The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  The kid behind the Geek Squad counter looks to be about twenty or so, the type of guy who Will always claimed gave techies a bad name. Greasy hair. Pimply face. Bushy eyebrows and a prominent overbite. Behind his Coke-bottle glasses, his eyes go comically wide.

  “You’re asking me to hack another person’s phone number?” the geek says, shaking his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “Can’t—” Dave gives him a charming smile “—or won’t?”

  “Irrelevant. I’m only allowed to repair and install.”

  My brother peels five twenties from his wallet and fans them across the countertop. “Are you sure about that?”

  The kid’s not sure. His gaze flicks from us to the cash, and the struggle is real. A hundred bucks can buy a lot of gigabytes. He whips his head left and right, taking note of a colleague ringing up a purchase at the register, another hunched over a MacBook at the far end of the counter. When neither of them looks his way, he swipes the bills and my phone from the counter, pocketing both. “BRB,” he says, and then he disappears through a door marked Employees Only.

  While he’s gone, I head over to the computer display and pull up the internet. “What was it Coach Miller called that neighborhood where he lived? Rainier something.”

  “View? No, that’s not right.” Dave thinks for a second or two, then snaps. “Vista! Rainier Vista.”

  “That’s it.” I look up the neighborhood and scribble a couple cross streets in a notebook I carry in my bag, then do the same with the nearest FedEx and police department.

  “While you’re at it, find us a decent restaurant. I haven’t eaten since Atlanta, and I’m starved.”

  For my brother, decent means complicated dishes and wine pairings, both of which means dinner takes forever. I shake my head. “We can stop at the first drive-through we come to, but I want to keep moving.”

  He wrinkles his nose. “You’re seriously suggesting we order food at a window and eat it out of a paper bag?”

  “Yes, because I still want to see Will’s old neighborhood and talk to somebody at the police department before the day’s over, and we can’t do that if you order the seven-course chef’s tasting menu, which I know you will.”

  “Seriously, Iris. I have to eat something. The low blood sugar is making me light-headed.”

  “Would you stop being such a drama queen? I already told you, we can—”

  “Um, sir?” We look over, and it’s the kid, my iPhone in one of his fists. “The text was sent from a messaging app.”

  “Okay,” Dave and I say in unison, and in exactly the same tone. Not okay as in we’re done here, but okay as in go on.

  The geek assumes the former. He plunks down my phone and turns to go.

  “Wait,” I say. “What about the number?”

  “The app encrypts and then destroys the text, as well as where the text originated.” He shoves his glasses up his nose with a knuckle. “Think of it as a Snapchat for text messaging. Only, you don’t have to reveal any identifying information in order to begin a conversation.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it’s impossible to trace the number. Sorry.” He moves down the counter to help an old lady clutching a laptop to her chest.

  Disappointment, sharp and instant, stabs me between the ribs. “Now what?” I say, turning to my brother.

  Dave sighs, watching the geek go. “Now you owe me a hundred bucks.”

  * * *

  I bribe Dave with the rest of my Chex Mix and an eight-thirty reservation at Atmosphere, which, according to Zagat, is one of Seattle’s best French restaurants overlooking the Puget Sound. With minimal griping, he steers the rental back across the lake to Rainier Vista.

  “Are you sure this is it?” he says, slowing in the middle of the street. “The way Coach Miller described it, I was expecting something much slummier.”

  I check the street sign against the address in my notebook. “This is the right place, but you’re right. It’s way nicer than I thought it would be.”

  Rainier Vista is not Beverly Hills, but it’s no slum, either. To our right are small but colorful houses with sweeping front porches; to our left are townhomes and a block-sized park, empty but for a pristine basketball court and a long line of trees. The setting sun lights them up from behind, bare limbs reaching into the leaden sky. I twist on my seat, searching for the promised view, but if Mount Rainier is visible from here, it’s tucked behind a thick layer of red-tinged clouds.

  Dave pulls over, hitting the button to roll down my window.

  “Hi, there,” he says, leaning across me to speak to the young couple on the sidewalk. Two kids, barely out of high school, their features hidden under thick hoods. His arm is slung around her shoulders in a gesture that hits me as more possessive than protective. “Do you guys live around here?”

  They don’t stop walking, don’t even turn their heads our way. The girl flicks her eyes in my direction, but her boyfriend hustles her along.

  Dave eases the car forward, dialing up the dazzle on his smile. “We’re new to the area, and we were hoping you could give us a little bit of direc—” The pair makes a sharp right, veering away from us down a footpath bordering an empty park. “Or maybe not.”

  “Friendly neighborhood.”

  Dave puffs an ironic laugh, then looks around, taking in the neighborhood. He points past me, out the passenger-side window and beyond, to a hulking block of what looks to be apartments. “See that simple design and cheap materials? How much you want to bet that’s HUD housing, and this neighborhood is a HUD redevelopment?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, if I’m right, HUD would have made provisions for the former residents, either to move them to a new neighborhood or guarantee them a spot in the low-income housing here. We’ve got a fairly decent chance of finding someone who was here before the redevelopment.”

  “Okay, smarty-pants. So where do we begin?”

  “One of those apartment buildings would be our best bet, but judging by the reception those kids just gave us, I’m guessing residents won’t take kindly to strangers coming in and asking questions. We’d be better off starting at some sort of community center. If we make friends with the staff, they might be able to tell us who’s lived here since before the developers came to town. We can funnel our questions through them.”

  Dave drives on, making a slow loop through the neighborhood. We pass more of the same, houses of all sizes pressed between parks and playgrounds, with an occasional high-rise jutting out over the rooftops. He points out a sign for the city’s light-rail system. “Proximity to public transit, plenty of ramps and open space, and have you noticed all the urban artwork? Definitely a mixed-income neighborhood.”

  “So where’s the community center?”

  “If I’m right, it’ll be pretty smack in the middle of the development.”

  We drive around a little more. Dave charts our progress on the map on his phone, driving up and down streets until he swings a sudden left, pointing the rental at a modern glass and stucco building at the end of a one-way road. A Plexiglas sign above the double doors announces it as Neighborhood House. “Bingo.”

  Dave finds a spot along the street, and we power through a stiff wind up the sidewalk. A glass-enclosed bulletin board to the left of the door announces an adult financial planning seminar, a jobs lab and the annual literacy drive under a United Way logo.

  “Boom,” Dave says as we pass. “Social services. Told you it was HUD.”

  I roll my eyes. “Such a cocky Realtor.”

  He grins and opens one of the double doors, stepping aside to let me pass.

  Inside, Neighborhood House is spacious and bright, a two-story windowed space flooded with natural and LCD light. Two women sit behind the reception desk in the very center, chatting with an e
lderly black man on the opposite side of the counter. They’re young, midtwenties or so, their faces fresh with eager smiles and philanthropic optimism.

  “Welcome to Neighborhood House,” one of them says, her accent nasal and Midwestern. “Do you know the way or would you like a little direction?”

  I step up to the counter, give her a friendly smile. “Hi, and thank you. I’m looking for information on a former resident, and I was hoping you could put us in touch with someone who was well connected in the community back before it was redeveloped.”

  “I’ve lived here my whole life,” the man says, turning to us with a dentured grin. “And I know everybody. Who you looking for, sweetheart?”

  Now that I’m closer, I see the man is not elderly; he’s ancient. Stooped posture and grizzled hair and droopy skin with a labyrinth of lines too deep to be described as wrinkles. And though his eyes are cloudy with cataracts, they’re intelligent and twinkling with warmth.

  “His name is Will Griffith, though back then he went by Billy. He lived here with his family until sometime in 1999, maybe a year or two longer. I don’t know his parents’ names, but they—”

  “Kat and Lewis,” the man says, and he’s no longer smiling.

  “Was Kat the one who died in the fire?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And she wasn’t the only one.”

  Excitement revs my heart, and a tingly warmth rises in my chest. “She wasn’t?”

  He shakes his head and studies me through squinted eyes. “Who are you, and why are you asking?”

  “The son, Billy...Will, is my husband. Well, was my husband. He was on that Liberty Airlines flight from Atlanta to Seattle, the one that...”

  Someone gasps, and right on cue, my throat closes up and my eyes fill with tears, my brain saturated with memories of my husband. Not the new Will, the one who lied about where he was going and where he came from, a past filled with anger and violence. He stays out of the picture, this new man I don’t know and can’t begin to understand. No, my tears now are for the old Will—the one who used to smack my butt whenever I got out of the shower, the one who asked me to marry him on an ordinary Saturday afternoon, by dropping to his knee in the middle of the breakfast aisle, in the very same Kroger where we began. That’s the Will I miss. That’s the husband I want back.

  “Sorry,” I say, ducking my head. I’ve never been a pretty crier, and I hate crying in public, something I’ve been doing an awful lot of lately. “I didn’t mean to...”

  One of the women plucks two tissues from a box and passes them over the counter. “Honey, you cry all you want. My God, your husband just died in a plane crash. I think everybody here will agree, you get a free pass.”

  Her colleague nods in vehement agreement.

  Only the elderly man doesn’t show a lick of sympathy. His lips, white-line thin, curl down at both ends, and his eyes, which when we first walked in glittered with joviality, are now as dark and stormy as the sky outside. The transformation bottles up my tears.

  “You remember my husband, don’t you?”

  He turns back to the women, slapping a stiff palm to the desk. “Ladies, you have yourselves a nice evening.” Without so much as a glance in our direction, he pushes past us for the door.

  He’s stooped and slow, but he walks with a steady, if not flat-footed gait. I catch up within a few easy strides. “Sir, wait. Please. I’m only asking for a minute or two of your time.”

  “No, what you’re asking is for me to dig up some old and unpleasant skeletons. Skeletons that are better left in the past.” Everything about the old man says he didn’t like Will then, and now, after I just admitted being married to him, he doesn’t like me much, either. He ducks his head and speeds up.

  At the exit, he punches a button and a motor whirs, swinging the heavy doors open like they’re moving through molasses, only barely faster than the old man. It’s enough of a delay that we stop walking.

  “Look, I understand Will was a troubled kid, but—”

  He lifts a hunched shoulder. “This was the projects. Lots of kids were troubled.”

  Even after all the lies, the impulse to defend my husband rises inside me like a tsunami, and I bite down on my tongue to hold the wave inside.

  “What did he do?” Dave says, coming up alongside me.

  The old man grimaces. “I already told you, let old bones lie. Nothing good can come of digging ’em up.”

  The doors are open now, letting in an icy wind. Sometime in the past few minutes, the skies have begun dumping rain, and it falls in fierce, angry swirls. The man yanks his zipper higher and heads out into it.

  Dave and I exchange a look, and he’s thinking the same thing I am, that this man is our best bet for information. I jut my chin in his direction, and Dave takes off after him.

  “At least let us drive you to where you’re going,” he suggests as the old man’s shuffling down the ramp. “You shouldn’t be out in this weather. The sidewalks will be slippery.”

  The old man is tempted. He pauses, glancing back over a shoulder.

  It’s enough for Dave to give him an inviting grin. “Our car is warm and dry, and it’ll take you anywhere you need to go.”

  The old man considers the offer for a second or two, his gaze sizing us up. He takes in my leather boots and cashmere scarf, Dave’s designer jeans under a Patagonia puffy coat. “Anywhere?”

  Dave and I both nod.

  The man’s scowl fades into something much more calculating. “I could eat.”

  * * *

  The old man’s name is Wayne Butler, and with his directions, Dave steers the rental to a halal joint on MLK Jr. Way. He takes in the neon signs and the faded red awning, and his shoulders droop, but he doesn’t complain, not even when Mr. Butler orders every curry on the menu, then steps aside so Dave can pay.

  As soon as we’re situated at a table near the window, I use the same strategy that got Coach Miller talking: honesty.

  “Mr. Butler, I know you’d rather not go excavating the past, but whatever Will did as a teenager, it can’t be worse than what he did to me, his own wife.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I nod, because I know what he wants. Mr. Butler wants me to put myself on his team—a team separate from my husband. I push a chunk of stringy meat around with a cheap fork and gather the words I think he wants to hear.

  “My husband—Will—we were married for seven years. He never told me anything about Seattle. I didn’t know he grew up here. I had no idea about his home situation. Maybe he was ashamed of his past, or maybe he was just trying to put everything behind him. I don’t know. But the thing is, I can’t reconcile the man I knew to the man Coach Miller told us about, and I need to do that in order to mourn my husband. I need to know all the parts of him—even the parts he kept hidden, the ugly parts—in order to move on.” I say the words, and a slow ache blooms inside my chest.

  Something cracks in the old man’s demeanor, a slight softening around his eyes and mouth, and relief loosens my muscles. “You talked to Anthony Miller?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a good man. What did he tell you?”

  “He said Will was mean and angry and his home situation was not pleasant. He said there was a fire, and that...” It takes me a second or two to muster up the words. “Will’s mom—Kat—died in it.”

  The old man chews a meaty bite. “He told you about the fire, huh?”

  I nod.

  “I lost everything I owned in that fire, and I’m not just talking about clothes and furniture. I mean letters and baby pictures and the recipes my great-grandmama handed down. My wedding suit and the pearl earrings I gave to my wife, God rest her soul.”

  I don’t bother asking if he was insured. The items he mentioned seem irreplaceable, and besides, after everything I’ve h
eard about Rainier Vista at the time, I’m guessing none of the residents were.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say instead. “That must have been very hard.”

  He nods, and his mouth settles into a thin line. “Did Anthony tell you who set the fire?”

  My heart ticks like a bomb beneath the bones of my ribs. The fire was arson? I try to answer, but I can’t speak.

  Dave does it for me. “No, who?”

  For someone who didn’t want to talk, Mr. Butler sure seems to be enjoying the attention now. He leans back in his chair, gesturing out the window with his fork.

  “I already told you, this place used to be the projects. Now, I don’t know where you folks are from, but by the looks of you, I’d wager neither of you have ever set foot in one. Let me assure you, it’s as bad as you think. Gangs, guns, prostitutes and drug runners on every corner. Suffice it to say, we had more than our fair share of troubled kids. But your husband stood out because he was smart. He was smart and he was sneaky, and both of those things together made him dangerous. You never knew he was on the verge of explosion until it was too late.”

  My gaze flicks to Dave, whose expression is carefully blank. “What are you saying, exactly?”

  “I think you know what I’m saying. The police could never prove Will set it, mind, but they were suspicious enough to assign him a case officer. And that fire killed more than just Kat. Two kids died that night, as well.”

  Dave jerks, and my mouth fills with an all too familiar acid. I turn away from the table and try not to pant, calculating the number of steps to the garbage can in case I can’t swallow the sick down. Three, maybe four, tops, but only if I leap over another table. The distraction puts some distance between me and what this man is saying—that Will set a fire that ended the lives of not only two children, but also his own mother. That he was responsible for their deaths. I lean back in the chair and shake my head, a slow side to side.

  Not possible.

  The old man takes in my posture, reads my disbelief and lifts a lumpy shoulder in a suit yourself gesture. “When it came to his parents, your husband got the short end of the stick, that’s for certain. Kat and Lewis Griffith could barely take care of themselves, much less another human being.”