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Everything you’ve ever heard about twins is true; Dave and I are living proof. We look alike, we act alike, we share the same habits and gestures. We both have fat lips and bony knuckles, we’ll watch any sport but can’t stand playing them, and we refuse to eat anything that has the slightest dash of vinegar in it. We even have twin telepathy, this inexplicable connection that lets us know what the other is thinking without either of us saying a word. Case in point? I knew he was gay before he had figured it out for himself.
He stubs the joint out on a teacup saucer already littered with ashes and sets it on the side table. “Just so you know, Ma is a wreck. She’s already brought home one of everything from Kroger, and she’s got a list a half mile long of all the things she’s going to fill your freezer with. If you don’t let her coddle you soon, you’re going to have enough food here to open a soup kitchen.”
“Coddling would make it real.” I sigh and press into him, leaning my head on his shoulder. “I keep telling myself it’s not. That Will is going to walk through that door on Friday evening, hot and rumpled and grumpy, and I’ll get to scream I told you so. I told you Will wasn’t on that plane. I keep waiting for someone to pinch me, to take me by both shoulders and shake me so I’ll wake up, but so far, nothing. I’m stuck in a fucking nightmare.”
“Sure as hell feels like it.” He picks up my hand, twines his fingers through mine, rolling the ring around with a thumb. “Nice Cartier.”
I blink back new tears. “Will and I are trying to get pregnant. You might be an uncle already.”
Dave looks at me for a good thirty long and silent seconds. He doesn’t say a word, but then again, he doesn’t have to. How long are we going to keep this up? his eyes say. This talking about Will like he’s still here?
As long as humanly possible, my answer.
But when it comes to the pregnancy, he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised. “What took y’all so long? James and I figured you’d have an entire brood by now.”
“Will wanted to wait. He said he wanted me all to himself for a while.”
“What changed his mind?”
I have to think about that one for a moment. “I don’t know, and honestly, I never thought to ask. I was just so excited he finally came around. He says he wants a little girl who looks like me, but if this is all true, if I really am stuck in this nightmare, I hope it’s a little boy who’s just like him.”
“Even after the conference that wasn’t?”
Of course Dave knows about Will’s invented conference. I’m sure my mother dragged it out of Claire, then dissected his lie for hours with anybody who would listen. I’m sure she’s come up with a long list of theories as to why Will would do such a thing, why he would go to the trouble of creating a conference flyer, why he would book two flights to opposite ends of the country.
But of course I already know the answer. So I wouldn’t know where he was going, what he was going to do there, who he was going to see. Any or all of the above.
The helpless fury that had me shaking under my comforter earlier threatens to bubble to the surface, and I swallow it back down. I love my husband. I miss him and want him back. The emotions are so big and wide, they leave no room for anger. I barter with a God I’m not entirely sure I believe in: Bring Will back, and I won’t even ask where he’s been. I promise I won’t even care.
“One lie doesn’t negate seven years of marriage, Dave. Does it piss me off? Maybe. But it can’t erase the love I feel for my husband.”
He concedes the point with a one-shouldered shrug. “Of course not. But can I ask you something else without you biting my head off?” He pauses, and I give him a reluctant nod. “What’s in Seattle? Besides rain and Starbucks and too much plaid, I mean.”
I lift both hands. “Beats the hell out of me. Will grew up in Memphis, and he moved to Atlanta straight out of grad school at University of Tennessee. His entire life is here on the East Coast. I’ve never even heard him talk of Seattle. As far as I know, he’s never been there.” I twist on the couch, stare into cat eyes the same dark olive shade as mine. “But what you’re really asking is, do I think Will is having an affair.”
Dave gives me a slow nod. “Do you?”
My stomach twists—not because I think my husband was cheating on me, but because everybody else surely will. “No. But I don’t think he was on that plane, either, so clearly I’ve not got the tightest grip on reality. What do you think?”
Dave falls silent for a long moment, contemplating his answer. “I have a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to my brother-in-law. Don’t get me wrong, I adore the guy, mostly because of how fiercely he loves you. You can’t fake that kind of love, the kind that, every time you walk into the room, fills his face with so much happiness that I have to turn away—and I’m a gay man. I eat that shit up. So to answer your question, no. I don’t think your husband was having an affair.”
My heart, which was already hanging by a thread, cracks in two. Not just at Dave’s belief in my husband or his talking about him like he’s still here, but more so that my brother’s love for me is so intense, it extends by default to another person. I curl my palm around his biceps and lay my head on his shoulder, thinking I’ve never loved Dave more.
“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, Will came into your life solo. His parents are dead, he has no siblings, he never talks about any other family or friends. Everybody has a past, but it’s like his life began when he met you.”
Dave is only partly right. Will has a lot of colleagues and acquaintances, but not a lot of friends. But that’s because, for techies like Will, it takes a lot for him to open up.
I sit up, twist on the couch to face my brother. “Because he lost track of all his high-school friends except for one, and he’s moved off to Costa Rica. He runs a surfing school there or something. I know they still exchange regular emails.”
“What about all the others? Friends, old neighbors, workout partners and drinking buddies.”
“Men don’t collect friends like women do.” Dave gives me a look, and I amend. “Heterosexual men don’t collect them. They don’t feel the need to run with a huge pack of people, and besides, you know Will. He’d rather be at home on his laptop than in a loud, crowded bar any day.” It’s part of the reason we eloped to the mountains of North Carolina seven years ago, with only my parents and Dave and James as witnesses. Will doesn’t like crowds, and he hates people fussing over him.
“Even introverts have a best friend,” Dave says. “Who’s Will’s?”
That’s an easy one. I open my mouth to answer, but Dave beats me to the punch. “Besides you, I mean.”
I press down on my lips. Now that my name is off the table, Dave’s question has me perplexed. Will talks about a lot of people he knows, but he never really defines them as friends.
Dave yawns and slumps deeper into the couch, and it’s not long before he forgets his question and nods off. I sit there next to my snoring brother, watching the horrific images flash by on the television screen but not really seeing them.
I’m thinking about our first anniversary, when I surprised Will with a road trip to Memphis. I’d spent weeks planning it, my version of a this is your life tour along all his old haunts, puzzling the stops together from the few stories he’d told me of growing up there. His high-school alma mater, the street where he’d lived until his mother died, the Pizza Hut where he’d worked evening and weekend shifts.
But the closer we got to the city, the more he fidgeted, and the quieter he became. Finally, on a barren stretch of I-40, he admitted the truth. Will’s childhood wasn’t pleasant, and his memories of Memphis weren’t exactly something he wanted to revisit. Once was hard enough. We hung a U-turn and spent the weekend exploring Nashville’s honky-tonks instead.
So, no, Will didn’t like to talk about his past.
But Seattle? What’s there? Who’s there?
I look over at my sleeping brother, at his chest rising and falling in the darkness. As much as I want to keep Dave’s suspicions at bay, to barricade his doubts about Will from my brain, the questions sneak back in like smoke, silent and choking.
How well do I know my husband?
7 (#u65b1e9f1-681e-5bc9-a4e7-ee4781eff6ae)
When I come downstairs next, it’s close to ten in the morning. My family is scattered around the kitchen, drinking coffee and listening to James read news of the crash aloud from a website on his iPad. From where he’s seated at the table, Dad coughs into a fist. James stops mid-sentence, and they look at me with a combination of guilt and concern, like four kids I caught stealing from my cookie jar.
“They found the black box?” I say without preamble.
Mom drops the spatula into a skillet of half-cooked eggs and whirls around, looking like she didn’t fare much better than I did in the sleeping department. Dark circles spread under her eyes like bruises, and her hair, normally an inspired work of hot-roller wizardry, hangs listless around her puffy face. “Oh, sweetheart.” She rushes across the kitchen tile, snatching me into a ferocious hug. “My heart is just breaking for you. Is there anything I can do? Anything you need?”
There are a million things I need. I need to know what made Will board that plane. I need to know what happened to make it fall from the sky. I need to know what his last moments were like, if he went down screaming or without warning, if one moment he was debating peanuts versus pretzels and the next he was dust. I need to know where he is—literally and exactly. Will there be a body to bury?
But most of all, I need Will to be where he said he was going to be. In Orlando.
I untangle myself from Mom’s arms. I look to James, since he was the one reading the news. “Do they know why it crashed?”
“It’ll be months before they say for sure,” James says, his voice careful. He takes me in with his blue-eyed doctor’s gaze, methodical and thorough, like he’s trying to take my pulse from the other side of the kitchen counter. “How did you sleep?”
I shake my head. I didn’t miss the way everyone exchanged looks at my question about the crash, and I sure as hell don’t want to talk about my lack of sleep. “Just tell me, James.”
He hauls a breath, his gaze sliding over my right shoulder to Dave, as if asking for permission. Dave must have nodded, because James’s gaze returns to mine. “Keep in mind this is just a theory at this point, but the media is speculating a mechanical problem followed by pilot error.”
“Pilot error.” The words come out sluggish, like my tongue is coated in molasses.
James nods.
“Pilot error. As in, somebody fucked up, and now my husband is dead.”
James grimaces. “I’m sorry, Iris, but it sure sounds that way.”
Bile rises in my throat, and the room sways—or maybe it’s just me.
James hops off his stool and rushes around the counter, steadying me with a palm around my elbow. “Would you like me to give you something? I can’t medicate your grief away, but a pill can help take the edge off, at least for the next few days.”
I shake my head. My grief, as spiky as it is, feels like the only thing binding me to Will. The thought of losing that connection, even the rawest, sharpest edges of it, fills me with panic.
“I wouldn’t say no to a Xanax,” Dave says.
James gives me a look, one like your crazy brother, then pats my arm. “Think about it, okay? I can write you a prescription for whatever you need.”
I give him my best attempt at a smile.
“Come.” My mother steers me to the kitchen island, overflowing with food. A platter of scrambled eggs, a mini mountain of bacon and sausage swimming in grease, an entire loaf of toasted bread. For Mom, there’s no better way of demonstrating her love than with heavy, hearty food, and this morning, her love is big enough to feed an army. “What would you like?”
I take in the food and the smell hits me, buttery eggs and fried pork grease, doing somersaults in my stomach. “Nothing.”
“You can’t not eat. How about I whip up some pancakes? I’ll make the Dutch kind and load them up with apple and bacon, just the way you like.”
Dave looks over from the coffeepot, where he’s measuring out the grounds. “Ma, leave her alone. She’ll eat when she’s hungry.”
“C’mere, Squirt,” Dad calls out from his seat at the table, patting the chair beside him. “I saved you a spot.”
My father is a former marine and a brilliant engineer with an easy smile and a halfway decent jump shot, but his greatest talent is running interference between my brother and me and our mother.
I sink onto the chair and lean into him, and he slings a beefy arm around my shoulders. My family is not a demonstrative clan. Hugs happen only at hellos and goodbyes. Kisses are rare, and they usually stop just short of skin. So far today I’ve held my brother’s hand, collapsed in my mother’s arms and snuggled up to my father. This is what death does. It forces intimacy at the same time it snatches it away.
My gaze falls on the legal pad, covered in Dad’s block-letter scribbles. Pages and pages of bullet points, grouped into categories and ranked by level of importance. If Will were here, he and my father would bond over the beauty of this list, a masterpiece of left-brained brilliance. I push aside Dad’s reading glasses and scan the papers, a string of knots working their way across my shoulder blades. It seems unfair there are so many tasks to tackle, when all I really want to do is go back to bed and forget yesterday ever happened.
And then I notice a grouping of four or five bullets at the bottom.
“Compensation?” I say, and there’s venom in my tone.
“Airlines provide a sum of money to victims’ families, Iris. I know it seems harsh, but I’m just looking out for my baby girl. I will make sure you’re provided for.”
As if Liberty Air can fix their shoddy planes and bungling pilots by throwing around some cash. Oh, we killed your husband? Here, go buy yourself something nice.
“I’d rather starve to death than touch a penny of their blood money.”
“Fine, then don’t touch it. Put it in the bank and forget all about it. I’m still going after it for you.”
I grab the pen and add my own bullet to the list: research victims’ families’ charities. Someone might profit from Liberty Air’s money, but it sure as hell won’t be me.
The next page is more of the first, and after a quick scan I flip to the next and then the next, stopping short at what I read across the top: MEDIA. Underneath, my father has created a long and extensive log of calls received, complete with date, time, name of caller and outlet. I don’t recognize all the names, but more than a few jump out at me. People magazine. The Today show. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Diane Sawyer. USA TODAY.
“How did they find me? Our number’s unlisted.”
Dave settles in at the head of the table with an egg-and-bacon sandwich. “I don’t know, but the phone has been ringing off the hook. We unplugged it an hour ago. And last time I looked, there were three news vans parked out front.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. And you know that photo of you and Will from last New Year’s Eve? It’s all over the internet.”
They could have chosen a worse picture, I suppose. Me and Will in our holiday finest, our faces lit up with goofy grins as he dips me over an arm. I loved it so much I made it my Facebook profile picture, which, now that I think about it, is probably where they got it.
Mom slides a plate with a mini mountain of food in front of me. “Here, liefje. Try to eat at least a few bites.”
I pick up my fork, cut off a mini slice of sausage and push it around my plate until Mom heads back into the kitchen.
Dad flips to the next page of his list. “Liberty Airlines has established a Family Assistance Center at the international terminal at Hartsfield. A lady by the name of—” he slips on his glasses and consults the paper “—Ann Margaret Myers is your point of contact.”
Dave snorts around a giant bite of food. “What kind of idiot plans a gathering for plane crash next of kin at the airport?”
“Liberty Air ones, apparently,” Dad says. “They want us down there so they can, and I quote, provide comfort and counseling, discuss plans and answer any questions.”
“Plans?” I say. “What kind of plans?”
“Well, for starters, they’re talking about a memorial service as soon as this weekend.”
Dad’s gentle tone does nothing to stop a familiar anger from sparking like a flash fire. A Liberty Air memorial service feels like an insult, like the neighbor who buys you flowers after they run over your dog. I won’t accept their public display of penitence, and I can’t forgive their mistake.
“So now I’m supposed to accept help from the people responsible for killing my husband? That’s absurd.” I shove my plate to the center of the table, and the pyramid of scrambled eggs landslides over the rim.
“I know it seems that way, punkin’, but it won’t be just Liberty Air. The Red Cross will be there, too, as well as folks whose sole job is to collect information about the crash. I want to hear what they know that we haven’t gotten from the TV or newspaper.”
“Maybe you can ask them who alerted the media before my daughter,” Mom says, slamming the salt and pepper shakers onto the center of the table. “Because that is an unforgivable blunder, and I’d like to tell that person what I think of them.”
“Whoever made that mistake will be out of a job, I’ll see to it.” Dad uses his drill-instructor voice—forceful, booming and unambiguous. He turns, and his expression morphs from fierce to fiercely concerned. “Sweetheart, like it or not, we’re going to have to interface with Liberty Air at some point. I can be a buffer if you want me to, or I can stand back and let you handle it yourself. Up to you. Either way, at the very least, we should go down there and see what this Miss Myers has to say, don’t you think?”
No, I don’t think. I’ve seen that footage—sobbing family members pushing their way through a sea of cameras, keen to capture their despair for all the world to see. And now Dad is suggesting we become a part of them?
Then again, I have so many questions, not the least of which is what did you do to my husband? If this Ann Margaret Myers has an answer for that one, she can plaster my teary, snotty face on the high-definition LED screens at SunTrust Field for all I care.
I push away from the table and head upstairs to get dressed.
* * *
On the last night of Will’s life, he cooked. Not something out of a box or the freezer section, but a whole-food, homemade meal. For someone who didn’t know how to cut a tomato when I met him, whipping up dinner must have been no easy feat, and it probably took him all day. Maybe something inside him knew what was coming, some otherworldly awareness that his cosmic clock was about to hit zero, but that night—our seventh anniversary—he surprised me with real food, and for the first time ever made by his own hands.
I found him bent over one of my cookbooks in the kitchen, the most amazing smell hanging in the air. “What’s going on?”
He whirled around, a twig of thyme dangling from a curl and a mixture of pride and guilt on his expression. “Um, I’m cooking.”
I could see that. Anyone could see that. He’d used every pot and pan we owned, and covered the entire countertop, every single inch, with food and ingredients and cooking utensils. Will was covered in flour and grease.
I smiled. “What are you making?”
“Standing rib roast, new potatoes in butter and parsley, and those skinny green beans wrapped in bacon, I forget what they’re called.”
