The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  “I have a better idea,” Dave says, as usual wading in to save me. “Why don’t we all meet at Mom and Dad’s next weekend instead? It’s closer for us, and Mom and Dad won’t have to make the drive again.”

  I give an enthusiastic nod. “Honestly, I wouldn’t mind getting out of town for a bit.”

  “I don’t know...” she hedges.

  “Jules, she’ll be fine,” Dad says, tossing me a wink. “Won’t you, punkin’?”

  “Absolutely. And I’ll leave straight from school on Friday to put me there by dinnertime.”

  Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, Mom reluctantly agrees, and Dad steers the conversation to weekend plans. There’s a new barbecue restaurant in town he’s been dying to try, and maybe we could all go see a movie at the new Cineplex, one where they serve wine and have big chairs that recline like La-Z-Boys. I smile and hum like I love the idea, but meanwhile I’m counting the moments until I’m alone.

  There’s something I need to do, and I can’t do it with any of them here.

  * * *

  After dinner, I dig a blank check and a hundred-dollar tip for Big Jim from my bag, hand both to Dad and head upstairs. The adrenaline that’s carried me all day is long depleted, and exhaustion pushes down on me like a lead blanket.

  Big Jim is hunched on the floor just inside my bedroom door, packing up his toolbox. I trip over his industrial boot.

  “Whoa there,” he says, steadying me with a palm around my wrist. “Won’t do anybody any good with broken bones.”

  I don’t tell him there’s nobody but me now, or that a broken bone hurts a hell of a lot less than a broken heart. I brush myself off and tell him I’m fine.

  A brand-new alarm panel hangs on the wall above his head.

  “I was just about to call you up here.” He pushes to a stand and dusts his hands on the seat of his pants. “You got a minute or two for me to give you the highlights?”

  My eyes are burning, my brain is blurry, and my body aches to climb under my covers, but I nod anyway. “Explain away.”

  “Okay. For now I’ve set your system to a default code, but as soon as I’m done here, you should change it to one of your own. You’ll use the code to turn the system on and off, as well as make any changes to the panel settings, so make sure it’s a combination you know by heart. And see these three buttons here?” He points to a vertical row of squares—universal symbols for police, fire and ambulance. “These here are your panic buttons. There’s another two by your bed, tucked behind each of your nightstands. You gotta hold ’em in for a minimum of three seconds, and make sure you mean it because we show up with guns blazing, no questions asked. If it turns out to be a false alarm, you’ll be getting a big old bill.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. Now, your duress code is set to straight down the middle of the keypad—2580. That’s another one you’ll want to change to your own as soon as I’m done.”

  “Why would I use a duress code instead of a panic button?”

  “In case somebody’s holding a gun to your head and watching over your shoulder while you disarm the system.”

  My eyes blow wide. “That actually happens?”

  Big Jim nods, his fleshy jowls bobbing. “Just happened to a young couple in Buckhead. Two armed men surprised the husband as he was coming in from the garage, pistol-whipped ’em both until they forked over all their cash and valuables. Husband used the duress code, otherwise they’d probably both be dead.”

  “Jesus.” I haul a calming breath, but it doesn’t work. The idea of someone chasing me into my own home, pistol-whipping me until I fork over four and a half million dollars I don’t have, sends an army of ants crawling under my skin.

  He points to an 800 number on the inside cover of the keypad. “Call this number first thing after I’m gone and set up your code word. It’s an added security measure, and our operators’ll ask for it every time they call. If the bad guy is standing next to you, give ’em the wrong word, and that’s their signal to send in the cavalry. Don’t worry if you forget any of this. It’s all explained in detail in the owner’s manual, which I’ll get you before I leave.”

  “Give it to my father, will you? He’s got your payment, and Mom’s holding dinner for you downstairs whenever you’re ready.”

  Big Jim pats his gut and grins. “I’m pretty much always ready.”

  After he’s gone, I toe out of my sneakers, dig my cell phone out of my pocket and collapse onto my bed. There are no new texts, nothing from either number, and I don’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. Both, maybe. Relief for the one, disappointment for the other.

  I pull up the string with the 678 number, the one ending in two threats. Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him. FYI, I know how to get around an alarm system. No way I’m touching either one of those.

  I back up, click on the conversation with the blocked number. Why the alarm, Iris? Did something happen?

  I think about who would be worried about me besides the people cleaning my kitchen downstairs—my colleagues, my girlfriends, the friendly neighbors to our left and across the street. None of them would text me from a blocked number. I press my fingers to my eyes and rub. Maybe I’m too tired. Stressed. Wrecked and confused from lying in the bed I once shared with Will. None of this makes any sense.

  Before I can think through the pros and cons of engaging whoever is on the other end of the blocked number, my thumbs start typing. Why do you care? Who are you?

  The reply pings my screen two seconds later, as if whoever is on the other end has been waiting for me all this time, thumbs pressed to the screen. I’m a friend, and I want you to be safe. Tell me who’s after you and why. I want to help.

  ME: Don’t play games with me. If you knew that I was in Seattle and got an alarm, you know about the stolen money, too.

  UNKNOWN: I know about the money. I just wasn’t sure that you did.

  My heart rides into my throat as I type the next words.

  ME: Are you the one who stole it?

  UNKNOWN: That depends on who you believe.

  The last text comes with a whiplike lash. So far, the only theory I’ve heard for who took the money is Will, which means...

  Not possible. A dead man can’t send texts.

  I’m considering my next move when another text lights up my screen.

  UNKNOWN: Please tell me what I can do to help you.

  ME: I don’t think so. Not until you tell me who you are.

  UNKNOWN: I want nothing more, believe me. But it’s better for both of us if I remain anonymous.

  ME: Then what’s the point? Why bother texting me at all?

  UNKNOWN: Because it’s the next best thing to actually being there.

  22

  The law offices of Rogers, Sheffield and Shea are located in the heart of Midtown, high in the clouds looming over Peachtree Street. Their lobby is everything you’d expect from Atlanta’s most prestigious attorney firm. Modern furnishings, seamless glass walls providing sweeping views of downtown and a twenty-foot trek to a dark-haired receptionist who could moonlight as a model.

  “Iris Griffith here to see Evan Sheffield.”

  She gestures to a row of leather chairs by the window. “His assistant will be right out. In the meantime, may I get you something to drink?”

  “I’d love a water, thanks.”

  What I’d really love is to get the hell out of here. To take the elevator back down to the parking deck, make a dash for my car and gun the gas for home. It’s not so much that I’m dreading what I’m here to tell him, though admitting my husband is a liar and a thief is certainly bad enough. No, my urge to beat a retreat is more fueled by fear. The last time I saw Evan, his eyes were haunted, and they’ve haunted me ever since.

  His as
sistant leads me into his corner office, where Evan is seated at a round table by the far wall. He’s grown a beard since I’ve seen him last, a scruffy patch of dirty-blond fur that sprouts from the lower half of his face, either a bold middle finger to the corporate world or a testament that the weight of his grief is too heavy a load to bear.

  I lift a hand. “Hi, Evan.”

  His suit jacket is folded over the chair beside him, his sleeves rolled up to just under his elbows. It’s an attempt at looking relaxed, but it doesn’t work. His back is slumped, his shoulders hunched, and his face, when it spreads into a sorry excuse for a smile, looks bruised and battered. He unfolds his massive body from his chair and reaches a long arm across the table, shaking mine above a bucket of ice and a tray of every brand of bottled water imaginable.

  “Good to see you again, Iris. I’d ask how you’re holding up, but I hate that question, and besides, I’m pretty sure I already know.”

  Of course he knows. He knows that the hole Liberty Air blew into his life is permanent, as is that hollow place inside him. He knows how you can lose hours at a time staring into space and torturing yourself with an endless parade of what-if scenarios. What if she’d gotten stuck in traffic? What if she’d given up her seat for that five-hundred-dollar coupon airlines are always using as enticement for overbooked flights? What if what if what if? He knows these things, so no need to say them out loud.

  “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” I say instead. “I know you had to shuffle some things around.”

  He waves off my thanks. “You’re the psychologist. Is it weird that I wanted to see you?”

  I sink into a chair diagonal from him, his blunt honesty loosening some of the knots across my shoulders. “Funny, I was just wondering how weird it would be if I hightailed it for the car.”

  “Is it my quick wit and sparkling personality?” He pushes up a self-deprecating smile, gestures to his massive frame. “My Herman Munster build and he-man charm?”

  “It’s your eyes, actually.” I brace and look at them full on, and they’re just as awful as I remembered. A beautiful mossy green, but they’re red around the rims, and the surrounding skin is puffy and crisscrossed with lines I happen to know are from despair. “Looking at them hurts my heart.”

  He winces, but he doesn’t let go of my gaze. “No more than looking into yours hurts mine.”

  “You must be a sucker for punishment, then.”

  He puffs a laugh devoid of humor. “It’s all relative these days, isn’t it?”

  There’s really nothing to say to that, so I don’t say anything at all. I stare out the window instead, watching a pair of hawks swoop and dive against fluffy white clouds. While Dave and I were chasing Will’s past around Seattle, a group of thirty or so people boarded a private Liberty Airlines jet and traveled to the crash site. I saw the images on Huffington Post, Evan’s profile standing taller than the blackened stalks, solemn figures holding hands and hugging in a charred field soaked with the essence of those they lost. I saw them and I thought, I can’t. What does it say about me—a psychologist, for crap’s sake—that they could and I can’t?

  “One of the lessons I’ve learned this past week,” Evan says, his voice bringing me back, “is that nobody understands what you and I are going through. People think that they do, and a lot of them want to understand, but they don’t. Not really. Unless they’ve lost someone like you and I have, they can’t.”

  Grief wells up like a sudden tide, intense and overwhelming. Evan has just hit on a big part of why grief groups are so popular. We’re strangers on the same boat, both trapped in a sinkhole of sorrow. At the very least, it helps to know you’re not going under alone.

  “It’s not just losing Will, it’s...” I pause, searching for the right word.

  But either Evan’s already thought this through, or his brain is much quicker than mine. “It’s the horror of how.”

  My nod is immediate. “Exactly. It’s the horror of how. It’s where I go whenever I close my eyes. I see his tears. I hear his screams. His terror beats in my chest. It’s like I can’t stop replaying those awful last minutes, putting myself in his shoes while the plane flipped and swerved and fell from the sky.”

  I say the words and boom—I’m crying. This is why I didn’t want to come, why no force on the planet could have made me step onto that cornfield. Whoever said God doesn’t give you more than you can handle was full of shit, because this—this grief that slams me over and over like a Mack truck, this weight of missing Will that presses down on all sides until I can’t breathe—is going to kill me.

  Evan pushes a box of Kleenex across the table. “I keep forgetting this is my new life. I’ll be halfway through leaving a message on Susanna’s voice mail, or standing in my boxers in my daughter’s room in the middle of the night, her warm bottle in my hand, before I remember. The crib is empty. My wife and baby daughter are dead.”

  “Jesus, Evan,” I say, my voice cracking. I pluck a tissue from the box and swipe it across my cheeks. “A couple days ago, I got a call from some journalist claiming the pilot was sleep-deprived and possibly hungover. Something about a—”

  “Bachelor party, I know. I’ve got somebody in Miami right now, asking around. So far, though, nothing.”

  “Has he talked to Tiffany Rivero?”

  “Who?”

  I give Evan a quick rundown of my conversations with Leslie Thomas, and he goes completely still. His expression doesn’t change. If it weren’t for the purple flush pushing up from under his shirt collar, I’d think he hadn’t heard me.

  “The story hasn’t broken yet, so she might be—”

  He pounds a fist on the table, rattling the ice in the bucket. “I knew it. I knew these fuckers were hiding something. A plane doesn’t just fall from the sky unless...” He pauses to pant, three quick breaths that flutter the papers on the table. “If this is true, if there was even a whiff of misconduct by anyone inside that cockpit, I will make it my personal mission to take down that airline and everybody in it. I guarantee you that much.”

  “The psychologist in me says revenge won’t change anything. Your wife and baby girl, my Will...they’ll all still be dead.”

  “What does the widow say?”

  I don’t have to think about my answer, not even for a second. “The widow in me says obliterate the bastards.”

  “Done. I’ll talk to Tiffany personally, fly there myself if I have to.” He scrubs a hand down his face, and his fury dissipates as quickly as it came, morphing into sorrow. “God help me, if my girls died because some asshole was too cocky to call in sick...”

  At the mention of his family, he looks on the verge of tears again, and I know how he feels, like his emotions have multiple personality disorder. Why do they call it grief, when really it’s a whole gamut of awful emotions, confusion and regret and anger and guilt and loneliness, wrapped up into one little word?

  “I can’t keep food down,” I hear myself say. Evan’s honesty has loosened something up in me, and the words come out on their own accord. “Everything tastes like cardboard, even when I’m starving. I’ll eat it, then throw it right back up. And every time I’m hanging over the toilet, puking up my guts, I get this secret little thrill because I think maybe I’m pregnant.”

  “I take it you and Will were trying?”

  I nod. “But not for very long, so the odds aren’t exactly in my favor. The nausea is probably psychosomatic or wishful thinking or just plain old heartbreak, I don’t know. But I can’t help from thinking that if I had a baby, if I had this little nugget of my husband growing inside me, it would make things a little easier.”

  “I think it would make things a lot easier. Then you’d feel like you had something to live for.”

  His words trigger a warning in my psychologist’s brain. “Are you saying you don’t?”
>
  “I’m saying it’s awfully hard to remember that I do sometimes. Especially at 4:00 a.m., when I’m standing in my daughter’s dark, empty room, staring into her empty crib while her cries echo in my head.”

  A surge of sadness for this man jabs me in the center of the chest, telling me that even though my own heart may be broken to bits, things could be worse. I reach across the table, give his big hand a squeeze. The gesture is empathy, sympathy and solidarity, all at the same time.

  He pulls his hand out of mine and drops his head into both of his, blowing a long breath out through his fingers. “I’m sorry. You didn’t come all the way here to have me cry on your shoulder.” He looks up, his mask molded into something semiprofessional. “You said something about needing some legal advice. Does it have anything to do with the crash?”

  “No. Yes. Well, sort of, but in a Twilight Zone sort of way.” I force a laugh, but it comes out loud and abrupt like a sneeze. I follow Evan’s lead and become serious. “I need to know if I can be held accountable for my husband’s alleged crimes.”

  His face remains carefully blank. “What kind of crimes are we talking about here?”

  “Embezzlement, mostly.”

  “Mostly, huh?” He fills two glasses with ice and pushes one my way, offering me one of the dozen bottles of water. I select a can of Perrier, and he pops it open with a hiss. “This sounds like the part where I should warn you our attorney-client confidentiality doesn’t kick in until you pay me a retainer.” I’m about to ask him if he’s serious—I always assumed that was a Hollywood plot device—when he adds, “If we were in a bar, I’d say buy me a beer, but since we’re not, a couple of bucks’ll do.”

  I dig five singles from my wallet and slide them across the table.

  “Start at the beginning,” Evan says, pocketing the cash.

  So I do. I tell Evan everything, beginning with the morning of the crash. I tell him about the Orlando conference and the job that wasn’t in Seattle. I tell him about how a condolence card led me to Coach Miller and Rainier Vista and the fire. I tell him about the I’m so sorry letter and my coffee with Corban and the fact Will asked him to look after me. I tell him about my BeltLine stroll with Nick and how a forensic accountant is ferreting through AppSec’s books as we speak, in search of the missing four and a half million. I tell him about the Cartier ring and the texts from both the blocked and the 678 number, and how the threats prompted me to install a brand-new, mac-daddy alarm system. It’s a tremendous relief to finally tell somebody, and the words flow without effort, without hesitation. Evan takes them all in with a serious but stony expression, and without scribbling a single word onto his yellow legal pad.