Husband Material

by Emily Belden

  ing all the Post-Its to the wall behind me. I need to see ex-

  actly what I’m working with, like a detective working a beat.

  As of right now, my algorithm is coded to do two separate

  things. During the day, it tracks influencers. At night, my po-

  tential relationships. What I need for this particular situation is essentially a combination of both. So I hunker down and

  tweak the code to act more like an online yearbook. Some-

  thing that can distill Gemma’s pictures, give me a run-down

  of her favorite activities, the scope of her friend network—

  things like that.

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  But in order to feed it, I’ve got to give my program a head

  start. I punch her name, Gemma Sutherland, into my search

  bar and find her easily enough on social media. I want to drill down on the accounts, but her Instagram profile, the most

  visual of them all, is locked. All I can see is her bio: WeHot.

  Amateur Blogger. Pro coffee drinker. Mother.

  I quickly create a fake Instagram profile for myself under the

  pseudo name, @SoCalSweatSesh. To do so, I pull twenty user-

  generated photos posted from the event at WeHot the other

  day, which helps me pose as a superfan of the boutique gym.

  I click the “request to follow” button on @GemmaSutherland’s

  profile and hope she’s off the boat and interested in connect-

  ing with another “like-minded” wellness guru…or whatever

  the hell I’m pretending to be right now.

  Meanwhile, I plug in the URL to her blog and hit Go. It

  hasn’t been updated in two years and the formatting is abso-

  lutely atrocious. I can barely follow the layout and none of the photos are aligned in any sort of methodical way. It’s a coder’s nightmare, but I try to look past the programming issues and

  search for more nuggets of truth.

  The blog does not turn out to be the gold mine I thought

  it would be. She only has five posts and two of them are reci-

  pes for cooking Brussels sprouts and the other three include

  her training regimen for a 5K, a manifesto on what is hap-

  pening to the health insurance system these days, and finally,

  an ode to Pinterest. It’s no surprise that she’s as basic as they come, but I know there has to be more. There always has to

  be more to a girl who has the balls to sidebar a girl she hardly knows on a captive ship and tell her she had a baby with her

  late husband.

  That’s when my phone pings with a notification from In-

  stagram: @GemmaSutherland has accepted your fol ow request.

  And, I’m in.

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  Where the blog was lacking in information, the social media

  stream more than makes up for it. It’s a treasure trove of pic-

  tures, mostly of her—mirror selfies of her six pack and perfect hair. I’m tempted to save a couple to my collection, but then I quickly remind myself that this woman slept with my husband.

  Scrolling down, there are a couple images with who I imag-

  ine may be her son, but they are all strategically positioned

  to retain his privacy. For instance, there is one where he is

  hanging upside down on monkey bars, but his back is to the

  camera. The caption reads, “When did my monkey become

  a middle schooler?!”

  Even though I can’t see his face in the pic, I get lost in the

  thought that this might be a little version of Decker. I pinch

  my fingers on the screen to zoom in on the image. The boy

  is wearing a camouflage T-shirt and his jeans are dirty from

  playing. He has longish blond hair that’s hanging down like

  strings of spaghetti. I can only assume he has a smile on his

  face in this moment. Maybe he has Decker’s overbite.

  I think back to how old I was in middle school. I do the

  math and realize that Decker was probably a sophomore at the

  time this kid was conceived—not even old enough to legally

  have a drink at the bar or to rent a car.

  Between our first date and our five hundredth date, he

  never casually—or formally, for that matter—mentioned a

  child out of wedlock. While I could understand how some-

  one would choose not to lead with that kind of information

  upon first getting to know someone, I can’t figure out, if this Gemma thing is true, why he would keep the fact he got a

  girl pregnant from me, his partner. His wife. There’s a time

  and place for all kinds of honesty once you make that com-

  mitment to someone. Decker was a guy who understood that.

  I go back to looking through Gemma’s photos. Eventu-

  ally in the stream, I spot an image of two Christmas stock-

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  ings hanging from a mantel. The embroidery on the smaller

  one says: Aiden. He has a name, I think to myself. A trendy one, at that.

  As I go on to recount more of our conversation, I think back

  to Gemma alluding to Debbie and Kurt being in the know

  about this. So I run what I’ve gathered so far about Gemma

  into my algorithm and have it spew out stats regarding a pos-

  sible link to Debbie or Kurt Austin. My search comes up

  dry. They aren’t friends on Facebook. They don’t follow each

  other on Instagram. They aren’t connected on LinkedIn. And

  they live worlds apart, according to their respective zip codes.

  There is virtually zero connection between them and I find

  that to be impossible given how Gemma says they are related.

  I drill into Debbie’s profile on my second monitor and comb

  through all of her online photos. If she knew she had a grand-

  son, rogue or not, she would post it. Maybe she wouldn’t tag

  him or drive extra attention to it, but I’m determined to find

  some visual wherein this kid is accidentally pictured in the

  background of a family dinner.

  I dig and I dig and I dig, but I find nothing. As frustrating

  as that seems, it’s actually a breath of fresh air. It’s entirely possible, and extremely likely, there is no relationship between

  the Austins and Gemma Sutherland, despite what she claims.

  Without so much as 1 percent of a link anywhere online, it

  serves as further evidence that there is no proof this kid was

  fathered by Decker.

  So my next step is to go down the rabbit hole one step fur-

  ther and attempt to link Gemma to at least one other guy dur-

  ing the same time frame who’s a plausible match to be Aiden’s

  real dad. For me, it is not enough to just prove Decker isn’t the father. I need to show there’s sufficient evidence for the father being someone else. I need to search for someone who is like

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  Decker, but didn’t just suddenly pass away and become an in-

  stant pond for this girl to go life-insurance-money fishing in.

  I use what I know and recall how Decker was an education

  major and a star athlete at USC. There’s no way he’d dabble in hooking up with faculty from some
other department and

  then risk getting kicked off the lacrosse team—or worse, out

  of USC completely, which also happens to be his father’s alma

  matter. It just wouldn’t be something that fell in his moral

  scope at all, I don’t care how many Bud Lights were involved

  that night at the party.

  In fact, I reckon it takes a specific type of person—an im-

  mature thrill-seeker; maybe a guy like douchebag Chad—to

  have the balls to hook up with his teacher and not use pro-

  tection. That’s when I get the idea to create a ranking system, similar to a March Madness basketball bracket, to narrow in

  on the real person who fathered this kid.

  I go through every photo I can get my eyes on from Gem-

  ma’s past feed—from the one where she’s doing a beer bong at a

  frat house, to the selfie with her favorite barista, to Thanksgiving Dinner eight years ago—and throw it into my algorithm.

  No photographed man is off limits for my data mining—if

  he has testicles and was in a photo with her around the time

  this child was conceived, he’s the potential father. I even go

  so far as to download a facial recognition program so even if

  she didn’t tag them in the post, my algorithm will find out

  who they are based on similar-looking images on other so-

  cial platforms.

  An hour later, I’ve found a bottle of wine to keep me com-

  pany and my bedroom wall is slathered in fluorescent-colored

  Post-Its. But despite its chaotic nature, I’ve narrowed it down to a “Final Four” of sorts and guess what? Decker is not on

  there. In no way, shape, or form have my statistics shown any

  viable link between her and him—other than the fact he took

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  a class she once TA’d called “Intro to Socialism.” But so what?

  There must have been a hundred people in that class and not

  all of them wound up being accused of fathering a kid. So

  that link doesn’t worry me, it’s a dead end.

  Like Debbie, Decker and Gemma have no social footprints

  to each other. I breeze through his birthday Facebook mes-

  sages—the ones I swore I’d never revisit—and see no well

  wishes from her. You’d have thought the mother of his child

  would have hit his wall with at least an “HBD.”

  And frankly, the more I look at her, the more I can’t even

  really see him being all that into her, looks-wise. She’s attractive, sure. But she’s way too LA and also the complete oppo-

  site of me. I like to think that I’m my own husband’s type,

  for fuck’s sake.

  As I bring my dirty wineglass back to the kitchen, I check

  the clock on the microwave and see that it’s nearly two o’clock in the morning and there’s been no sign of Casey. I can bet that after tonight’s blowout, she won’t be making an appearance at

  apartment 518. In fact, I’d say there’s a good chance she found her way back to that guy from speed dating and is banging

  him at his dingy apartment right now. Or who knows, maybe

  she’s at Justin’s place just trying to stick one to me.

  I wish I could pull an all-nighter and drive my investiga-

  tion home, but I’m exhausted and Leno needs to be popped

  out for a pee before we go to bed for the night. So I take one

  last look at my wall before heading outside. Absorbing what

  I have done, I can’t help but feel proud. This is me, thriving

  under adversity. This is what I wish I could have done in the

  hospital.

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  “Charlotte. It’s 7:00 a.m. I promise you I was going to bring

  the urn back before noon,” a groggy-eyed Brian says as he

  answers the door in gray sweatpants and no shirt.

  “Sorry, I know it’s early,” I acknowledge. “Can I come in?”

  Before he has a chance to answer, I roll past him through

  the foyer and straight into his living room. I set my bag on his Chesterton sofa like it’s some sort of old habit. In my hand is the stack of sticky notes from my wall. I begin placing them,

  in order, on a blank wall below his flat screen. I’ve even sta-

  pled the profile pages of a few key people to the correlating

  Post-It. Sure, it may look like a police lineup as I press them onto the wall, but I figure in different light, with fresh eyes, there is a better chance I will see the truth.

  “What are you doing?” he asks. By now he’s fetched a T-

  shirt and a pair of glasses.

  “You said you wanted to help me with things, right?” I

  don’t make eye contact. I just continue recreating the bracket.

  “Yeah, but—”

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  “So then help me figure out why my client told me she

  slept with Decker and had his baby in college.”

  He takes a few steps forward and looks up at the wall.

  “What is all this, Charlotte?” Brian asks with the same shock and horror of stumbling upon a gruesome murder scene. “Why

  are these names on my wall?”

  “It’s a relationship map. A ranking of everyone who that

  girl most likely had sex with according to her social media in-

  teractions since the start of her various online profiles.”

  Brian moves closer, taking better note of my display. He’s

  now gazing at it like it’s a piece of art hanging in the Lou-

  vre—squinting, tilting his head, contemplating. He peels off

  Post-It with the name “Marcus Linton” on it and puts it back.

  “Sorry for all the stickies. I found out on the boat last night and I didn’t have any Wi-Fi, so I started scribbling—”

  “Why am I not on here?” he asks, pointing to the wall be-

  hind him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “If this is about all of the people who Gemma Sutherland

  might have slept with, then why am I not here?”

  “Wait. How do you know who Gemma Sutherland is?”

  “Her name is right here, Charlotte. Right in the middle

  of your…web?” He peels off the bright pink Post-it with her

  name and hands it to me as a reminder. “I mean, I know half

  these people from USC. Curious why Marcus Linton made

  the cut and I didn’t?”

  “Are you really asking me this?” It feels like bad timing on

  his part, but I can’t help but explain my rationale. “I mean,

  besides her TA-ing at the same school you went to, there are

  zero links between the two of you. Same for Decker. Hence,

  how I know she’s lying about getting pregnant with his child.

  Their connection starts and ends with him being a student in

  her socialism class. Your connection? Is nonexistent.”

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  “That’s interesting, because I did know her.”

  I’m sure he means he knew of her and I feel bad that he seems devastated that a cute blonde with big boobs wanted

  nothing to do with him back in the college days. It’s times

  like this when I especially hate being the bearer of bad news,

  but you can’t argue with what the facts show. You ca
n’t argue

  with what’s on the wall.

  “Come on, Brian. Are you seriously annoyed this chick

  wasn’t into you? I know you can get anyone you want, but

  you wouldn’t want this one. Seriously. She seems certifiably

  insane. If anything, you should be glad I ruled you out.”

  “Ruled me out?”

  “Yeah, congrats. You’re not in the running to have had a

  rogue kid with this crazy, gold-digging woman. I mean, using

  her ex-student’s death to prey on his wealthy surviving fam-

  ily? Please. I’m not falling for it.”

  “I don’t think this is healthy, Charlotte. Why don’t we take

  five on the couch? I’ll get some cold brew going. We can work

  on a crossword puzzle together.”

  A puzzle? I just told Brian someone confronted me about having a secret baby with my dead husband. Now is not the

  time to be derailing me with coffee and crosswords.

  “Yeah, sure. After we look these people up. Gemma was

  in love with someone, but it wasn’t Decker. I need to figure

  this out.”

  “She was in love with me,” he says, seemingly out of nowhere, gripping the handles of two coffee mugs. “Not Decker

  or—” he looks at my wall chart “—whoever the hell Mitch-

  ell Heath is.”

  “Very funny. Can I have a little cream, please?”

  “Look, I clearly wasn’t planning on having this conversa-

  tion with you this morning, but you seem adamant,” he says.

  “So here’s the truth: I’m the one who backed off on things

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  with Gemma. I liked her, but not as much she liked me. So

  I sidelined her. Like I did with every girl when I was nine-

  teen years old.”

  “Did you go out late last night after work? If so, I think you

  still might be drunk,” I playfully accuse him.

  “Stone sober, actually.” Clearly not in a joking mood. “I

  don’t like to drink so soon after losing a patient. It’s a dark habit a lot of doctors fall into.”

  “Where’s the urn? I should go,” I say, not feeling like going

  tit for tat on whose loss is worse.

  “You don’t need to go, Charlotte. I was just trying to—”

  “I’m sorry about your patient, Brian. I really am. I of all

  people know that death isn’t easy. I know all about the dark habits people—not just doctors, mind you—fall into when you lose someone. But the reality is, tomorrow you get to go back