I fumbled with the trash when I got home. Garbage day always reminded me I was a widow. Some days I could forget my loss, but never on garbage day. The weekly walk to the curb was the antithesis of my walk down the aisle. Instead of carrying a bridal bouquet, I carried smelly rubbish.
Some papers fell out as I dumped one wastebasket into another. One was Garnett’s boarding pass to MSP airport.
How romantic, I thought, pressing it against my heart. The minute Garnett heard Sam Pierce was dead, he sensed my trouble and rushed for a seat on the next plane.
But then I noticed the arrival date was the day before Sam was killed. Why would Garnett have lied? And what reason would he have had to come to town without telling me?
I’m ashamed to say the first thought that came to mind was not that he was cheating on me but that he owned a gun and was in the correct geographic region to have killed Sam.
It would have been a relief to laugh together at the zany idea. Him slaying Sam to protect my reputation. A very outdated motive. Something an obsessed Don Quixote might do for his Lady Dulcinea. But Garnett’s love for me couldn’t have been strong enough to kill in cold blood. Though if it was, would that make me an accomplice?
The truth was, Garnett was one of the good guys in life, so him killing Sam didn’t compute. But what was he doing in town that he needed to keep secret?
Some couples are doomed unless they agree on all the big issues in life, like politics, religion, and where to call home.
Garnett and I clashed in all those areas and more. But even though we had our share of squabbles—many of them my fault—I still believed we had a chance at happy-ever-after because we agreed on something pretty specific: that the film Saving Private Ryan contains the best movie dialogue ever written.
There are lots of lines that stand out, but we give the prize to the scene where Tom Hanks tells his platoon that, in real life, he’s only a small-town English teacher. “I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.”
Is that enough to build a relationship on?
To prove my confidence in him, I considered crumpling up the boarding pass, throwing it in the trash, and never speaking of it again. Instead, I stuck it in a desk drawer.
The trash can was behind the house, out of view of company. As I went out the back door to wheel it to the front curb, I saw a shadow moving along the side of the garage. I stopped, then heard the crunching of feet on gravel.
Instantly, I remembered that Sam Pierce had been killed in his own backyard. I went back inside, locked the door, and decided to wait until morning to put out the garbage.
I turned on all the lights in the house before finally falling asleep on the couch. In the morning, I didn’t wake up until I heard the garbage truck driving past.