The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  Not my husband bubbles up from the very core of me, from somewhere deep and primitive. My Will was on a different plane, on a whole different airline even. And even if he wasn’t, Liberty Airlines would have already called. They wouldn’t have released his name without notifying me—his wife, his very favorite person on the planet—first.

  But before I can tell my mother any of these things, my phone beeps with another call, and the words on the screen stop my heart.

  Liberty Airlines.

  4

  With a shaking hand, I hang up on my mother and pick up the call from Liberty Airlines.

  “Hello?” My throat is tight, and my voice comes out raspy and faint.

  “Hello, may I please speak with Iris Griffith?”

  I know why this woman is calling. I know it from the way she says my name, from her carefully neutral tone and businesslike formality, and the breath sticks in my throat.

  But she’s wrong. Will is in Orlando.

  “Will is in Orlando,” I hear myself say.

  “Pardon me... Is this the number for Iris Griffith?”

  What would happen if I said no? Would it stop this woman from saying the words I know she called to say? Would she hang up and call the other William Matthew Griffith’s wife?

  “I’m Iris Griffith.”

  “Mrs. Griffith, my name is Carol Manning of Liberty Airlines. William Matthew Griffith listed you as his emergency contact.”

  Will is in Orlando. Will is in Orlando. Will is in Orlando.

  “Yes.” I clutch my stomach with an arm. “I’m his wife.” Am his wife. Am.

  “Ma’am, I deeply regret to inform you that your husband was a passenger on this morning’s Flight 23, which crashed en route from Atlanta to Seattle. It is presumed that none of those on board survived.” She sounds like a robot, like she’s reading from a script. She sounds like Siri calling to tell me my husband is dead.

  My muscles stop working, and I go down. My torso falls forward onto my own lap, my body bending in half like a snapped twig. The impact knocks the wind right out of me, and the breath leaves me in a great moan.

  “I know this must come as a shock, and I assure you Liberty Airlines is here to support you however and whenever you need. We’ve established a dedicated hotline number and email address for you to contact us anytime, day or night. Regular updates will also be available on our website, www.libertyairlines.com.”

  If she says anything more, I don’t hear it. The phone clatters to the floor and right there, in the middle of my cluttered office, my doorway filling with wide-eyed students, I slide off my chair and sob, pressing both hands to my mouth to stifle the sound.

  * * *

  Two large shoes step into my field of vision. “Oh, Iris. I just heard. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I look up through my hair at Ted, at his concerned brow under those canine curls, and I weep with relief. Ted is a fixer. He’ll know what to do. He’ll call somebody who will tell him it was the wrong Will, the wrong plane, I’m the wrong wife.

  I try to pull myself together, but I can’t, and it’s then I notice that my office is crawling with high-schoolers. I already heard them gathering in the hall outside my doorway, low tones and whispered words I wasn’t supposed to hear. Words like husband, plane, dead, and I know they’ve heard the news.

  No. Just this morning, while I was filling our travel mugs with coffee, Will checked the weather in Orlando on his phone. “High of eighty-seven today,” he said with a shake of his head. “And it’s not even summer. This is why we will never live in Florida.”

  Ava watches me with tears in her eyes. “Will is in Orlando,” I say to her, and her face flashes pity.

  I’m embarrassed to have her see me like this, to have any of them see me like this, a crumpled, snotty mess on the floor. I cover my face with my hands and wish they’d go away. I wish all of them would just leave me alone. My open-door policy can suck it.

  “Here, let me help you up.” Ted hauls me off the floor and deposits me on my chair.

  “Where’s my phone? I want to try Will again.”

  He leans down, picks up my phone from the floor, passes it to me. Nine missed calls. I taste bile when I see they’re all from my mother. None, not even one, from Will.

  “Guys, give us a little privacy, will you?” Ted glances over his shoulder. “Shut the door on your way out.”

  One by one, the kids file out, mumbling their condolences. Ava runs a light finger down my arm on her way past, and I flinch. I don’t want her sympathy. I don’t want anyone’s sympathy. Sympathy would mean what that woman told me is true. Sympathy would mean my Will is dead.

  Once everyone is gone and we’re alone, Ted drapes a palm over my shoulder. “Is there someone I can call?”

  Call! I was about to call the hotel. My gaze lands on the conference flyer, and I snatch it from my printer, wave it in Ted’s face. “This! This right here proves Will is in Orlando. He’s tomorrow’s keynote. He wasn’t on the plane to Seattle. He was on one to Orlando.” Hope blooms in my chest.

  “Did he check into the hotel?” Ted says, but in a tone that says he’s humoring me.

  With shaking fingers, I find the Post-it where I scribbled the number and punch it into my phone. I can tell that Ted’s holding out little hope, that he thinks this exercise is a futile waste of time, and the blatant mollification that lines his face is too much for me to bear. I stare down at my desk instead, concentrating instead on the marks and scratches that crisscross its surface. The phone rings, then rings again.

  After an eternity, a perky female voice answers. “Good afternoon, Westin Universal Boulevard. How may I be of service?”

  “Will Griffith’s room, please.” The words tumble out of me, jagged and raw and way too fast, like an auctioneer hyped on crack.

  “My pleasure,” the receptionist chirps in my ear. I’m sure she gets crazed spouses on the line all the time, women hunting down their wayward boyfriends or philandering husbands. Westin probably has an entire training manual on how to deal with callers like me. “Griffith, you said?”

  “Yes, Will. Or it could be under William, middle initial M.” I drag a deep breath and try to calm myself, but my leg is bouncing, and I can’t stop shivering.

  Ted shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over my shoulders. I know he means well, but the gesture feels far too personal, and the fabric smells like Ted, fragrant and foreign. I want to rip the jacket off and chuck it out the window. I don’t want any man’s clothing touching my body but Will’s.

  The woman clicks around a keyboard for a few seconds. “Hmm. Sorry, but I’m not finding a reservation for Mr. Griffith.”

  I choke on a sob. “Check again. Please.”

  There’s a long pause filled with more clicking, more humoring. Dread begins to burrow under my skin like a parasite, slow and steady, eating away at my certainty.

  “Are you positive it’s this Westin property? We have one in Lake Mary, just north of the city. I can get you the number, if you’d like.”

  I shake my head, blinking away fresh tears in order to read the hotel information at the bottom of the flyer. “I’m looking at the conference flyer right now. It says Universal Boulevard.”

  Her voice brightens. “Oh, well, if he’s here for a conference, then perhaps I can get a message to the organizer’s point of contact. Which conference?”

  “Cyber Security for Critical Assets: An Intelligence Summit.”

  She hesitates only a second or two, but long enough that bile builds in my throat. “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but there’s no conference by that name at this hotel.”

  I drop the phone and throw up into my wastebasket.

  * * *

  Claire Masters, a colleague from the admissions office across the hall, drives me home. Claire
and I are friendly enough, but we’re not friends, though I don’t have to ask why I’m here, buckled into the passenger’s seat of her Ford Explorer instead of someone else’s car. Early last year, Claire lost her husband to Hodgkin’s, and now, whether she volunteered to drive me home or Ted asked her to, the reason is clear. If anyone will understand what I’m going through, it’s another widow.

  Widow. I’d throw up again, but my stomach is empty.

  I turn and stare out the window, watching the familiar Buckhead strip malls fly by. Claire drives slowly, her hands at ten and two, and she doesn’t say a word. She keeps her mouth shut and her gaze on the traffic in front of her, and as much as I detest being lumped into her tragic category, at least she knows that the only thing I want is to be left alone.

  My phone buzzes on my lap. My mother, calling for what must be the hundredth time. Guilt pricks at my insides. I know it’s not fair to keep avoiding her, but I can’t talk to her right now. I can’t talk to anybody.

  “Don’t you want to get that?” Claire’s voice is high and girlish, and it slices through the silence like a serrated knife.

  “No.” It takes all my energy to speak around the boulder on my chest.

  Her gaze bounces between me, my phone and the traffic before us. “Take it from me, your mother is losing her mind right now.”

  I wince at her knowing tone, at the way she’s putting the two of us on the worst kind of team. “I can’t.” My voice cracks the last word in two, because talking to Mom would mean saying those awful words out loud. Will is gone. Will is dead. Saying the words would make this thing real.

  The phone stops, then two seconds later, starts again.

  This time, Claire plucks the phone from my lap and swipes the bar to pick up. “Hi, this is Claire Masters. I’m one of Iris’s colleagues at Lake Forrest. She’s sitting right beside me, but she’s not quite ready to talk.” A pause. “Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid that’s correct.” Another pause, this time longer. “Okay. I’ll make sure to tell her.” She hangs up and places the phone gently back onto my legs. “Your parents are on their way. They’ll be here before dark.”

  I’d thank her, but I can’t muster up the energy. I stare out the window and try to picture it, my Will in a field of smoking wreckage, with luggage and debris and charred, twisted chunks of metal scattered all around, but I can’t. It seems incomprehensible, as abstract to me as a concept from Dr. Drukker’s AP physics class. Will was going to Orlando, not Seattle. He can’t be dead. It just isn’t possible.

  Claire turns onto the ramp for Georgia 400 and floors the gas, and we roar south in blissful, blessed silence.

  5

  No matter how many times I assure her it’s not necessary, Claire walks me up the flagstone path to my front door. I dig through my bag and pull out my keys, sliding them into the lock. “Thanks for the ride. I’m going to be okay.”

  I open the door and walk through, but when I go to close it, Claire stops me with a palm to the stained-glass panel. “Sweetheart, I’m staying. Just until your parents get here.”

  “No offense, Claire, but I want to be alone.”

  “No offense, Iris, but I’m not leaving.” Her high-pitched voice is surprisingly firm, but she softens her words with a smile. “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, but I’m staying, and that’s that.”

  I step back and let her pass.

  Claire glances around the foyer, taking in the honey-colored walls, the gleaming pine floors stained almost-black, the carved railings on the original staircase. She cranes her head around the corner into the front parlor, empty save for a tufted beige sofa we’re still paying off—our Christmas gift to each other from Room & Board—then points toward the back of the house. “I assume the kitchen is that way?”

  I nod.

  She drops her bag by the door and heads down the hallway. “I’ll make us some tea.” She disappears around the corner into the kitchen.

  As soon as she’s gone, I latch onto the newel post, this morning’s memories assaulting me. The weight of Will’s body on mine, heating me with his hands and hot naked skin. His lips in the crook of my neck and heading south, the scratch of his morning beard against my breasts, my belly, lower still. My fingers twining in his hair. The water sluicing down Will’s muscled torso as he stepped out of the shower, the brush of his fingers against mine when I handed him a towel. His smooth, warm lips coming in for just one more kiss, no matter how many times I warned him he was in serious danger of missing his flight. That very last flick of his hand as he rolled his suitcase out the front door, his wedding band blinking in the early-morning light, before driving off in his car.

  He has to come back. We still have dinner dates and hotel reservations and birthday parties to plan. We’re going to Seaside next month, a Memorial Day getaway with just us two, and to Hilton Head this summer with my family. It was only last night that he pressed a kiss to my belly and said he can’t wait until I’m so fat with his baby, his arms won’t reach all the way around. Will can’t be gone. The finality is too unreal, too indigestible. I need proof.

  I dump my stuff on the floor and head down the hallway to the back of the house, an open kitchen overlooking a dining area and keeping room. I dig the remote out of the fruit basket, and with the punch of a few buttons, CNN lights up the screen. A dark-haired reporter stands in front of a cornfield, wind whipping her hair all around her face, interviewing a gray-haired man in a puffy coat. The text across the bottom of the screen identifies him as the owner of the cornfield now littered with plane parts and human remains.

  Claire comes around the corner holding a box of tea bags, her eyes wide. “You really shouldn’t be watching that.”

  “Shh.” I press and hold the volume button until their voices hurt my ears almost as much as their words. The reporter peppers the man with questions while I search the background for any sign of Will. A flash of brown hair, the sleeve of his navy fleece. I hold my breath and strain to see, but there’s nothing but smoke and cornstalks, swaying in the breeze.

  The reporter asks the old man to tell the camera what he saw.

  “I was working on the far west end of the fields when I heard it coming,” the old man says, gesturing to the endless rows of corn behind him. “The plane, I mean. I heard it before I saw it. It was obviously in trouble.”

  The reporter pauses his story. “How did you know the plane was in trouble?”

  “Well, the engines were squealing, but I didn’t see no fire or smoke. Not until that thing hit the field and blew. Biggest fireball I ever seen. I was probably a good mile or so away, but I felt the ground shake, and then a big blast of heat hot enough to singe my hair.”

  How long does it take a plane to tumble from the sky? One minute? Five? I think of what that must have been like for Will, and I lean over the sink and gag.

  Claire reaches for the remote and hits Mute. I grip the countertop and stare at the scratched bottom of the sink, waiting for my stomach to settle, and think, What now? What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Behind me, I hear her scrounging around my kitchen, opening cabinets and digging around inside, the vacuumed hiss of the refrigerator door opening and closing. She returns with a pack of saltines and a bottle of water. “Here. The water’s cold, so take tiny sips.”

  Ignoring both, I move around the counter to the other side and collapse onto a bar stool. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.” Claire gives me a questioning look. “The stages of grief according to Kübler-Ross. I’m clearly in the denial phase, because it makes no sense. How could a man headed to Orlando end up on a westward-bound plane? Was the conference moved to Seattle or something?”

  She lifts both shoulders, but her expression doesn’t seem the least bit unsure. I may be in denial, but Claire’s clearly not. Though she might not say it out loud, she accepts Liberty Air’s claims th
at Will is one of the 179 bodies torn to pieces over a Missouri cornfield.

  “It’s just not possible. Will would have told me, and he definitely wouldn’t have kept up the running dialogue about going to Orlando. Just this morning, he stood right where you’re standing and told me how much he hated that city. The heat, the traffic, those damn theme parks everywhere you look.” I shake my head, desperation raising my voice like a siren. “He’s been so stressed, maybe he didn’t know the conference had been moved. Maybe that’s where he’s been all this time, roaming around the scorching Orlando streets, trying to track down the new location. But then why not call me back?”

  Claire presses her lips together, and she doesn’t respond.

  I close my eyes for a few erratic heartbeats, the emotions exploding like bombs in my chest. What do I do? Who do I call? My first instinct is to call Will, like I do whenever I have a problem I can’t figure out myself. His methodical mind sees things differently than mine, can almost always plot a path to the solution.

  “You should design an app,” I told him once, after he’d helped me chart out an entire semester’s worth of drug and alcohol awareness programs. “You’d make a fortune. You could call it What Will Will Say?”

  He’d patted his lap, smiling my favorite smile. “Right now he says you’re adorable and to get over here and give me a kiss.”

  Now I press my fingers to my lips and tell myself to calm down, to think. There must be someone I can call, someone who will tell me this is all just one huge misunderstanding.

  “Jessica!” I pop off the stool and sprint to the phone, resting on a charger by the microwave. “Jessica will know where he is. She’ll know where the conference was moved.”

  “Who’s Jessica?”

  “Will’s assistant.” I punch in the number I know by heart, turning my back on Claire so I don’t see her creased brow, her averted gaze, the way she’s chewing her lip. She’s humoring me, just like Ted did.

  “AppSec Consulting, Jessica speaking.”