Six Years (3 page)

“What’s wrong?” Benedict asked.

I skipped the “Nothing” or “How do you know something’s wrong?” and went straight to it: “Have you ever heard of a guy named Todd Sanderson?”

“Don’t think so. Who is he?”

“An alum. His obituary is online.”

I turned the screen toward him. Benedict adjusted the goggle-glasses. “Don’t recognize him. Why?”

“Remember Natalie?”

A shadow crossed his face. “I haven’t heard you say her name in—”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, this is—or was—her husband.”

“The guy she dumped you for?”

“Yes.”

“And now he’s dead.”

“Apparently.”

“So,” Benedict said, arching an eyebrow, “she’s single again.”

“Sensitive.”

“I’m worried. You’re my best wingman. I have the rap the ladies love, sure, but you have the good looks. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Sensitive,” I said again.

“You going to call her?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Condoleezza Rice. Who do you think I mean? Natalie.”

“Yeah, sure. Say something like ‘Hey, the guy you dumped me for is dead. Want to catch a movie?’”

Benedict was reading the obituary. “Wait.”

“What?”

“Says here she has two kids.”

“So?”

“That makes it more complicated.”

“Will you stop?”

“I mean two kids. She could be fat now.” Benedict looked over at me with his magnified eyes. “So what does Natalie look like now? I mean, two kids. She’s probably chunky, right?”

“How would I know?”

“Uh, the same way everyone would—Google, Facebook, that kinda thing.”

I shook my head. “Haven’t done that.”

“What? Everyone does that. Heck, I do that with all my former loves.”

“And the Internet can handle that kind of traffic?”

Benedict grinned. “I do need my own server.”

“Man, I hope that’s not a euphemism.”

But I saw something sad behind his grin. I remembered one time at a bar when Benedict had gotten particularly wasted, I caught him staring at a well-worn photograph he kept hidden in his wallet. I asked him who it was. “The only girl I’ll ever love,” he told me in a slurry voice. Then Benedict tucked the photograph back behind his credit card and despite hints from me, he has never said another word about it.

He’d had that same sad grin on then.

“I promised Natalie,” I said.

“Promised her what?”

“That I’d leave them alone. That I’d never look them up or bother them.”

Benedict considered that. “It seems you kept that promise, Jake.”

I said nothing. Benedict had lied earlier. He didn’t check the Facebook page of old girlfriends or if he did, he didn’t do it with much enthusiasm. But once when I burst into his office—like him, I never knocked—I saw him using Facebook. I caught a quick glance and saw that the page he had up belonged to that same woman whose picture he carried in his wallet. Benedict quickly shut the browser down, but I bet that he checked that page a lot. Every day, even. I bet that he looked at every new photograph of the only woman he ever loved. I bet that he looked at her life now, her family maybe, the man who shared her bed, and that he stared at them the same way he stared at the photograph in his wallet. I don’t have proof of any of this, just a feeling, but I don’t think I’m too far off.

Like I said before, we all have our own brand of crazy.

“What are you trying to say?” I asked him.

“I’m just telling you that that whole ‘them’ stuff is over now.”

“Natalie hasn’t been a part of my life in a long time.”

“You really believe that?” Benedict asked. “Did she make you promise to forget how you felt too?”

“I thought you were afraid of losing your best wingman.”

“You’re not that good-looking.”

“Cruel bastard.”

He rose. “We humanities professors know all.”

Benedict left me alone then. I stood and walked over to the window. I looked out on the commons. I watched the students walk by and, as I often did when confronted with a life situation, I wondered what I’d advise one of them if they were in my shoes. Suddenly, without warning, it all came rushing in at once—that white chapel, the way she wore her hair, the way she held up her ring finger, all the pain, the want, the emotions, the love, the hurt. My knees buckled. I thought that I had stopped carrying a torch for her. She had crushed me, but I had picked up the pieces, put myself back together, and moved on with my life.

How stupid to have such thoughts now. How selfish. How inappropriate. The woman had just lost her husband, and prick that I am, I was worried about the ramifications for me. Let it go, I told myself. Forget it and her. Move on.

But I couldn’t. I was simply not built that way.

I had last seen Natalie at a wedding. Now I would see her at a funeral. Some people would find irony in that—I was not one of them.

I headed back to the computer and booked a flight to Savannah.

C
hapter 3

T
he first sign something was off
occurred during the eulogy.

Palmetto Bluff was not so much a town as a gigantic gated community. The newly built “village” was beautiful, clean, nicely maintained, historically accurate—all of which gave the place a sterile, Disney-Epcot faux feel. Everything seemed a little too perfect. The sparkly white chapel—yep, another one—sat on a bluff so picturesque it appeared to be, well, a picture. The heat, however, was all too real—a living, breathing thing with humidity thick enough to double as a beaded curtain.

Another fleeting moment of reason questioned why I had come down here, but I swatted it away. I was here now, thus making the question moot. The Inn at Palmetto Bluff looked like a movie facade. I stepped into its cute bar and ordered a scotch straight up from a cute barmaid.

“You here for the funeral?” she asked me.

“Yep.”

“Tragic.”

I nodded and stared down at my drink. The cute barmaid picked up the hint and said no more.

I pride myself on being an enlightened man. I do not believe in fate or destiny or any of that superstitious nonsense, yet here I was, justifying my impulsive behavior in just such a manner. I am
supposed
to be here, I told myself. Compelled to board that flight. I didn’t know why. I had seen with my own two eyes Natalie marry another man, and yet even now, I still couldn’t quite accept it. There was still an innate need for closure. Six years ago, Natalie had dumped me with a note telling me she was marrying her old beau. The next day, I got an invitation to their wedding. No wonder it all still felt . . . incomplete. Now I was here in the hopes of finding, if not closure, completion.

Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something.

But what exactly did I want here?

I finished my drink, thanked the cute barmaid, and carefully started toward the chapel. I kept my distance, of course. I might be horrible and callous and self-involved, but not so much as to intrude on a widow burying her husband. I stayed behind a large tree—a palmetto, what else?—not daring to so much as sneak a look at the mourners.

When I heard the opening hymn, I figured that the coast was as clear as it was going to be. A quick glance confirmed it. Everyone was inside the chapel now. I started toward it. I could hear a gospel choir singing. They were, in a word, magnificent. Not sure what exactly to do, I tried the chapel door, found it unlocked (well, duh), and pushed inside. I lowered my head as I entered, putting a hand to my face as though scratching an itch.

Talk about a poor man’s disguise.

There was no need. The chapel was packed. I stood in the back with other late-arriving mourners who couldn’t find a seat. The choir finished the spirited hymn, and a man—I don’t know if he was a minister or priest or what—took to the pulpit. He began to talk about Todd as a “caring physician, good neighbor, generous friend, and wonderful family man.” Physician. I hadn’t known that. The man waxed eloquent on Todd’s strengths—his charity work, his winning personality, his generosity of spirit, his ability to make every person feel special, his willingness to roll up his sleeves and pitch in whenever anyone, stranger or friend, needed a hand. I naturally wrote this off as familiar funeral narrative—we have a natural habit of overpraising the deceased—but I could see the tears in the eyes of the mourners, the way they nodded along with the words, as though it was a song only they could hear.

From my perch in the back I tried to glance up front for a glimpse of Natalie, but there were too many heads in the way. I didn’t want to make myself conspicuous, so I stopped. Besides, I had come into the chapel and looked around and even listened to words of praise for the deceased. Wasn’t that enough? What else was there to do here?

It was time to leave.

“Our first eulogy,” the man at the pulpit said, “comes from Eric Sanderson.”

A pale teen—I would guess that he was around sixteen—rose and moved to the pulpit. My first thought was that Eric must be Todd Sanderson’s (and by extension, Natalie’s) nephew, but that thought was quickly shot down by the boy’s opening sentence.

“My father was my hero . . .”

Father?

It took me a few seconds. Minds have a habit of going on certain tracks and not being able to hop off. When I was a child, my father told me an old riddle that he thought would fool me. “A father and son get in a car accident. The father dies. The boy is rushed to the hospital. The surgeon says, ‘I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.’ How can that be?” This was what I mean about tracks. For my father’s generation, this riddle was, I guess, mildly difficult to figure, but for people my age, the answer—the surgeon was his mother—was so obvious, I remember laughing out loud. “What next, Dad? Are you going to start using your eight-track player?”

Here was something similar. How, I wondered, could a man who has only been married to Natalie six years have a teenage son? Answer: Eric was Todd’s son, not Natalie’s. Either Todd had been married previously or at the very least had a child with another woman.

I tried again to see Natalie in the front row. I craned my neck, but the woman standing next to me gave me an exasperated sigh for invading her space. Up on the podium, Todd’s son, Eric, was killing it. He spoke beautifully and movingly. There wasn’t a dry eye in the chapel except, well, mine.

So now what? Just stand here? Pay my respects to the widow and, what, confuse her or disrupt her day of mourning? And what about selfish ol’ me? Did I really want to see her face again, see her crying over the loss of the love of her life?

I didn’t think so. I checked my watch. I had booked my flight out tonight. Yep, quick in and out. No muss, no fuss, no overnight, no hotel cost. Closure on the cheap.

There were those who would state the obvious about Natalie and me—that is, I had idealized our time together out of all rational proportion. I understand that. Objectively I see where that argument has validity. But the heart isn’t objective. I, who worshipped the great thinkers, theorists, and philosophers of our time, would never stoop so low as to use an axiom as trite as,
I just know.
But I
do know
. I know what Natalie and I were. I can see it through clear eyes, nothing even slightly tinted, and because of that, I cannot compute what we’ve become.

In sum, I still don’t get what happened to us.

As Eric finished up and took his seat, the sounds of sniffles and gentle sobs echoed through the sparkly white chapel. The clergyman who’d been running the funeral moved back to the pulpit and used the universal “please rise” hand gesture. When the congregation began to stand, I used the diversion to slip back outside. I moved across the way, back to the cover of the palmetto tree. I leaned against the trunk, staying out of sight of the chapel.

“Are you okay?”

I turned and saw the cute barmaid. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Great man, the doc.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Were you close?”

I didn’t answer. A few minutes later, the chapel doors opened. The coffin was rolled into the blazing sun. When it got near the hearse, the pallbearers, one of whom was his son, Eric, surrounded the casket. A woman with a big black hat came out next. She had one arm around a girl of maybe fourteen. A tall man stood next to her. She leaned on him. The man looked a bit like Todd. I guessed this was his brother and sister, but it was only a guess. The pallbearers lifted the coffin and slid it into the back of the hearse. The woman with the black hat and the girl were escorted to the first limousine. The tall maybe-brother opened the door for them. Eric got in after them. I watched the rest of the mourners start coming out.

No sign of Natalie yet.

I found that only mildly odd. I had seen it work both ways. Sometimes the wife was the first person to depart, trailing the coffin, sometimes resting a hand on it. And sometimes she was the last, waiting for the entire chapel to empty out before braving the walk up the aisle. I remembered my own mother hadn’t wanted to deal with anyone at my father’s funeral. She went so far as to slip out a side door to avoid the crush of family and friends.

I watched mourners exit. Their grief, like the southern heat, had become a living, breathing thing. It was genuine and palpable. These people were not here out of mere courtesy. They cared for this man. They were rocked by his death, but then again, what had I expected? Did I think Natalie would dump me for a loser? Wasn’t it better to have lost out to this beloved healer instead of a swarthy douchebag?

Good question.

The barmaid was still standing next to me. “How did he die?” I whispered.

“You don’t know?”

I shook my head. Silence. I turned toward her.

“Murdered,” she said.

The word hung in the humid air, refusing to go away. I repeated it. “Murdered?”

“Yes.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again. “How? Who?”

“He was shot, I think. I’m not sure about that part. The police don’t know who. They think it was a robbery gone wrong. You know, a guy broke in and didn’t know someone was home.”

Numbness crept in now. The flow of people had stopped coming out of the chapel. I stared at the door and waited now for Natalie to make her appearance.

But she didn’t.

The man who’d led the service came out, closing the doors behind him. He got into the front of the hearse. The hearse started rolling out. The first limousine followed.

“Is there a side exit?” I asked.

“What?”

“To the chapel. Is there another door?”

She frowned. “No,” she said. “There’s only that one door.”

The procession was under way now. Where the hell was Natalie?

“Aren’t you going to the graveyard?” the barmaid asked me.

“No,” I said.

She put a hand on my forearm. “You look like you could use a drink.”

It was hard to argue with that. I half stumbled behind her toward the bar and half collapsed onto the same stool as before. She poured me another scotch. I kept my eyes on the procession, on the chapel door, on the little town square.

No Natalie.

“My name is Tess, by the way.”

“Jake,” I said.

“So how did you know Dr. Sanderson?”

“We went to the same college.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You look younger.”

“I am. It was an alumni connection.”

“Oh, okay, that makes sense.”

“Tess?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know Dr. Sanderson’s family at all?”

“His son, Eric, used to date my niece. Good kid.”

“How old is he?”

“Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Such a tragedy. He and his father were so close.”

I didn’t know how to broach the subject so I just asked: “Do you know Dr. Sanderson’s wife?”

Tess cocked her head. “You don’t?”

“No,” I lied. “I never met her. We just knew each other through a few college events. He’d come alone.”

“You seem awfully emotional for a guy who only knew him through a few college events.”

I didn’t know how to answer that one, so I stalled by taking a deep sip. Then I said, “It’s just that, well, I didn’t see her at the funeral.”

“How would you know?”

“What?”

“You just said you never met her. How would you know?”

Man, I was really not good at this, was I? “I’ve seen photographs.”

“They must not have been good ones.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was right there. Came out right after the coffin with Katie.”

“Katie?”

“Their daughter. Eric was one of the pallbearers. Then Dr. Sanderson’s brother came out with Katie and Delia.”

I remembered them, of course. “Delia?”

“Dr. Sanderson’s wife.”

My head started spinning. “I thought her name was Natalie.”

She crossed her arms and frowned at me. “Natalie? No. Her name is Delia. She and Dr. Sanderson were high school sweethearts. Grew up right down the road here. They’ve been married for ages.”

I just stared at her.

“Jake?”

“What?” I said.

“Are you sure you’re even at the right funeral?”