The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  Dave wraps my fingers around an icy drink, then presses a tiny blue pill into my palm. “Not only will this little guy knock you senseless, the sleep will be deep and dreamless and last all the way home.”

  If there’s one thing you can count on from an urban, sophisticated gay man, it’s good pharmaceuticals. I toss the pill back without hesitation.

  And then I turn to the window, press my forehead to the glass and wait for senseless, dreamless sleep to pull me under.

  17

  Dave and I are halfway up the walk when Mom swings the door open and steps onto the porch in her bathrobe. “Lieverds! Welcome home.”

  We’ve been on the ground for a little over an hour, and I’m still headachy and groggy from Dave’s little pill. But the bigger issue is what Dad told me is waiting upstairs on my bathroom counter. Will’s ring is like a living, breathing presence in this house, calling me to it like a beacon. I have a million things to do, a long list of people to call back, yet all I can think about is the ring.

  I piece together what I hope is a halfway decent smile. “Hi, Mom.”

  Her worried gaze tips to Dave, trailing me up the porch stairs. I don’t have to turn to know he’s gesturing for her to back up and give me some space. Her look of obvious dismay at his message tugs at me, and I remember a Christmas not too long ago, when after too much eggnog she admitted to sometimes feeling like a jilted lover around me and Dave, so covetous is she of our connection. She’s wearing the exact same expression now. I reach the top and step into her arms, sinking into a rare bear hug, and her body shakes with what I know is frustration. My mother is a fixer, and my life has turned into a tragedy she can’t fix.

  “My sweet, sweet baby,” she whispers into my hair.

  I untangle us, and she leads me into the foyer, where Dad and James stand in their pajamas. Dad swings an arm around my shoulders while James sweeps Dave into an embrace worthy of a three-month rather than three-day separation. I see it, and a twinge of something unpleasant hits me in the solar plexus. Is this how it’s going to be now? Bitterness and anger and jealousy every time I see another couple kiss? I swallow the feelings down and make a silent vow. My misery will not begrudge anyone, least of all Dave, his happiness.

  “Breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes,” Mom says.

  I don’t have the heart to tell her I just ate a rubbery egg-and-bagel sandwich on the plane. I snatch my bag from the floor where Dave dumped it and head up the stairs. “Just going to grab a quick shower. If I’m not down by then, start without me.”

  She gives me a worried nod.

  I haul my heavy body up the stairs and down the hallway to my bedroom, noticing that Mom has scoured the place. The woodwork gleams, the windows sparkle, even the linens have been laundered and the beds made up, the corners tucked tighter than a hospital mattress. I dump everything on the foot end of mine and run a finger up the duvet, breathing in the heady scent of my favorite flower, stargazer lilies, stuffed into bowls and vases everywhere I look. On both nightstands, on the TV table, on the stool by the reading chair by the window. She must have spent a fortune.

  In the bathroom, the envelope sits like a hunk of kryptonite on my vanity. I inch my way across the tile and slide my shaking fingers into the padded paper, feeling around until they make contact with a cool slip of metal.

  I know it’s Will’s ring before I pull it out. I know it by the hammered finish, by the weight and the thickness of the metal, the way it slides up my thumb and hugs just the right spot between the joint and the base. My breath catches when I read the inscription, the tiny letters a jeweler in Buckhead overcharged me to hand engrave: My very favorite person. xo, Iris.

  A new wave of grief sucker punches me in the heart, a direct hit, and I settle the ring on my thumb, turn on the shower and stumble in fully clothed. I think about the day I pushed it up Will’s knobby finger, the ball of emotion that clogged my throat when we exchanged our vows, the way he twirled me around after until my heart felt like it would burst with joy. It was the perfect day, the first in the rest of our perfect lives together. How lucky was I to have found this man, my other half, my very favorite person on a planet crammed with strangers? I knew then our love would last a lifetime.

  The lifetime lasted seven years and a day.

  I tell myself I should be grateful, that I should cherish every second we had together, but as scalding water batters the top of my head, all I can think is, more.

  Dammit, I wanted more.

  * * *

  By the time I strip off my clothes and turn off the water, my skin has bloomed pink, my fingertips have shriveled white and wrinkly, and I’ve missed breakfast by a good half hour. I picture Mom downstairs in the kitchen, holding a plate of pancakes a foot thick and staring with longing up at the ceiling. I know I should go down there, but I can’t. The inertia is as thick and sticky as flypaper. I leave my clothes in a wet heap on the shower floor, wrap my dripping body in a towel and sink onto the vanity stool instead, inspecting my face in the mirror.

  Puffy eyes. Dark circles. Fish-belly complexion and sunken cheeks. It seems unfair that losing your husband means also losing your beauty. Haven’t I lost enough? Haven’t I been given enough shit to deal with? At the very least, widows should get rosy cheeks and glowing skin as a compensation prize.

  I’m reaching for my jar of moisturizer when my elbow jostles the Liberty Airlines envelope, revealing another one, a smaller one, lying beneath it. A plain number ten envelope with a bluish tinge, generic and cheap. My name and address are typed in all caps across the front, under the words Personal and Confidential. I flip it over, poke a finger under the seal and rip it open.

  The sheet of paper inside could have come from a million different notebooks, purchased at a million different stores. But it’s the three little words, scrawled in a script as familiar to me as my own, that suck the air from my lungs.

  I’m so sorry.

  A burst of heat spreads across my chest. I snatch the envelope from the counter and check the postmark. The letter was sent two days ago, on April 8. The crash happened on April 3. That’s five days after the crash.

  After the crash. After it.

  And yet this note was written by my husband’s hand. I’m positive of it. The angular cursive, the lazy transitions, the too-long tail on the last letter. Even the blots of ink are consistent with Will’s favorite pen.

  There are a couple of hard knocks on the door, and Dave’s voice carries around the corner. “Iris, are you decent?”

  It takes me a couple of tries to find my voice. “Come in.”

  My brother’s face appears above me in the mirror, his concerned gaze lasering in on mine. “Was it his?”

  At first I think he means the note, even though I just opened it, and there’s no possible way he could know. “Huh?”

  “The ring. I take it was Will’s?”

  Oh, right. The ring. I wiggle my thumb, feel the hard metal pushing against my skin. “Yes. It’s his.”

  “Oh, Jesus, I’m so sorry, Iris. I was hoping...” Dave steps closer, resting a supportive hand on my still damp shoulder. “I know you were hoping, too.”

  It’s all I can do to nod. He gives me a funny look, and I pass him the paper over my shoulder.

  “What’s this?”

  “A note.” My voice is shaky, and so is my body, the emotions coursing through me so fast, my muscles vibrate with it. “I think Will wrote it.”

  “Okay...” Dave dips his head, his eyes scanning the paper. “Sorry about what?”

  “I don’t know.” I hand him the envelope, let him do the math for himself.

  It doesn’t take him long. He spots the postmark, and his head whips up, his eyes blowing wide. “Who sent you this?”

  I shrug. “It’s postmarked Fulton County, which means it’s local.”<
br />
  Dave sputters for a few seconds before his anger catches wind. “Is this some kind of sick joke?” He shakes the paper above my head, his face turning purple with fury. “This is psychotic. Whoever sent you a note from your dead husband is a psychopath, you know that, right?”

  I nod. “But it’s definitely Will’s handwriting.”

  “It’s postmarked two days ago!” he roars, scowling at my reflection as if I’m the one who dropped it in an Atlanta mailbox. “How could Will have written it?”

  “He must have done it before he died.”

  “Then who sent it?”

  Dave’s anger ignites my own. “I don’t know!” I scream back, the words fueled by fury and frustration. My skin is blistered with it, with the shock of receiving a note in my dead husband’s scrawl.

  The bathroom plunges into silence.

  Behind me, Dave sucks a lungful of air and blows it all out, long and slow, until his shoulders unhunch and his expression loses some of its heat. “Sorry. Sorry, but I’m pissed, okay? I’m going into big-brother protective mode because whoever sent you this did so with one intent and one intent only, and that’s to fuck with your head.”

  I let out a laugh that’s not the least bit funny. “Don’t tell him, but it’s working.”

  Another hard sigh. “Okay. Let’s back up and think this through. I’m so sorry is generic enough he could have said it to anyone, but to write it on a piece of paper and hand it to them... It has to be someone he knew pretty well. Someone he worked with, maybe?”

  “Probably the most likely candidate. If Will wasn’t home, he was at the office. Either there, or at the gy—” The word gets swallowed up in a realization, and I twist around on my stool, staring up at Dave head-on. “Corban.”

  “Who?”

  “The friend from the gym. The one who showed up at the memorial with news of the job that wasn’t. I don’t know if he was lying or misinformed, but there was something off about him, mostly because he knew all these things about Will, when I’d never heard of this guy. Will never talked about him at all. Not once”

  “Okay.” Dave nods. “Definitely suspicious. So how do we find out if he’s the one?”

  I pause to think, but the answer doesn’t take me long. “I’ll call him, ask him to meet me for coffee, get to know him a little better.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me just now. I said we. How do we find out.”

  I shake my head. “He won’t open up if he suspects even for a second we’re onto him, which he will if I bring along a chaperone. I’m a psychologist, Dave. I know how to make people flip over and show me their underbelly. But I have to build trust first, and I can’t do that with you glaring at him over my shoulder.”

  “I don’t like it.” The anger is back in his voice, and it’s laced with oh hell no. “If he’s our guy—”

  “If he’s our guy, then having you there will make him clam up for sure. And give me a little credit. I’m not stupid. I’ll make sure to suggest a public place, a spot with a million people around. Nothing will happen. I’ll be fine. And no offense, but nothing you can say is going to stop me.”

  My brother thinks about it for a second or two, puffing a trio of short and quick breaths through his nose. “Fine, but only if you promise me that, if he’s our guy, you’ll let me kick his ass.”

  I don’t tell him there’s not a chance, that Corban is built like a tank. I don’t remind him of that time in tenth grade, when the PE coach told Dave he fights like a girl. Instead I nod and reach for his hand, thinking never have I loved my brother more.

  18

  Corban is seated on a bar stool by the window at Octane, a trendy coffee bar and lounge on Atlanta’s Westside, when I walk through the door. The place is packed with new age nerds and long-haired hipsters interspersed with a few grad students from the downtown colleges, all of them pounding away at their MacBook Airs. Corban looks up from his phone, greeting me with a smile that is both quick and blinding. “Hey, Iris.”

  I toss him a wave, then gesture to the counter. “Can I get you anything?”

  He lifts a ceramic mug from the bar top, fresh steam rising from the rim. “I’m all good, thanks.”

  I head to the counter, reciting my order to a dreadlocked girl, and study him out of the corner of my eye. I’d forgotten how dark and...shiny he is. His scalp is cleanly shaven and buffed to a high sheen, his arms slick and smooth where they bulge out of his sleeves.

  I also can’t help but notice he’s handsome—the kind of handsome that comes with glossy magazine covers and red-carpet appearances. His clothes are casual, a fitted T-shirt and designer jeans, but he wears them with the elegance of a custom suit, perfect for his lean frame. I was too wrecked the day of the memorial to pay much attention to his looks, but I’m noticing them now, and I’m not the only one. Judging from the hair twirls and liquid looks over coffee cup rims, every female in the place has spotted him and is trying to snag his attention. Their doe eyes narrow when they get a load of me heading in his direction.

  I drop my drink on the bar and let him pull me into a hug, soft cotton over muscles hard as steel. He smells like detergent and aftershave, a spicy scent that tickles the back of my throat.

  “So great to see you again. How are you holding up?”

  Friendly. Empathetic. Sincere. If this is the guy behind the letter, if he’s capable of torturing a widow with a handwritten note from her dead husband, he’s an Oscar-worthy actor skilled at hiding behind his charm. This doesn’t mean I’m letting my guard down. There are plenty of good actors out there, not all of them in Hollywood.

  I sink onto a stool, hanging my bag from a hook under the bar. “As well as can be expected, I guess. Thanks for meeting me, and for bringing over the box of Will’s stuff. I especially liked the picture CD.”

  Most were images I’d seen before on Will’s phone or on Facebook, but there were a few new shots, candids with Corban surrounded by others at the gym, their faces shiny with sweat, their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. Their easy smiles and relaxed postures told me their friendship extended beyond occasional workouts, and seeing them made the hurt throb all over again in my chest. Why did Will keep that part of his life secret from me?

  “Will was a good friend. The best,” Corban says, his voice and expression mournful—more points in his favor. “I already miss him like hell.”

  “Me, too.” I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat, scolding myself for letting him get me choked up. No way I’m going to let him play me like that, not until I know for certain he didn’t send me that note. I curl a hand around my teacup, threading a finger through the handle, and pull myself together.

  “The paper said they’ve begun recovering bodies from the crash site and have already returned some personal items to the families.”

  I nod, my free hand floating to the spot where Will’s ring hangs from a chain, right above my heart, my emotions skidding into dangerous territory, my eyes filling—dammit—with tears.

  “Jeez, Iris. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard that must be for you.” He wraps a palm around my elbow, gives it a quick squeeze. “I’m so sorry.”

  I’m so sorry. The exact same words on Will’s note.

  Even though the words are generic, the match dries my eyes like a blast of icy air, and they narrow into a squint I bury in my teacup. Was it intentional? A fluke? The idea that this man would send me that note, then taunt me by saying the identical words to my face, burrows like an insect under my skin. I gulp at my tea, but the hot liquid only fans the flames in my belly. Could Corban really be that cruel? Could anyone?

  “Are you okay?”

  His concern, as genuine as it sounds, tells me I need to get a hold of myself, of this conversation. I wipe my expression clean and drop my cup back onto the saucer.

  �
��I’m fine. But I asked you here because I wanted to get your take on something.” I pause to receive his nod. “I called ESP, the company you told me offered Will a new job. I talked to their head of HR. She didn’t know Will, and what’s more, she told me the last executive job was filled over eight months ago.”

  “I don’t...” Corban’s gaze doesn’t let mine go, but his dark brows—along with his lashes, the only hairs on his head—dip in a sharp V. “You’re telling me that Will didn’t get a new job in Seattle?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But... I don’t get it. Why would he feed me that elaborate story about a new job on the West Coast if it wasn’t true? Why would he tell me about these hotshot new colleagues he was going to have, all the cool and crazy things they did on their team-building excursions? He told me they were taking him skydiving, and that their office building had a zip line. I mean, those are some pretty specific details. Why would he make all that up?”

  “He didn’t make it up. I’m pretty sure he got it from ESP’s website.”

  “But the new job, the move to the West Coast, his worries you wouldn’t want to leave your family... That was all fabrication?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Corban’s frown deepens, and his eyes flash with something I recognize as disappointment. His friend, the one he misses like hell, lied to him. He seems so genuinely offended that I decide to switch tracks.

  “Did Will ever tell you where he was from?”

  Corban tries to shake it off, crossing a denim-clad leg and bouncing his red Converse sneaker under the bar. “Oh, sure. I have a couple of cousins in Memphis, so Will and I were always comparing notes. Turns out we’ve been to a bunch of the same neighborhood haunts.”

  “Will is from Seattle.”

  “Okay.” Corban drags out the word like he’s humoring me, but his legs go still. “But then he moved to Memphis when he was what, five? Six? I know for sure it was when he was still a kid. Will went to Central, the big rival of the school where my cousins went.”