The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  “I need to hear the code word, ma’am.”

  That’s right, the code word. The one Big Jim said they’d ask for each time I spoke to them on the phone, the one that lets them know everything is okay. “Rugby.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. You have a nice day.”

  I drop the phone onto a stone table and turn toward Corban with an apologetic wave. “What are you doing here?”

  Corban looks pointedly behind him, at a strip of freshly mowed grass, then back to me. “I’m mowing your lawn.”

  “I can see that, it’s just... My yard service is going to be really confused when they show up here Tuesday morning. They’re going to think I’m cheating on them.”

  Corban gives me an oh well grin. “Best to keep those guys on their toes. Men work harder if they think they’ve got competition.”

  Before I can respond, he yanks on the cord to start up the mower and gets back to work.

  While he’s finishing up, I fetch two Heinekens from the kitchen and carry them out onto the terrace, falling into one of the chairs in a patch of late-afternoon sunshine. I inhale the scent of freshly cut grass and taste the tang of beer on my tongue, watching Corban push the lawn mower back and forth across my grass as if it weighed nothing.

  He really is a fine specimen of a man. Lean and dark and slick with sweat, his muscles bulked up under his skin. Maybe that’s why Will didn’t introduce us, because he was afraid of the competition. He must have seen how girls fell all over themselves for Corban at the gym. Maybe Will was afraid I would do the same.

  I think of my husband, and my heart gives a happy flutter at the same time the hurt comes flooding back, razor-sharp and every bit just as heavy as before. The reminder sweeps heat through my veins. Will chose money over me, over us. Good. Anger is good. Because hurt will make me cry, and once I start, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop.

  Corban reaches the end of the lawn, flips a switch, and the backyard plunges into silence.

  I pick up the second bottle, wag it in the air. “A beer for your troubles.”

  “Thanks.” Corban pulls a T-shirt from his back pocket and uses it to wipe his face, walking across the newly cut grass. “There’s nothing better than a cold beer after mowing. Nothing.” He takes it from my hand with a grateful nod, taps the neck against mine. “Cheers.”

  We both take a long pull from our bottles. Corban sinks into the chair next to me.

  “So,” I say, “does mowing my lawn fall in the category of looking out for me?”

  “Yup, and while I’m here, I might as well take care of anything else you need done. A room that needs painting, maybe, or a drain that’s stopped up. I can clean gutters, too. And when’s the last time you had the oil changed in your car?”

  I feel a twinge at the memory of that rainy morning twelve days ago, when Will asked me the same thing as we spooned in bed, but I swallow everything down, along with another sip of beer. “You’re just the complete handyman package, aren’t you?”

  A self-deprecating smile slides up one side of his face. “It’s one of the few pros of growing up with ADD. You learn to do a lot of things when you can’t sit still for longer than thirty seconds. Plus, my father wasn’t around to take care of things. I was the oldest of five kids, and Mom needed all the help she could get.”

  My psychologist’s training kicks in before I can stop myself. “That’s a lot of responsibility for a kid.”

  He gives me a one-shouldered shrug. “I didn’t mind. I kind of liked bossing the other kids around. Not that my sisters ever listened. Still don’t. They’re stubborn as mules, just like our mom.” His easy smile says he loves them for it.

  “Why didn’t Will ever introduce us? I mean, he obviously talked a lot about me to you, but he kept your friendship a secret from me. Why do you think he did that?”

  If Corban is surprised at my sudden change of subject, he doesn’t show it. He leans back in his chair and blows out a long breath.

  “I’ve asked myself that question at least a million times. Will wasn’t exactly a spontaneous guy, so I’m sure he had a long list of well-thought-out reasons, but for the life of me, I can’t come up with any explanation but one. Maybe our friendship wasn’t as good as I assumed it was. I mean, I thought we were tight, but maybe I was wrong.”

  “And yet you still came all the way over here to mow the widow’s yard.”

  “It wasn’t that far. My house is barely outside the perimeter.”

  I know Corban is joking, trying to make light of whatever moral obligation brought him here from the Atlanta suburbs, but his tone carries an edge that tells me the subject is anything but jovial. He’s hurt, snubbed by the fact my husband kept their friendship from me, which in my book makes it even more admirable that he came here today.

  “Thank you, Corban. You didn’t have to do any of this, but I really appreciate you looking out for me.”

  “I’m glad to. Because, honestly, now that I know what I know...” He glances over, and something flashes across his face, something that makes him look sheepish. “I’m wondering if maybe the problem was me.”

  I settle my beer onto a stone coaster. “What do you mean?”

  “I already told you I thought Will was acting funny. I saw the signs, and I registered them, but I never reacted, not once. Not even when he made me make that promise to watch out for you. Let’s be honest. You don’t ask a friend to take care of your wife if you’re not worried something’s about to happen. But not once did I ever sit him down and say, Hey, man, what’s going on with you? Do you need a hand?” He lifts both shoulders high, then lets them drop. “Looks like I was the shitty friend in this equation, not Will.”

  I take a long draw from my bottle, but the cold liquid does nothing to budge the sudden lump in my throat. Corban may have been a shitty friend, but what does that make me? What kind of wife doesn’t notice when her husband is in so much trouble that the only way out is by faking his own death? An even shittier one. The answer makes me dizzy and unstable, like I’ve suddenly become unmoored. I plant my feet onto the cement pavers and my palms on the hard seat under me, searching for contact with the earth.

  Corban’s confession puts us on the same playing field somehow. When it comes to my husband, we’ve both been betrayed, we’ve both failed. That’s the only excuse I have for what I say next.

  “There’s some money missing from Will’s company,” I say, watching a squirrel sway in a neighbor’s branch. I can’t bear to see the surprise I imagine climbing Corban’s face, or even worse—judgment. “A lot of money, actually. Four and a half million and counting, according to his boss. No charges have been filed yet, but it’s only a matter of time. The folks at AppSec seem pretty certain it was Will.”

  There’s a long beat of silence. And then another.

  I look over, and Corban is watching me with a face so straight it’s deadpan. He holds on to it for another few seconds, and then he presses a palm to his bare stomach and busts out laughing.

  “I’m serious, Corban. This isn’t a joke.”

  He gives me a come on look. “Will Griffith drove an old jalopy with a hole in the floorboard and a seriously questionable transmission. If he came into some sudden cash, don’t you think he would have splurged on a better ride? Or, hell, I don’t know, bought himself a wallet that wasn’t held together with duct tape?”

  “He splurged on jewelry.”

  “Please. The only jewelry he ever wore was the wedding ring you bought him. And before you say anything, his watch doesn’t count. I’m pretty sure that thing was made of plastic.”

  “For me.” I twist my hand around, and the Cartier winks in the sunshine. “He splurged on jewelry for me.”

  Corban’s smile drops like a guillotine. “That ring doesn’t prove a thing. Will didn’t like to spend money on himself, but he would
gladly spend it on you. He probably saved up for months, or maybe he financed it. Doesn’t matter. The point is, he had a good job. He did well enough for an occasional splurge.”

  “He paid cash.”

  “Okay, I’ll admit, it doesn’t look good, but I don’t know...” Corban swallows, and doubt pushes across his face like a shadow. “Do you think he took it?”

  I lift both shoulders to my ears. “If he did, it’s not in our bank account. Not in the house, either.”

  “Where else could it be?”

  I don’t answer because, suddenly, the missing-Will part steamrolls me. I may live to be eighty, to pay off this house Will and I bought together, but I’ll be doing it alone. His legs won’t warm my cold feet, his smiles won’t piece together my broken heart. As furious as I am at him for choosing money over me, I’m also flattened and lost without my husband.

  “I know,” Corban says softly. “I miss him, too.”

  I nod, trying to drum up some of my earlier anger, but it seems to have abandoned me. The only thing I can manage to muster up is more sorrow. For Will, for me, for Corban grieving a lost friend.

  “I owe you an apology, you know.”

  Corban’s head swings my way, his forehead creasing. “What for?”

  “I found a note. Two, actually. Both in Will’s handwriting, both showed up after the crash.”

  I’ve stunned him silent. It takes him a second or two to get his bearings. “What...what did they say?”

  “The first one said I’m so sorry. The second told me I was in danger, and to stop snooping into Will’s past. I went to Seattle after the crash. I talked to people who remembered him.” I shake my head. “There was lots of drama, none of it good.”

  “What drama? What happened?”

  “Drugs. Arson. Depending on who and what you believe, maybe murder. I met the father I thought died ages ago, not that he was in a state to tell me anything. He has Alzheimer’s, and it’s pretty advanced. But none of that is my point. My point is, when I met you the other morning for coffee, I suspected you. I thought you sent the notes to...I don’t know, to trick or torture me or something.”

  Indignation straightens Corban’s spine. “I would never—”

  “I know.” I pause to give him a smile. “That’s why I’m apologizing.”

  He smiles back. “Forgiven.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  We sit for a bit, each of us lost in our thoughts. I lean back in the chair, and Corban does the same, stretching his long legs out before him, closing his eyes to the sun. A shrieking comes from a few houses down—children playing in a yard somewhere—and beyond that, the faint and familiar rumble of traffic.

  “So, wait,” Corban says, his eyes snapping open with sudden realization, “since I didn’t send the notes, who did?”

  I don’t answer, or maybe I do. Corban studies me with an intense gaze, and from the way his mouth is drawn tight, I can tell he reads my message in the silence.

  His eyes go big and round. “No.”

  I hesitate only a second. I’ve already started down this path, and after the way he’s responded today, my instinct says he can be trusted. “There have also been some texts.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Lots of things. But in the last ones, he admitted it was him.”

  “No. No. That’s...” He passes a hand over his mouth and shakes his head, a hard back and forth like a dog trying to choke up a bone. “That’s not possible. That’s insane!”

  “Of course it’s insane, but so is stealing four and a half million dollars from your employer. You said it yourself, Will was acting funny. What if he was faced with a choice, go to jail or disappear? What if he didn’t love me enough to do the right thing?”

  As I say the words, my voice breaks and my eyes fill with tears, and I was right before, when I thought that once I started crying I wouldn’t be able to stop, because that’s exactly what happens. The wound feels ripped open all over again, fresh and jagged, and I wrap both arms around my waist, fold myself double and sob. And it’s not the pretty kind of cry, either. It’s the kind that sucks the breath from my lungs and screws up my face and turns it all red and snotty. Because this is what it’s all about, isn’t it? In the end, Will didn’t love me enough.

  Poor Corban, he looks like he’s at a loss. He’s a man without a clue what to do with a sobbing pseudo widow, so he just sits there, stiff and uncomfortable, his gaze scanning my face like he’s searching for something. Any indication for how to make me stop crying, most likely.

  It takes me forever to wind down, for my sinuses to stop streaming and the wails to taper into whimpers. When finally I’m able to suck a long, shaky breath, he passes me his shirt to mop up my face. The cloth smells like grass and cologne and man, and it makes me miss my husband even more.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t understand.”

  I bark a wet laugh at the irony. “Just one? Because there are a million things I don’t understand.”

  He takes a long last slug of beer, draining his bottle. “If Will’s not dead, then where is he? Where’d he go?”

  I hike my shoulders to my ears again. “Wherever the money is, of course.”

  25

  That night I don’t sleep. Fury pumps like a cactus through my veins, poking me with pointy fingers. Every time I threaten to drift off, it reminds me of my phone downstairs, tangled among the forks and knives, beeping and buzzing with Will’s incoming texts.

  How many has he sent by now? Ten? Twenty? Forty? I glare at the ceiling, clench my teeth until my jaw aches and tell myself I don’t care.

  If Dave were still here, I’d pad into his room and bum another one of his magic blue pills. After yesterday—no, after the past two weeks—I could use a night of deep and dreamless sleep, if for nothing else than to keep me away from my phone.

  By morning, my brain, soaked with adrenaline and fury, feels numb, and I throw back my covers with relief. I shower and brush my teeth like any normal Monday morning. I dry my hair and put on my makeup. I shove my limbs into a skirt and blouse and my feet into my favorite pair of high heels and teeter downstairs to scrounge up coffee. Normalcy is what I need.

  A normal widow would call in sick today. She’d spend the day in bed, wrapped in her dead husband’s bathrobe and bingeing on Oreos dipped in peanut butter and hiding from the world. And a normal boss would understand. Ted would reply with a whole slew of platitudes he’d actually mean, telling me to take my time, to not rush things, that my office will be waiting for me whenever I’m ready.

  Only, I’m not a normal widow, am I? My husband—the same husband who thirteen days ago dived to his death in a westward-bound 737—is not really dead, which means I’m also not really a widow.

  As the coffee is brewing, I sneak a peek into the cutlery drawer. The phone screen is black. I tap the button with a finger and nothing happens. The battery is dead.

  “Ha!” I bark into my empty kitchen, slamming the drawer shut. It feels like a small kind of victory.

  What could Will possibly say to make this better? What excuse could he possibly have? And if he went to all this trouble to fake his death, why bother texting me at all? How does he know I won’t march into the police station with my phone, fork it over for their detectives to use as Exhibit A?

  That last one stops me on the kitchen tiles. Could I really turn in my own husband? Should I? I’ve always believed that stealing is a crime worthy of punishment, but the thought of my husband, my Will, wasting away behind bars somewhere, squeezes a spiky ball of nausea in my stomach.

  And then I think of his mother and those two poor children sleeping in their beds when a fire tore through their building. What if Will was the one who set it? What if he’d gone to prison and we’d never met? H
ow different my life would have been. How empty.

  I have so many questions. Maybe I should give him a listen, see what he has to say before making any decisions.

  The coffee sputters to a stop, and I pour it into a big gulp-sized travel mug. I grab a granola bar from the pantry, my keys and bag from the counter, and my dead phone from the drawer.

  Later. I’ll give him a listen later.

  * * *

  High-schoolers swarm the parking lot when I swing into Lake Forrest at fifteen minutes before first bell. They watch me pass from behind designer sunglasses, not even trying to hide their stares and double takes. I’m like a subject for one of their psych experiments, an alien who’s just arrived from Planet Widow. They’re studying me for signs the aliens have sucked out my brain and replaced it with one of theirs.

  Josh Woodruff, a senior, climbs out of the car next to mine, squinting at me over the roof of his hardtop convertible. “Hey, Mrs. Griffith. Are you okay?”

  I wince and punch the lock button on my key fob, pulling up my sunniest smile. “Good morning, Josh. Any news?”

  His frown clears to a mask of mock modesty, and he begins listing off the college letters he’s received—all acceptances and all top-tier schools, but not the one his parents are pushing for. “Still nothing from Harvard, though.”

  “No matter what they come back with, you should be proud. You’ve already got an impressive list of schools who want you to wear their jerseys.”

  He gives me an I guess shrug. “Dad’s still working his contacts, so hopefully I’ll hear back soon.”

  “Fingers crossed!” I push all sorts of brightness into my answer, though for these kids, luck has nothing to do with it. For them, success is built on two things and two things only—hard work and network. Money is a given, and failure is not an option.

  Josh smiles at me in an absentminded sort of way, then stands there until I turn away, toward the high-school building.