by Brad Parks
Matt and I exchanged a quick, meaningful glance. He hadn’t published a paper in a year and a half, nor did he have anything in the pipeline. And, yes, that was stressful. Matt felt like he had reached a go-big-or-go-home juncture in his research, where he couldn’t just pump out another article about the gradual progress he was making. Until he got a major result, no one really wanted to hear from him.
He kept saying he was close. But in some ways there was no more fraught place than finding yourself on the brink of a greatness that continued to elude you.
“No more or less so than usual,” Matt said.
“A certain amount of stress is unavoidable,” I said.
“Well, yes. But he still has to take care of himself,” Reiner said to me, then turned to Matt. “Make sure you’re eating well and getting good sleep. If you start to feel overwhelmed by something, give yourself permission to take a break and perform some self-care—go on a walk or do whatever you do that rejuvenates you.”
“Take two spoonfuls of slacking off and call me in the morning,” Matt said.
“That’s right. Just take it easy.”
Then Reiner added the words that my superstitious side wished he hadn’t:
“And hope whatever this was doesn’t come back.”
CHAPTER 5
The most painful seven days of Emmett Webster’s life—168 hours he wished he could bury somewhere near the center of the earth—were finally coming to an end.
He couldn’t believe it had only been a week. It felt like so much longer.
Wanda had died on Sunday morning. The three days that followed were a numbing blur of grief and logistics. The viewing had been Thursday evening, the memorial service Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, the love of Emmett Webster’s life had been committed to the ground forever.
Wanda Elaine Webster. Cherished wife, mother, and grandmother. Friend to all. May she rest in peace.
Emmett’s friends and colleagues in the New Hampshire State Police had come out in force for the whole thing. Cops were great when it came to funerals. There was something about the occasion—the air of crisis, the fellow officer in need, the rigid formality of the event—that appealed to a cop’s nature and training.
They were around death a lot. They knew what to do.
Maybe that explained how Emmett was able to get through that initial phase of mourning with such stoicism. He simply went into cop mode.
For the eulogy, he had told the story of their first date. They went bowling. They were so pumped just to be with each other she rolled a 167 and he rolled a 212. Neither one of them had bowled that well before—or since.
They were married six months later. Three kids followed in five years. The next quarter century went by in a cheerful churn of seasons.
She had been the feisty one, the one who wore every feeling she had directly on her face. He was the plodding, steady type, the kind of cop who solved cases with stoic persistence. Clashing styles, to be sure. But they were always better together than apart. Fact was, you needed sunshine and clouds to make a rainbow.
At the viewing, he must have had the same conversation, or slightly different variations thereof, no less than a hundred times. He’d tell the person how Wanda had recently been diagnosed with what had been called “mild” sleep apnea. They were still figuring out what to do about it—whether she needed the mask or whatnot. She had decided to sleep on the couch in the den because she worried her snoring would wake up Emmett.
That’s where he found her the next morning. In the den. Sudden cardiac death, triggered by sleep apnea.
At least she didn’t suffer, the person would reply.
Yes, it was a blessing.
But really? Seriously?
There was plenty of suffering.
His.
And she was dead, the woman who was at the geographic middle of fifty-four-year-old Emmett’s happiness for more than half his life. How was that any kind of blessing?
He spent Saturday with the kids and grandkids, who overfilled the family house in Concord. They looked at pictures. They watched videos. They told stories.
Oh, everyone had their moments—they couldn’t believe Mom was gone, they missed Grandma—but with all five grandchildren under the age of six, it was basically just chaos. No time to really think about anything. Emmett had switched from cop mode to grandpa mode, forcing cheer as he played with dolls and trucks.
Then they left. All three kids. All three spouses. All five grandkids. They had to go back to their regularly scheduled lives.
And now it was again Sunday morning—one week, exactly, since Wanda had died—and Emmett was alone.
Powerfully alone.
He wandered from room to room, still expecting to find Wanda in one of them. Everyplace he went was drenched with memories of her.
Upstairs—their bedroom, the bathroom—still smelled like her.
The kitchen? Forget it. Even in death, her vivacious presence filled the space.
In the dining room, there were three easels, each containing a poster board filled with pictures. Wanda, the most gorgeous bride ever, walking back down the aisle, newly married. Wanda with Emmett in dress uniform, on the long-ago day when he had been promoted to detective. Wanda with the kids in various stages of development, with their trophies, dance outfits, and diplomas. Wanda with grandchildren, smiling brightly.
He had to get out of there. Fast.
That’s how he found himself in the den.
Which was probably the last place he should have been.
He asked himself, not for the first time, whether it would have mattered if he’d done something different. If he had forced her to get the stupid mask. Or if he had insisted she wear those breathing strips they had gotten from the drugstore. If he had just kept her in bed with him, because her snoring wasn’t that bad. Something.
Suddenly he couldn’t handle the den anymore either. He was on his feet and moving. Down the stairs, to the basement, where Wanda almost never went.
It would be safer for him there.
He clicked on a pull-chain light. There was his workbench, built into the left side of the far wall.
And, to the right, his gun safe, where he stored his hunting rifles and service weapon, a Smith & Wesson M&P 45.
He looked at his tools for a moment, all neatly arranged. Then, in a kind of trance, he walked to the gun safe, spun the dial, and opened the door.
His hand went for the Smith & Wesson, reflexively checking the magazine.
Full. And he knew there was one in the chamber.
He slid the magazine back in, hearing it snap into place. He lifted the gun, feeling the weight of it. The grip fit his palm perfectly.
This could be so easy.
No more suffering.
And it would either be Wanda, waiting for him on the other side, or it would be nothing. Both possibilities were better than what he was feeling now.
His index finger, which had started in its automatic resting spot outside the trigger guard, had somehow worked its way inside.
One week. One miserable week. The previous Saturday night, before they went to bed, everything in their lives was settled, everything made sense. She had retired after thirty-two years in the Concord City Clerk’s Office. He was a month away from finishing thirty distinguished years of service to the New Hampshire State Police, the last eighteen of them as a detective with the Major Crime Unit.
They had bought an RV, a Leisure Travel Vans twenty-four-footer. They had been planning their retirement for years, calculating and recalculating their pensions, saving and working—overtime for him, every chance he got; an extra job for her at the outlets during the holidays—so they could go wherever they wanted, do whatever they wanted.
Visit the kids. See the country. Spend their golden years together.
Emmett and Wanda.
What a pair.
Now that the unit was broken, now that there was no together anymore, what was he still doing here? What w
as the point?
He fitted the barrel of the gun into the soft underside of his chin.
Just to see how it would feel.
And it felt, well, inevitable. The pain had been unbearable, and he didn’t see how it would do anything but get worse as the days, weeks, and months without Wanda passed.
If he didn’t do it now, he was just going to do it later. Why not get it over with? It wouldn’t hurt. At least not for very long.
Really, what was he afraid of?
He began applying gentle pressure to the trigger. Not enough to send the bullet on its way. But it was definitely heading in that direction. Just a little more squeeze and then—
His phone rang.
He pulled it out of his pocket.
Gracie. His youngest. The pregnant one.
He put the gun down so he could answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Dad, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Good. Go to your computer. I just sent you an email. I want you to pull it up right now.”
Emmett had a flip phone, as all of his children knew. If you sent Dad an email, he still had to check it on his laptop.
“I’m down in the basement. I’m not—”
“Just go to your computer.”
Emmett did as he was told, leaving the gun behind, walking into the kitchen, flipping open the lid on his laptop, clicking on Gracie’s email, which consisted only of a picture.
An ultrasound photo.
“What . . . what’s this?”
“That,” Gracie said, “is your granddaughter. Isn’t she adorable? Look at that little face. The technician was supposed to send us the picture after our last checkup, and it finally just arrived. I think it’s Mom, working her magic. She knew we need a little pick-me-up.”
Or maybe she knew they weren’t the only ones.
Emmett tilted his head, and, yes, you could see the baby’s face.
“How about that,” he said.
“And we decided on the plane ride back we’re going to name the baby Wanda. Is that okay?”
“Oh, Gracie,” Emmett said, his throat squeezing.
“Love you, Dad.”
And Emmett managed to choke out, “Love you too.”
CHAPTER 6
I felt like I was tiptoeing all through the next two weeks, just waiting for the phone call saying that Matt had lapsed into another fit.
That had become my euphemistic name for what happened to him: a fit, like the whole thing—being plunged into a catatonic state for reasons that eluded medical explanation—had been nothing more than a childish tantrum.
Without telling Matt, I packed a bag that I kept in my car, just in case. And I established with Aimee that all I had to do was text her a 911, and she’d know to come running again.
In the meantime, I lived in a kind of suspended animation. Normally, I tried to get out for a hike at least once a week—as long as the weather wasn’t too terrible. Ever since I started losing my hearing, hiking had become my preferred method of self-care. Often, the family joined me. Mount Cardigan State Forest and Gile State Forest were our go-to spots, with Mount Moosilauke thrown in if we had time to make the drive.
But there was no way I was going to risk Matt going into a seizure while we were on top of a mountain somewhere. And I didn’t want to go alone either. It felt irresponsible to wander out of cell phone range.
As it was, every time my phone rang—in the office, while I was out doing errands—my first thought was that I’d have to dash back to Dartmouth-Hitchcock for more tests, hand-wringing, and dread.
And I didn’t know which was more terrifying:
That we didn’t know what had triggered the fit.
Or that we didn’t know what made him come out of it.
If there was a next time, would it last longer than six hours? Like six months? Or six years? Or . . .
I didn’t voice any of these fears to Matt, because I knew he wouldn’t have any answers either. It became the great unspoken, looming over everything.
Without my having to nag him, Matt voluntarily dialed back his work schedule. A bit. He decided the problem was simply stress, and that natural medicine—pumping up his exercise regime—was his best option. He made more time to participate in the noontime pickup hoops game at Alumni Gym that locked Dartmouth professors, students, and administrators in mortal basketball combat. He was coming home with bruises and scratches to show for his enthusiasm.
Otherwise, the greatest risk to his health was that I might mother-hen him to death about his eating. I did my best to rid the house of corn syrup and insisted we add kale smoothies to our dinnertime regime, as if the whole problem with Matt’s diet was that it wasn’t trendy enough.
Matt actually liked them.
Morgan? Less so.
“Daddy was the one who got sick,” he moaned. “Why should I be punished?”
Otherwise, I slowly allowed myself to believe that impending doom might not be shadowing me at every turn, and we stumbled around finding our new normal.
It was early Monday evening, two weeks postfit. With Morgan at swim practice and Matt still at work, I was in the kitchen starting dinner, singing, something I only did when I was sure I was alone, when it didn’t matter if I was horribly (and unknowingly) off key.
Music had actually been what got Matt and me together. Like a lot of math types, Matt was a naturally gifted musician for whom playing piano seemed somehow intuitive. I was a singer from the cradle on, taking voice lessons as a child, doing all the musicals in high school, then becoming a member of a popular a cappella group in college.
When he was in grad school at Princeton and I was a young reference librarian in nearby West Windsor, New Jersey, he was a last-second emergency fill-in accompanist for a community choir I had joined.
I had noticed him before our holiday concert because, let me be honest, he was hot. His lifelong basketball obsession had given him a chiseled physique, plus he had these puppy dog brown eyes that I could just tell served as a window to a lovely soul.
After the show, in which I had a solo, he shyly approached me and told me I had the most gorgeous soprano voice he had ever heard. Then he said he was missing his family in North Carolina and asked, in this adorable country twang of his, if I might sing his favorite carol, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” while he accompanied me.
“What key?” I asked.
“Just pick one,” he said.
I sang; he played, transposing on the fly, perfectly and beautifully. Matt didn’t merely strike the keys; he caressed them, coaxing a sound out of the piano that made me wonder what else his hands could do.
It was probably a good thing a small crowd gathered around to listen, because otherwise I would have jumped him right there.
Romance ensued. I assumed music would continue to be a large part of our relationship, and of my life in general. Until, around the time I turned thirty, I started having trouble with harmonies. Then it was melodies. Before long, I was struggling to even match pitches. It was mortifying.
Finally, I went to an audiologist, who gave me the devastating diagnosis: bilateral otosclerosis, a progressive hardening of the stapes, the tiny bone in the middle ear that transfers sound from the eardrum to the inner ear.
What’s more, my stapes bone was pressing on the nerves of my inner ear, causing more damage. It was an extra layer of hell that made my hearing loss more severe and eliminated numerous treatment options, including surgery. And it was only going to get worse.
We had just gotten married but were still childless, so I tearfully told Matt if he wanted to leave me—because he didn’t want to raise a baby with a woman who might not be able to hear it cry, or spend his old age with a woman who might not be able to hear him at all—I completely understood.
“Brigid,” he replied gently, “how many times do I have to tell you I’m only with you for your body?”
One joke at a time, we somehow made it this far. A
nd now here I was, pounding flat some chicken breasts, climbing to a fortissimo in “Ave Maria,” when I turned and jumped about six feet.
Matt was sitting at the kitchen peninsula.
“Jesus, Matt,” I said, my hand to my thumping heart.
“Oh, please don’t stop,” he said.
I huffed at him, my way of saying I wasn’t engaging in this again, the why don’t you sing to me anymore, you sound beautiful / no I don’t argument.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, glancing toward the clock. It was quarter after five. On Mondays, Matt normally stayed at the office until it was time to pick up Morgan from swimming at six.
“I wanted to talk to you while Morgan wasn’t here.”
“Okay, hang on,” I said, putting down the mallet I had been using and washing my hands.
Then, as I dried them on a dish towel, I stood directly across from him.
“What’s up?”
“You remember that alum, Sean Plottner?”
“The rich one.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“What about him?”
“He offered me a job this morning,” Matt said.
“Really? To do what?”
“Research. And only research. No teaching. No grubbing for grants. No faculty meetings. I would work for his company, Plottner Investments, in New York.”
“New York,” I said, trying not to immediately freak out over the prospect of tearing Morgan away from the school he loved and the only home he’d ever known.
“That part might be negotiable. But I’m still not taking the job. Or at least I don’t think I am.”
“Okay,” I said, a little mystified. “Then why do you look like you’re Hamlet and it’s deep in act two?”
“Because of what the offer was.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“He started at five hundred thousand.”