The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  “I have a brand-new alarm, the best on the market, according to the guy who installed it. Cameras, panic buttons, the works.”

  “Alarms won’t dissuade a determined criminal, Iris. I’ve seen it enough times to know this for a fact. You’d be safer somewhere else. A friend’s house, a hotel, or if you don’t have the cash, you’re welcome to my guest room.”

  I don’t respond, mostly because I don’t know what to say. Attorney/client. Fellow widow. Friend. There are already too many connections here, too many ways our lines can potentially be crossed. As sweet as his offer is, adding roommates into the mix feels like a bad idea all around.

  “I can see my offer is freaking you out, so you should know the room comes with its own bathroom and a lock on the door, and that I’m not only asking for you.” He lifts his shoulders in a no big deal shrug, a stark contrast to his expression. “Whoever said the worst part happens when your family and friends pack up and leave isn’t wrong. My house is too damn quiet. It’d be nice having someone around again.”

  He closes his eyes when he says it, like it’s not me he’s thinking of, but Susanna and Emma, trying to capture their fleeting images on his mind’s eye. I know his offer comes from a good place, but it also comes from a place of love and loss and longing. Already I feel like I’m intruding, and I haven’t stepped one foot through his door.

  I open my mouth to politely decline, but Evan must sense it coming, because he cuts me off. “Just think about it, okay? The room’s there anytime you want it. And if you don’t, at least promise me you’ll consider staying with a friend or family member.”

  I nod and smile my thanks, and Evan returns to his pasta.

  “So. Did you ask Zeke if he can track the origin of the spyware?”

  “No. I didn’t know that was an option.”

  “I don’t know for sure that it is, either, but if anybody can do it, he can. In the meantime—and I can’t believe I even have to say this out loud—stay away from Corban Hayes. If he texts again pretending to be Will, do not, I repeat, do not engage. If he calls or shows up at your house again, call the cops, and in the meantime, document everything. We’ll need it for the restraining order.”

  My cell phone buzzes on the table, and Dave’s face lights up the screen. “It’s my brother. Do you mind?”

  Evan waves a hand in my direction. “Go for it.”

  I pick up, sticking a finger in my other ear so I can hear over the restaurant noise. “Hey, can I call you later? I’m at dinner.”

  “Nope. No way. Do you know how many messages I’ve left you? Thirteen, that’s how many, and Mom’s called me at least twice that, looking for you. She’s completely freaked out. Where the hell have you been?”

  “Sorry, but you wouldn’t believe the last couple of days.”

  I give Dave a quick rundown of the events since I saw him last—only two days ago but enough drama to fill two months. I stick to the highlights, telling him about Tiffany, the second note, the texts claiming to be Will, Zeke tracking the phone to an address in Vinings.

  When I get to the part about Corban spotting me through the window, Dave stops me. “Holy shit, Iris. Did you call the cops?”

  “Evan and I were just getting to that part, which is why I need to go. Will you call Mom for me? Tell her I’m fine, and I’ll call her in the morning.”

  “I’ll tell her, but you know she’s going to keep calling. I suggest you do us all a favor and pick up. Oh, and while I’ve got you, did you see the email from the Seattle police?”

  “No, why? Did it say when we can expect the report?”

  “They already sent it.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “The whole thing. The fire, the evidence against Will, everything.”

  “And? What’s it say?”

  “Who the hell knows? It’s like reading something in Spanish. I only understand every fourth or fifth word. Anyway, take a look at it when you get a chance and call me back. Maybe between the two of us, we can translate all the police-speak.”

  I look across the table at Evan, dragging a hunk of bread through the sauce on his plate. “I can do better than that.”

  * * *

  Evan agrees to take a look at the police report, but only if I show it to him on the laptop screen at my house. Though neither of us actually says it out loud, we both know the reason behind the ultimatum. Evan wants to be sure there’s no one lurking in the shadows of my empty rooms, and after today’s discoveries and my sprint through Corban’s backyard, I want to let him.

  My house is a hulking black shadow against the nighttime sky, despite the lights casting a golden glow down at the street.

  “I’m not going to lie,” I say, searching through my ring for the brass house key. “I feel better with you walking me in. It never occurred to me when I left this morning that I might not be home before dark.”

  Evan shines his iPhone at my doorknob so I can see. “Yeah. It’s pretty spooky.”

  I push open the door, and the system greets me with a long, shrill beep. I hurry to the pad and punch in the code while Evan pats around for the light switch. He finds it, and the hallway floods with light.

  “Alarm’s on, which means there’s nobody here.” I gesture to one of the motion sensors, mounted high in the hallway corner. “Those things are in every room, and the guy who installed them told me they’re sensitive enough to work in the dark.”

  Evan doesn’t look convinced. He peers around the corner into the front room, then swings his head the other way. “I’m still going to do a walk-through. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Actually, thank you. I’d appreciate it.” I flip the dead bolt on the door, reset the alarm and motion for him to follow me to the kitchen, turning on more lights along the way. “Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got soda and beer and wine, and stronger if you’d like.”

  He opens the pantry door, shuts it. “I’d love a glass of wine, thanks.”

  I let him wander around my house, peeking behind doors and rattling knobs and windows while I uncork a bottle of pinot noir. I carry it, along with two glasses, over to the counter and pull up the email from the Seattle Police Department on my laptop. A few minutes later, Evan reappears, looking a great deal more relaxed.

  “All clear?”

  “All clear.” He sinks onto a bar stool, frowns at the screen. “This looks like the incident report.”

  I push a glass across the counter and lean closer so I can see around his shoulder. “Yeah, so?”

  “So really, this isn’t telling us anything new. There was a fire that killed Will’s mom and a couple of neighbor kids, and the cops found accelerant in the apartment next door, but what happened next?”

  I shrug. “What about the case officer? Will was assigned one. Dave and I thought maybe he would know more.”

  Evan scans the file. “Wyatt Laurie. Does the name ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll see if I can track him down tomorrow. Did you or your brother check court records?”

  “No.”

  “Those would paint the picture after the fire. If there were search warrants or criminal charges filed or, better yet, a case brought to court. That’s how we piece together the full story.”

  Disappointment weights my bones, making my body feel heavy. “Oh.”

  He glances over, butting my shoulder lightly with his. “Iris, this isn’t a bad thing. Police departments can be stingy and slow with their reports, but court records are public, and often they’re accessible online.” He clicks around with the mouse, and his big fingers punch at the keyboard. “Here we go, the US District Court for the Western District of Washington. What year did all this happen again?”

  “1998 or ’99.”

  “Hmm, digital records may not go back that
far, but we should be able to find at least a hit or two. Summaries, most likely, but we should be able to come up with at least the outline of a story.” He fills in an online form, hits Submit. Two seconds later, the results pop onto the screen. “Bingo. Do you have a printer?”

  * * *

  Evan and I end up on opposite ends on the couch, stacks of printouts spread out on the cushions between us. There aren’t that many. A few court records, a handful of news articles on the fire and not much else. So far they’ve told us nothing new.

  Part of the problem is that Evan was right; most of what we were able to find on the internet is incomplete, a paragraph or two summarizing what should be pages and pages of data.

  The other part, a bigger part, is that the evidence against Will was sketchy at best. The gas can, purchased in 1997, couldn’t be connected to anyone at Rainier Vista. The apartment where the fire began, adjacent to Will’s, was unlocked and untenanted, and investigators found more DNA than they could identify. And it didn’t help that the investigating officer turned out to be a cokehead who was working his way through Rainier Vista’s lineup of hookers. The case was dismissed long before the jury could come to a decision.

  I toss the sheet I’m reading onto the couch, the frustration rising swift and thick. “This feels like an exercise in futility. I mean, I began it wanting insight into Will’s past, but now... Now I’m not so sure. I mean, it’s not going to change anything that happened. I just don’t see the point.”

  Evan doesn’t look too sure. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my job, it’s to keep digging until you have the full picture. If you want to know what Will was thinking in the weeks and months and even years before the crash, you need to know the major life events that shaped him as a person.” He flaps a page in the air between us. “I’d say the fire qualifies.”

  I give him a reluctant shrug, and we go back to our reading.

  From the printouts, I learn that in addition to the old man Dave and I spoke to at Neighborhood House, the prosecutor’s star witness was a woman by the name of Cornelia Huck, a neighbor in 47c, the apartment flanking the abandoned one where the fire was started. Early on in the trial, Mrs. Huck testified she heard Will’s parents fighting the night of the fire, but that there were three voices, not two. Two adults and one teenage boy. Mrs. Huck recognized the distinction because she had a handful of kids, though she was careful to point out they were not friends with Will.

  At some time after midnight, things quieted down. An hour and a half later, the building was in flames. Mrs. Huck managed to make it out, though she lost everything, and like most of the residents, she was uninsured.

  “Do you think Mrs. Huck had an ax to grind?” I say, reaching for my wine. I say the name, and something niggles, a memory pushing at the back of my mind.

  “Most definitely. Especially since she was already a little infamous for her regular 911 calls, accusing the Griffiths of disturbing the peace. She said, and I quote, ‘she couldn’t think straight with all that hollering.’”

  “And meanwhile, where are her kids? She mentions them at the trial, but I don’t see anything in the reports from the scene of the fire.”

  “If they’re not listed as witnesses or as victims, we can assume they were nothing more than bystanders.”

  The memory slides into place now, fully formed. Will’s high-school friend, the one I never met because he was off in Costa Rica, teaching rich tourists how to surf. His name is Huck. I always assumed Huck was his first name, but now I’m not so sure. One of the neighboring kids?

  I lean my head back on the leather, close my eyes and wonder where to begin unraveling the confusion of the past two weeks. With the crash? With Rainier Vista? With the notes and texts? I think back to the morning Will left, when our marriage seemed like the simplest thing on earth. We made each other feel lighter, better, happier. If I’d known all along what I know now about him, would I still feel that way?

  I shake my head, shake off the thoughts. “So, now what?” By now it’s quarter to ten on a school night, and all I want to do is go to bed.

  “I’ll sic my assistant on this tomorrow morning, and we’ll see what else she can dig up that might be relevant.”

  “No, I meant about Corban. Should we be contacting the police?”

  “And tell them what?”

  “Uh, everything I told you tonight. The texts, the tracker, the creepy smile when I drove away.”

  “A creepy smile isn’t a crime, and neither, technically, are the texts.”

  I sit up a little straighter on the couch. “He’s pretending to be my dead husband!”

  “Maybe. Right now all we know for sure is that Zeke traced the blocked number to a house where Corban was physically present, and who’s to say Will wasn’t hiding out in the basement? We don’t know that Corban was physically holding the phone that sent the texts, or that he even actually lives there. If anything, you’re the guilty one here, for invading his privacy. I know it’s frustrating, but I’m just saying, before we go to the police, we’re going to need more information.”

  “Okay, then what about the tracker?”

  “Again, we don’t know that Corban is the one who put it there. And, unfortunately, this is one area where technology is light-years ahead of the law. Those spyware apps aren’t illegal, and unless Zeke can trace the tracker back to Corban using legal means and not his shady hacker ways, we’re going to have a tough time proving Corban is guilty of anything.”

  “Isn’t that what the police are for?”

  “The police can only take action once sufficient evidence has been obtained, and we don’t have that yet. At this point, any suspicions against Corban are just that—suspicions.”

  “What about a restraining order?”

  “We could try for a temporary protective order, but we don’t have much to go on. We’d have to show that his behavior has been harassing and intimidating, and that it’s caused you to fear for your safety. That’s going to be hard to do after you offered the guy a beer for mowing your lawn.”

  I huff a long sigh.

  “Look, I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just telling you how these things work. Our best course of action is to get a PI on the case first thing tomorrow morning and then come up with a next step based on what he finds. Does that sound like something you can live with?”

  I nod, but it’s slow and bumpy.

  “Good.” He slaps both hands to his knees and unfolds his long limbs from the couch. He smiles down at me, shoulders hunched and hands shoved into his pockets. The lawyer version of him is wiped away, and he’s back to being the sad-eyed man-boy, the one who, when I look at him too long, hurts my heart. “You sure you’re going to be okay here?”

  “Of course.” An edge of fear shades my voice, and I cover it by dragging my smile wider. From the way his mouth draws tight, I don’t think I did a good job.

  “If you don’t want to stay with me, you can always go to a hotel.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve got the mac-daddy alarm, remember?”

  “Right.”

  Evan offers me a hand and pulls me off the couch, and I walk him to the front door. As he’s reaching for the knob, he pauses, turning back with a frown. “Did you ever hear back from Zeke about the 678 number?”

  I slide my phone from my pocket, check the screen. “No. Nothing.”

  “Wonder what’s taking him so long. I’ll give him a call on the way home. If he’s made any headway, I’ll let you know. And we’ll talk tomorrow about plans to go see Tiffany.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Okay. Be smart. Keep your doors locked. Don’t open up to anyone. Trust your gut. If you have even the slightest suspicion there’s something wrong, use the panic buttons. That’s what they’re for.”

  “Evan, seriously. I’ll be fine.�
��

  He relents, yanking on the front doorknob, and a siren splits the air.

  “Oh, shit!” I lurch to the pad and punch in the code, and the deafening screech stops. I know from experience what comes next. I run into the kitchen for the phone, which is already ringing.

  “Rugby, rugby, rugby,” I say by way of greeting. “Sorry! I promise this is the last time.”

  “Glad to hear all is well, Mrs. Griffith. Have a good night.”

  I drop the phone onto the charger and make my way back into the hall, my heart settling.

  Evan is standing just where I left him, his hands shoved into his pockets, his grin big and wide. “Well, at least we know the thing works.”

  “My neighbors are going to hate me.”

  He pulls me in for a quick hug, wrapping me in his praying-mantis arms and his scent of unfamiliar shampoo and aftershave. For a fleeting second, I reconsider his offer of his guest room, and just like that, the hug turns awkward. Too tight, too close, too soon for his chin to be resting on the crown of my head, his hand warm and dry in my neck.

  I untangle myself and pull away.

  “Be safe, okay?” I nod, and he smiles. “Call you in the morning.”

  He slips out the door, then waits on the stoop while I flip the dead bolts behind him. He gestures to the alarm pad, and I roll my eyes playfully, punching in the code and giving him a thumbs-up through the glass once the system is armed. Once he’s certain I’m safe, he jogs to his car and folds himself in, and a few moments later, he’s gone.

  I flip off the porch light, then reconsider, flip it back on. If there was ever a night to sleep with all the lights on, every damn one of them, it’s tonight. I press my face into the glass panel and look out into the night, at the row of hulking Victorians across the street, their silhouettes looming in the darkness. An occasional upstairs window spills out golden light, but otherwise, all is still.

  “I thought he’d never leave,” a familiar voice says from right behind me, and my heart stops.