds, “Oh, schatje, is there anything I can do?”
Yes. You can bring me Will. I need to wring his neck.
6
I wake up and the first thing I think is Where’s Will? Where is my husband?
The clock says it’s seventeen past midnight. I strain for the sound of water running in the bathroom, for the slap of bare feet on the closet hardwoods, but other than heated air whistling through the vents, our bedroom is quiet.
The day comes roaring back like a head-on collision. Will. Airplane. Dead. Pain steals my breath, stretching from my forehead to my heels.
Terror overwhelms me, and I lurch upright in bed, flipping on the light and sucking deep breaths until the walls stop pushing in on me. I flip down the covers and reach for the divot in the mattress where Will’s body lay only yesterday. Without Will in it, our king-sized bed has grown to the size of an ocean liner, swallowing me up with all the emptiness. I run a palm over his pillowcase, pluck at a couple dark hairs caught in the cool cotton. I close my eyes, and I can still feel him, physically feel the heat of his skin, the scratch of his beard sliding across my shoulder blade, the weight of him rolling onto me, my own gasp as he pushes inside. One minute he’s here, the next he’s gone, like a morbid magician’s disappearing act.
And now I’m supposed to believe he’s in pieces on a Missouri cornfield? I can’t wrap my head around the concept. It’s sheer insanity.
Climbing out of bed is like swimming upstream. My body is heavy, my limbs sluggish and stiff, and there’s a vise clamping down on my lungs that makes it hard to breathe. I’m still in Will’s robe, and it’s all tangled and twisted around my body. I loosen the belt, rewrap the terry cloth around my torso and retie everything snug around my waist. It still swims on me, but it’s warm and comfortable, and it smells like Will—all of which means I may never take it off.
Downstairs, the kitchen television flashes blue and white streaks in the darkness. Muted coverage of the crash. I stand there for a long moment, staring at a reporter before a field of charred earth and steaming chunks of metal, and it strikes me that he might be enjoying this a little too much. His eyes are too big, his brow too furrowed, everything about him too theatrical. He’s waited his entire career for a story like this one; better make it good.
Behind me, the lump on the couch shifts—my twin brother, Dave, in a Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants. “Been wondering when you’d get down here,” he says in his deep, dusky bass that makes him sound like a sports announcer instead of the Realtor he is. He lights up a joint the size of a cigar and sucks in a lungful, patting the cushion next to him.
“I’m telling Mom.” Other than crying, it’s the first time I’ve used my voice in almost seven hours, and my throat feels scratchy and sore. I plop down on the couch.
“My husband’s a doctor,” Dave says through held breath. “It’s medicinal.”
I snort. “Sure it is.”