The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  “Now is not the time to be feeling sorry for yourself, Iris. Now is the time to find and retain the best lawyer in town.”

  My thoughts zip to Evan Sheffield, the seven-foot attorney I met at the memorial, the one who lost his wife and baby daughter in the crash. I think of him and his shoulders heavy with burden, and the feelings come flooding back. The shock. The fury. The grief. I imagine myself sitting across from him, looking into his sad eyes as I tell him about the missing four and a half million, and the idea makes me dizzy with dread.

  “I’ll make some calls today,” I say, lifting my head to find a valet standing in front of my car, watching me with concern. I give him a weak smile to let him know I’m all right, and he jogs off. “In the meantime, do me a favor, will you? Don’t tell Mom and Dad about this, okay? Dad already threatened to pay for the alarm system, and I don’t want them to worry any more than they already are.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Dave says, right as a text pings my phone. “You can’t...”

  Dave’s still talking, but I’m no longer listening. I’m staring at a text from the 678 phone: Hello, Iris. How did you get this number?

  My stomach flips upside down. With shaking fingers, I type my answer. How do you know my name? Who is this?

  A bubble appears under my message, indicating the other person is typing. I hold my breath and wait for the answer.

  “Hellooo,” Dave says over the car speakers. “Iris, are you still there?”

  I mash the button on my steering wheel to end the call, my gaze never leaving the phone. A few seconds later, a text lights up my screen. There was only one other person who knew this number, and he’s dead. Do you have what he took from me?

  Nausea rises in my throat. Whoever is on the other end is referring to the money. A partner?

  ME: I’m not answering any questions until you tell me who you are.

  678-555-8214: This isn’t a negotiation. I want my money.

  ME: What money?

  678-555-8214: Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him.

  I take the long way home, winding down Lenox Road in a daze, my phone on the passenger-side floor, where I flung it like a hot potato. I barely notice when the stately condos and perfectly manicured lawns give way to a seedier strip, dark-windowed lingerie shops and gentlemen’s clubs of Cheshire Bridge. I putter past in the slow lane, stuck behind slow-moving out-of-towners and Marta buses making frequent stops, fingers gripping the wheel hard enough to snap it in two.

  I’ve never been at the receiving end of a death threat before. Even though it was delivered in the most impersonal way possible, via text and from who knows how many miles away, the words still hit me like an icy fist in my gut.

  Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him.

  At a light, I lean over the middle console and check my cell. Still dark and silent, thank God. Whoever the person is on the other end of that 678, I don’t doubt for a second that their threat was serious. This person knows Will, knows about the four and a half million, and thinks I know where Will put it. People have killed for a whole lot less.

  Two questions enter my mind at once. First: How did the sender know it was me? This person must have already had my cell phone number, but how? Second: If the number wasn’t Will’s, why would he have given it to Natashya? Why list it on the receipt of something bought with stolen money?

  The car behind me beeps, and I look up to see the light has turned green. I leave my phone on the floorboard and hit the gas, falling into line behind a white SUV.

  And then another thought makes my hands wrap tighter around the wheel. Could the blocked number and the 678 number be owned by the same person?

  I roll that one around in my mind, poking and prodding for holes. The Best Buy geek said the Seattle texts, the ones that showed up as a blocked number on my phone, were sent from a messaging app and therefore couldn’t be traced. What if the 678 phone has the messaging app on it? It’s entirely possible they originated from the same cell phone.

  I take a right on North Highland and follow the two-lane road through the heart of Virginia Highlands. By now it’s close to six, and the streets and sidewalks are crammed with rush-hour and dinner traffic. I creep along, trying to convince myself the senders are the same, but I can’t. The tone of the texts was too different, the messages too contrasting.

  I swerve into a parking lot and dig my phone off the floor, pulling up the text string from the blocked number. Compared to the threat from the 678 number, these texts seem almost innocuous. Urging me to go home, to not believe what I was hearing about Will from the folks in Rainier Vista. Like whoever it was didn’t want me to find out the truth about Will.

  I think about who would want to keep me in the dark about Will’s past, who would have something to lose or gain if I found out, and the only person I can come up with is...Will. Will didn’t want me to know, enough so that he lied about his parents, his background, his ties to Rainier Vista and Seattle. Will is the most likely person to have sent those texts.

  Which is, of course, impossible. A dead man can’t send a text.

  And then Corban’s words filter through my brain, the ones Will made him swear on his mother’s grave: I promised that if anything ever happened to him, I’d look out for you. Is Corban the person behind the blocked number, an anonymous protector fulfilling his promise to a dead friend? I let the possibility sink into my brain, but something about it doesn’t feel right, something doesn’t quite pass the smell test.

  And then it hits me. Corban didn’t know about Will’s past in Seattle, either. He was just as stunned as I’d been when I found out. Either that, or the man is a world-class actor.

  Frustration burns across my chest, and I shove my car into Reverse, swinging it around and punching the gas for the road home. Do I get help? Contact the police and have them trace the 678 number? Maybe I should tell them about Nick threatening to take me down in order to get back the money. Maybe Nick is the one behind the text?

  But what if Dave is right? I could be held accountable. And they might try to take the ring. I splay my fingers on the wheel, and the diamonds flash in the sunlight coming through the front windshield. I picture myself rolling it off my finger and dropping it into an evidence bag, and a panicky feeling rises in my throat. I remember Will’s soft smile when he put it there, on the morning of the day he died, and my hand tightens into a fist.

  They’ll have to cut my finger off to get it.

  * * *

  I have an antiquated system. This is what the alarm guy—a potbellied man who tells me to call him Big Jim—says as soon as I walk through the front door. Something about my panels and motion sensors being far too basic for the newer technology, which nowadays works via GSM rather than hardwired telephone lines. He tells me all this in a rambling, roundabout way, using far too many words for the message he’s trying to convey.

  I interrupt him halfway to nowhere, softening my words with a smile. “Is there a price in there somewhere?”

  The grin Big Jim gives me in return is big and wide, revealing teeth as crooked as they are yellow. “There’s a price in there, but I was just working up to it gentle-like, so as not to scare you off.”

  “It’s like pulling off a Band-Aid. Just say it really fast and get it over with. It’s less painful that way.”

  “Six hundred bucks.” He hands me a handwritten proposal, tapping his mouth with a pen. “That’s to install all new equipment, add glass breaks to the rooms on the ground floor, replace your old panels and add another one to your bedroom wall, all of which will qualify your system for our basic package.”

  My cell phone feels hot in my pocket, the threatening words flashing across my mind. Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him.

  “How much for your mac-daddy system?�
�� I say.

  One of Big Jim’s bushy brows rises up his forehead. “You talking cameras and two-way voice intercoms and panic buttons?”

  “Is that the best you’ve got?”

  “Yes, ma’am, top-of-the-line. Also comes with a video monitoring system you can control from your phone or computer.”

  “Sold.”

  “But I haven’t told you the price.”

  “Whatever it is, I’ll pay it. And if you install everything today, it comes with the added bonus of a home-cooked meal and a hefty tip. From the smell of things, my money’s on spaghetti.” I give him a this is your lucky day smile. “Mom’s meatballs are world-class.”

  He leans back on his heels and cackles. “It’s a deal.”

  I leave him to his work and head down the hallway into the kitchen, where Mom is at the stove, stirring a pot large enough to feed the whole block. She hears me dump my bag on the counter and tosses me a smile over her shoulder.

  “Hi, sweetheart. You’re just in time. Dinner will be ready in fifteen.”

  “Perfect.” I drop a kiss on her cheek, getting a good whiff of tomatoes and garlic and spices, and my stomach growls at the same time nausea twists it in a knot. “Hope you don’t mind, but I just offered to feed the alarm guy.”

  Mom’s face brightens. There’s nothing she loves more than sharing her cooking with appreciative strangers, and everything about Big Jim says he appreciates a lot of food. She wipes her hands on her apron and moves to a cutting board on the island, setting to work on a cucumber for the salad. “Where have you been all afternoon? I thought you were just running out for an hour or so.”

  “Oh, I went to run a few quick errands, but you know how Atlanta traffic is. Rush hour starts at four o’clock some days. It took me forever to make it back.” I flip on the water and wash my hands. “What can I do to help?”

  She points the end of the knife at a bowl full of shallots. “Slice up one of those, will you?”

  Mom begins chatting about her ideas for the funeral, listing off a couple of venues she wants to check out, and relief loosens the muscles knotted across my shoulders. Either Mom didn’t notice I was being intentionally vague, or she decided not to push it. But I meant what I said to Dave. Until I know how airtight Nick’s allegations are, I’m not planning to fill my parents in on the missing four and a half million dollars. They’re already worried enough, and adding death threats and the possibility of criminal charges into the mix will send them into nuclear territory.

  But a bigger reason—and yes, after the events of these past few days, I can see how some might call it an irrational reason, as well—is that I don’t want to further tarnish their memory of Will. My parents have always loved Will, and for the exact same reasons that Dave did, because of how plainly and perfectly Will loved me. The thought of watching their expressions turn sour, of seeing judgment flash across their faces every time his name is brought up at Christmases and birthdays, makes my stomach feel heavy, like there’s a rock lodged at the very bottom.

  Dave comes through the back door with his iPad and a bottle of beer, his designer sunglasses hanging from the neck of his polo shirt. “Why’d you hang up on me?”

  The great thing about having a twin is that you’re so in sync, and they know what you’re thinking without you having to say a word. Until you’ve got a secret, that is, and then the worst thing about having a twin is that you’re so in sync.

  The problem is, I know Dave, and I know if I tell him about the death threat, he’ll glue himself to my side and never leave. As much as I love my brother, the thought of his constant hovering makes me hot and itchy, my skin stretched too tight.

  “I didn’t hang up on you,” I lie. “We must have gotten cut off or something.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Then why didn’t you call me back?”

  “Our conversation was already winding down. What else was there to say? Besides, I was on my way home. I figured we could finish up in person.” I pluck a bottle of water from the fridge and turn to face him. “Like now, for example. Let’s finish now.”

  My cell phone buzzes in my pocket, vibrating the skin of my hip and spiking both my pulse and my body temperature. I unzip my hoodie and peel it off, dropping it onto the counter next to my bag.

  He cocks his head and studies me, his gaze crawling over my face. “What is up with you? Why are you purple? What are you not telling me?”

  “Nothing, Dave. I’m not telling you nothing.”

  He throws his hands up in the air by his sides. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Exactly, and neither does this conversation.”

  Mom’s sigh is one I’ve heard a million times before. What sounds like an argument to her is just Dave’s and my normal way of communicating...except for now. Now we’re fussing because he’s trying to unpuzzle my secret, and I’m holding the missing piece in my pocket.

  “I swear, you two are worse than a couple of toddlers.” She shoves a stack of plates into Dave’s hands. “Set the table, would you?”

  He gives me an I’m watching you look, then heads toward the table.

  As soon as his back is turned, I slide the phone from my pocket.

  678-555-8214: FYI, I know how to get around an alarm system.

  UNKNOWN: Why the alarm, Iris? Did something happen?

  21

  All through dinner, the phone is like a hunk of plutonium pressed against my hip, a silent and deadly thing radiating poison in my pocket. If I had any doubts before that the numbers came from different sources, I certainly don’t now. There’s no way I know how to get around an alarm system and Did something happen? came from the same thumbs.

  Unless it’s someone trying to mess with my mind. The thought sours my stomach, churning the spaghetti and meatballs I just choked down into a nauseating mush, because it’s entirely possible. Maybe even the same person who sent the letter in my husband’s hand, which my training tells me could have only come from a sociopath.

  “Iris, sweetheart, did you hear a word we said?” Mom says from across the table.

  I freeze my fork mid-spaghetti twirl, look up from my plate to find her watching me, her brow furrowed with concern. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “We were just talking about our plans, and how James needs to head home this weekend.”

  He confirms this with an apologetic smile. “I have a full day of surgery on Monday, and I really need a day or two at home to get my bearings. I hope you understand.”

  “You don’t have to apologize for having your own life and career. Go. Of course, go. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll come back next weekend, and we’ll see where we’re at.” He says this to the table, but mostly to Dave, and that’s when it dawns on me that James is planning to return to Savannah alone. He’s leaving my brother here.

  I look around at my family, wonder what else of their conversation I missed. “What are everybody else’s plans?”

  “We’re staying,” they say, pretty much in unison.

  “Don’t you have to get back to work?” I say to my parents, then turn to Dave. “What about your career? Don’t you have showings next week?”

  “I’ll get a colleague to handle them.” He lifts a shoulder, like no biggie, but I happen to know he’s full of crap. Real estate is a tough business, and the sharks in his office are notoriously bloodthirsty, always nipping at other agents’ clients. Guilt nips at my insides.

  My gaze goes to Mom, then Dad, both of whom are conspicuously silent. I see a million things in the way they look at me—worry, determination, stubbornness. They’ve no plans to leave this weekend, either. In fact, Mom looks ready to chain herself to the chair and bolt it to the floor.

  “You guys really don’t have to stay. I’ll be fine.”

  Mom looks insulted I would even
suggest it, and she’s shaking her head before I’ve finished speaking. “Your father and I have already cleared it at work, and we want to stay. We’re happy to, and for as long as you need us.”

  A warm wave of love for my sweet mom washes up my chest. If she had her way, she’d be moving in and force-feeding me three square meals a day until I am ready to start dating again. Is it weird that I want some time alone? I’m not an introvert. I love my family, and I normally wish they lived closer. New widows usually dread this moment, when the people pack up their things and return to their own lives, leaving the widow alone with her grief. And here I am, trying to talk my family into it.

  I put down my fork and say it as gently as I know how. “I love having you here, and as much as I appreciate the four of you gathering around me this past week—and I really do—I’m not going to be around much. I’m going back to work Monday morning.”

  Mom’s brows dip under the weight of her worry. “So soon?”

  I nod. “It’s what I would tell myself to do, if I were my own patient. To get back to my normal life and routine, to carve out a new normal for myself. And honestly, I’m kind of looking forward to being around kids who are even more screwed up than I am. It might take some of the edge off.” When she doesn’t crack the slightest smile at my joke, I reach across the table and cover her hand with mine. “Mom, I know what I’m doing. I promise.”

  She darts a look at Dad, who gives her an up to you shrug. She shakes her head, her stubborn expression digging in even further. “I don’t like the idea of you being alone.”

  “I’ll meet Elizabeth for dinner or invite her over for a drink. I haven’t seen or talked to her, to any of my girlfriends, since the memorial. It’ll be good.”

  “That’s a great idea. You do whatever you need to do,” Mom says. “I’ll keep working on the funeral plans, and now that it’s warming up, your window boxes could use some refreshing...”

  I try for a compromise. “Why don’t you go home for a few days, take care of whatever you need to take care of there, then come back later in the week? We’ll have the whole weekend together.”