The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  We climb into the rental, and Dave starts the engine, gunning the gas until the vents spew warm air at our heads. Atlantans are not built for this kind of cold. The kind that whips across your skin and bites through to your bones, making you feel wet even though you’re not. I shiver in the passenger’s seat while Dave fiddles with the radio. He settles on a country station, the kind with Willie Nelson and lots of twang, and I pull up the driving directions on my iPhone.

  “We need to get over to I-5 and then head north.” When Dave doesn’t hit the gas, I look over to see him watching me. “What?”

  “It’s just...” He sighs, looking me square in the eye. “Are you absolutely positive you want to do this?”

  “You’re asking me now?”

  He lifts both hands, lets them fall onto the steering wheel. “My timing isn’t the best, I’ll give you that, but yes. I’m asking you now, when there’s still a chance for us to turn this thing around. To go home and forget all about whatever’s here in Seattle before it gets in the way of your husband’s memory. Because it will, you know. Especially if what we find is bad. Have you considered that it might be?”

  “Of course I’ve considered that it might be bad. In fact, I kind of assume it is. No man rewrites bits and pieces of their lives because those years were squeaky-clean.”

  He gives me a look that says touché. “Okay, so let me ask you this, then—what if whatever we find isn’t just bad? What if it’s awful? No, what if it’s DEFCON-one awful? Without Will here to defend himself or explain, would you still want to know?”

  I gaze out over the parking lot and beyond, watching a jet roar skyward while I consider my brother’s question. Dave is right; I could still turn this thing around. I could climb out of this car, go back to the airport and try to forget all about Will’s past in Seattle. I could concentrate on remembering the good parts of my husband—that nobody could make me belly-laugh harder, that he thought Sunday mornings were made for coffee in bed, that the sloping spot under his left ear seemed made for my nose—and try to ignore the rest. The parts he lied about. The parts of himself he hid. I could go home and get started mourning my husband.

  But how do you mourn a person you’re no longer certain you know?

  I think of possible discoveries that would merit a DEFCON-one rating. That Will has another family, a pretty wife and two adorable toddlers with his square chin and slate-blue eyes, tucked away in a Seattle bungalow. That he’s a wanted criminal, a serial killer or a rapist or a terrorist with a long list of murders to his name. Every theory I come up with is ridiculous. Anyone who wants to hide from a secret wife or the law does not put themselves up on Facebook.

  Then why all the lies?

  I don’t have the first clue. But I do know I have to find out.

  I twist on the seat to face Dave. “Yes. I still want to know.”

  “You sure?”

  I nod, immediate and decisive. “Positive.”

  Without another word, he shoves the car into gear, punches the gas, and away we go.

  * * *

  Once Dave has merged onto the highway, I punch in the number for ESP’s head of Human Resources and hit the button for speakerphone.

  “Good morning, this is Shefali Majumdar speaking.”

  Except for her name, Shefali sounds as American as apple pie. Her voice is smooth and pleasant, without the slightest trace of an accent I can detect, though once I explain why I’m calling, the awkwardness is hard to miss.

  “So basically,” she says when I’m done, and there’s new hesitation in her tone, “what you’re asking me is if I hired your husband?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Who was also one of the passengers on last week’s Flight 23?”

  “Unfortunately so.”

  “And he never told you he was interviewing or even looking for a new job?”

  “Exactly. I only know because he told a friend he was offered a position at ESP. And that friend told me.”

  Shefali falls silent, and Dave and I exchange a worried look. I lean back in the passenger’s seat and give her a moment to consider my request, my heart thunking against my ribs. I’m prepared to beg, am already gathering up the words in my head, when she begins. “Every human resources manual ever written would say that I can’t tell you either way. That applicants for any position have an indisputable right to privacy whether I hire them or not. If your husband didn’t see fit to tell you about his job search, then ethically speaking, I can neither confirm nor deny that his search might have led him here.”

  Disappointment spears me in the gut. I open my mouth to argue, but I’ve barely made a sound before Shefali cuts me off.

  “What I can tell you is that ESP hasn’t had a senior position opening in more than eight months, and it was for VP of Marketing. Any technical positions we’ve filled this past year, a software engineer would have been vastly overqualified for.”

  Dave looks over, his eyes wide. I close mine, her message hitting me like a locomotive. “So you didn’t hire him.”

  Her only answer is silence.

  “Did you speak to him recently about a job?”

  Shefali pauses, but only for a second or two. “Mrs. Griffith, up until fifteen minutes ago, I’d never heard of him.”

  * * *

  Dave and I spend the rest of the drive bickering about what Shefali’s words mean.

  “Why would Will lie?” Dave says for what must be the fifth time. “Why would he tell Corban about a job he didn’t even apply for? One that didn’t even exist?”

  I give him the same answer as the last time he asked. “Maybe it wasn’t Will who lied. Maybe it was Corban.”

  “That makes no sense. What would Corban have to gain by lying?”

  “I don’t know.” The words come out harsher than I intended because we’ve been having this same conversation for the past fifteen minutes. I don’t have answers for his endless questions. I don’t know, I don’t understand, and I can’t fathom any reason either of them would have for lying.

  I’m saved from another round when Dave’s phone beeps, indicating we’ve arrived at our destination. He hits the brakes in the middle of the street, gesturing beyond me out the window.

  Hancock High School is a massive complex of brick and mortar in Seattle’s Central District, a downtown neighborhood on the confused end of gentrification. It’s a neighborhood with multiple personality disorder—housing projects on one block, hulking renovated Victorians on another, boarded-up convenience stores on the next. We park on the street in front of the main entrance and make our way up the cement steps.

  Like any other school in the country, Hancock has had to respond to the rash of shootings and stabbings with increasingly drastic security protocols, especially in a neighborhood like this one. Theirs include locked doors, a camera whirring above our heads and a uniformed guard stationed just inside, staring us down. I wave, and he buzzes us in.

  “Can I help you?” he says, standing so we can see that he’s armed.

  I show him my Lake Forrest badge, stamped with the school’s emblem and featuring a full-color photograph of me, right above my title as school counselor. Lake Forrest is a small enough school that staff are not actually required to wear them on campus, but I’m suddenly glad I keep mine in my bag.

  “My name is Iris Griffith, and I’m a faculty member at Lake Forrest Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. I am looking into the background of one of your alums and was hoping to take a peek in your library. I assume that’s where I’d find copies of all your old yearbooks?”

  Sure enough, the man points us across the lobby to the main desk. “You’ll need a visitor’s pass first. Library is down the hall to your left. Can’t miss it.”

  I thank him, and a few minutes later, Dave and I are bellying up to the library’s informatio
n desk. The woman behind it is barely visible over the piles of books and papers, a leaning tower of brown boxes and a computer screen so old it should be in a museum.

  She also looks nothing like a librarian. Her hair is a wild cloud of corkscrew curls, she’s covered in leather and tattoos, and it’s a good thing this school doesn’t have metal detectors, because there’s no way she’d make it through one with all those piercings. They line her lobes and nostrils and brows, and when she gives us a smile, two tiny silver balls peek out from under her top lip.

  “You’re not students,” she says, sizing us up. “Let me guess. Journalists? College recruiters? Neighborhood activists?”

  I flash my Lake Forrest badge, launch into my spiel, but she waves me off before I’ve gotten through the first sentence. “Bummer, I was really hoping you were recruiters. Our seniors are at a sixty-two percent college acceptance rate and holding, and if we don’t raise it another ten percent by graduation, I’m going to spend my summer months mowing lawns. Anyhow, what can I do for you guys?”

  “We’re looking for a copy of your old yearbooks—1999, maybe a year or two before.”

  “Who you looking for?”

  “My husband.” I swallow down a searing pain that I know must melt my features. “His name was Will Griffith.”

  One of her brows arches at my use of the past tense, but she doesn’t ask for details. She pushes to a stand, gestures for us to follow her down to the right, to where an open and bright reading area darkens into the stacks. “Name’s India, by the way.”

  “I’m Iris, and this is my brother, Dave. Thanks for your help, India.”

  “No problem.” She walks fast, her motorcycle boots making dull thunks on the ratty carpet, talking the entire time over her shoulder. “Hancock opened its doors in the ’20s, but the first yearbook didn’t appear until 1937. I guess it took them that long to get their you-know-what together. Back then we weren’t much more than a twelve-room building with a couple hundred students, most of them Jewish, Japanese or Italian.” She gestures to the far wall of framed photographs, dozens and dozens of more recent graduating classes, a sea of brown and tan faces punctuated by the occasional light-skinned one.

  I stop and scan them for the Class of 1999. The picture’s too high for me to pick out Will, but it’s the same racial makeup, more dark than light.

  India takes a hard right into the stacks, stopping at a shelf packed with hard, burgundy covers, many of them held together by Scotch tape. “What year did you say you were looking for?”

  “Graduating class of 1999.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The year we got our first National Merit Scholar, our football team took state and a burst pipe flooded the gym right in the middle of a basketball game.” At our raised brows, she lifts a shoulder. “I’m the unofficial school historian. Comes with the territory of running a library, I guess. Anyway...” She runs a black-painted fingernail down the spines until she finds the right one, then pulls it out and hands it to me. “Here you go. There are a couple of tables around the corner. Take as long as you need. I’ll be holding down the fort up front.”

  Dave thanks her, and I carry the book with shaking hands to a table at the end of the stacks. The design is classic ’90s. Fat gold letters and the outline of a wildcat on satiny maroon, and the few bites of Chex Mix in my belly push up the back of my throat. I shove the book at my brother. “I can’t. You look.”

  We sit, and I study the tabletop’s ballpoint graffiti while Dave flips through the yearbook’s pages. He stops on a spread of seniors, full-color shots of kids in burgundy caps and gowns, the bright gold tassels hanging alongside smiling cheeks.

  Only Will, the only white face on the page, is not smiling.

  “Sorry, Iris. It’s him.” Dave turns the book around so I can see. “William Matthew Griffith.”

  It’s Will, all right. His hair is lighter and his face is thinner, but his eyes are as familiar to me as my own. The sight of him there—here, in a Seattle yearbook—hits me like a visceral punch.

  I press a hand to my churning stomach and try to think through what I know. “Okay, so clearly, the bit about growing up in Memphis was a lie.”

  “We don’t know that. Maybe he only transferred here for his senior year,” Dave says, playing devil’s advocate. “Hang on, let me get the earlier years.” He jumps up from his chair and heads back into the stacks.

  But Will’s picture is there, too, and in all three, scowling at the camera in a way I’ve never seen him do, not even when our flight back from Cancun was delayed five times in twelve hours.

  Dave rests a hand on the back of my chair, leans in to inspect the pictures. “Why does he look so angry?”

  “Because that’s what he was. His dad was dead, and his mom was sick. She died his junior year. On top of school and caring for her, he was working two jobs, running the house and paying all the bills.” As I say the words, it occurs to me that any or all of this could have been a lie, too. “At least, that’s what he always claimed.”

  Dave sinks into his chair, reaching for the 1999 yearbook, the one where Will was a senior. He taps the white space under his picture. “How come everybody else has a favorite quote and list of extracurriculars, but there’s nothing under Will’s name. Wasn’t he some kind of wrestling champion?” Dave flips to the wrestling page, and there’s no Will.

  It never occurred to me to question him, but now that I think about it, when would Will have had time for the wrestling team? I press both hands to my churning stomach and swallow down a surge of sick. Who is this man I married?

  Dave leans back in his chair, running a palm through his dark hair. “Okay, let’s think this through—1999 isn’t that long ago. I’ll bet you at least one of his teachers is still working here. Maybe they’d remember him.”

  “India might know someone we could ask.” I reach for my bag and stand.

  Dave gathers up the yearbooks. “You go ahead. I’ll put these back and meet you up front.”

  I find her behind the information desk, sorting returned books onto a rickety cart. She looks up when she hears me coming. “Did you find what you needed?”

  “Sort of. I was wondering if any of the teachers who were here in 1999 are still here now.”

  “Oh, sure. A bunch of them. You wanted to see if one of them remembered your husband?”

  I nod.

  “Well—” she leans on the cart and thinks for a moment, and then her face brightens “—I’m pretty sure the baseball coach graduated from Hancock in 1999. I don’t know if he knew your husband, but he’d be the best place to start.” She checks her watch, taps the face twice with a finger. “You have about an hour before practice starts, which means you can probably find him in the gym.”

  13

  Dave and I find a man matching Coach Miller’s description in a dim hallway at the back of Hancock High’s gym, lugging a metal basket of baseballs into the hall. Above his head, a lone tube light buzzes and hums.

  “Are you Coach Miller?” I ask, moving close enough to get a good whiff of his cologne. The man is bathed in it, an overwhelming stench that burns the back of my throat, especially when combined with the other odors hanging in the air, Bengay and sweaty socks.

  He looks up, his eyes half hidden under the bill of a Hancock High baseball cap. “Yup.”

  India wasn’t kidding when she said he was built like a linebacker. Coach Miller is massive, six feet and then some of bulky bones and fat-padded muscle under baggy street clothes, jeans and a long-sleeved polo. He ducks back into the room, reappearing two seconds later with another basket, this time filled with mitts.

  “The librarian told us you graduated from Hancock in 1999.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He locks the door with a key he drops into his back jeans pocket. “Who’s asking?”

  “My n
ame is Iris, and this is my brother, Dave. We were hoping you could tell us what you remember about a former classmate of yours. Will Griffith.”

  “Nope. Don’t know him.” He leans down, reaching for one of the baskets.

  I slide my phone from my pocket and wake it up, revealing a picture of me and Will. “This is him. William Matthew Griffith. Do you recognize him?”

  With a loud sigh, he glances at my screen, then drops the basket and looks again. “Him? That’s Billy Griffith.”

  My heart flips over. “Do you remember him?”

  “Everybody who went to Hancock back then remembers Billy Griffith.” He cocks his head, and his eyes narrow in suspicion. “Who did you say you were again?”

  “Iris Griffith. His wife.”

  The coach gives a surprised puff, quick and sharp enough to stir up the hair on the left side of my face. “No way.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s just...” He gives me a slow head-to-toe, lingering on my curviest spots in a way that makes it hard to stand still, then follows it up with a grin, and I’m confused by the incongruity. His gaze was appreciative, but his smile isn’t the least bit friendly. “You don’t really seem like his type.”

  Maybe not, but I know this guy’s type. The type who, once upon a time, was the one every boy wanted to be and every girl wanted to date. The type who swaggered through the hallways with a ball and an empty backpack, never once thinking beyond next week’s game. The type I warn my students at Lake Forrest Academy not to become.

  I park my tone in neutral. “How so?”

  “Do you have a weapon in your purse or your back pocket? Do you hear voices in your head telling you to, I don’t know, light fires and slash tires?”

  Indignation burns, hot and sudden, at his question, but I keep my expression in check. “Of course not.”

  “See? Not his type.” He leans down, swipes the basket of balls from the floor. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get ready for practice.” Without waiting for a reply, he turns and takes off down the hall.