Griff woke from a troubled sleep. Thoughts of Kate rushed in, and it took a couple of minutes before he could breathe again. The last thing he remembered was Aubrey feeding him soup and promising to find him a lawyer. She’d neglected to bring any booze, however. He hadn’t had a drink since Sunday and it was—what, Tuesday? Wednesday? He wasn’t feverish any longer. His mind was clearer than it had been in a while. That was not necessarily a good thing.
In the quiet of the cabin, he heard the soft lapping of the lake against the dock. A ray of light from the picture window pierced his eyes, irritating them. The sunlight forced him to sit up; otherwise he might not have found the will. He felt Kate in it, calling him outdoors. Pulling the afghan tight around his shoulders, Griff stepped out onto the back deck, and the cold enveloped him. It was a damp, blustery day, with a taste of snow in the air. Was Kate out here? He saw no hope in this dead landscape. The sky was silver, the lake was black, and the bare trees made ugly slashes against the sky. All around, piles of wet leaves gave off the sickly-sweet smell of death. Maybe that was her message to him.
He was staring at the lake, thinking about Kate’s body in the freezing river, when the phone in his back pocket rang, making him start. Aubrey brought him a charger, he remembered. He pulled the phone out and saw that it was Jenny calling.
“Hello?” he said.
“Griff. I can’t believe I reached you. I tried so many times.”
“My phone was dead,” he said, and his voice was dead, too.
“Are you all right?” Jenny asked.
The question was so surreal that he couldn’t answer.
“Griff?” she said.
“No, Jenny. I’m not all right.”
“Everybody’s been looking for you. A lot is going on. I can’t get into it over the phone. When the medical examiner’s office couldn’t get in touch with you, they had to call Kate’s brother to make arrangements for her body.”
“Her brother? Why?”
“Because they couldn’t find you, and Keniston was in the hospital.”
“Oh. Kate said he was going in for tests.”
“Well, he has cancer, so they talked to Benji Eastman instead, and Benji called me, trying to find you. I arranged for Kate to be moved to the funeral home in town, but now the funeral director wants to meet with you.”
“That’s terrible about Keniston.”
“Yes it is. But Griff, where the hell have you been?”
“At Aubrey’s cabin, at the lake.”
Jenny made an annoyed noise. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me that.”
“I haven’t been feeling well. She was letting me rest,” Griff said.
“There’s no time for that now. I hate to be blunt, Griff, but if you don’t show your face, it looks bad. You need to make your wife’s funeral arrangements, or else people might draw the wrong conclusions.”
He paused. She was implying that people thought he killed Kate. If that’s what they thought of him, why was Jenny even bothering to help him? He wished she would leave him to his fate.
“Are the police—?” he began.
“Are they what?” she asked. But he let the question lie there.
“Let’s talk in person, all right?” she said. “Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you. We’ll go to the funeral home together.”
She hung up before he could say no. It would take her half an hour to drive to the cabin from Belle River. Griff had no car to make his getaway. But he found that he no longer wanted to run. He didn’t want to die either. It hadn’t occurred to him before Jenny’s call, but Kate was still here, not just in his mind, but in body. He could see her, touch her, talk to her, say the things he’d been longing to say but thought he’d never get the chance to. Maybe if he said them, he would be able to go on. There was a small part of him that still imagined a future.
Suddenly Griff couldn’t wait. He went back inside and tried to take a shower, but the water that came out of the shower head was ice-cold and rusty, so he settled for washing his face. That bruise was fading, and the swelling on the left side of his jaw had gone down. He was ravenously hungry. He made scrambled eggs and wolfed them straight from the pan. By the time he was done, Jenny’s minivan was in the driveway. She honked. He threw the pan in the sink and ran out.
The road down from the lake was narrow and winding, and for the first bit Jenny concentrated on her driving. Once they hit the highway, she stepped on the gas, and glanced over at Griff with concern.
“Nobody told me you two were splitting up,” she began.
“It came as a surprise to me, too.”
“You asked me on the phone about the police,” she said. “They think it’s suspicious that Kate went missing immediately after filing for divorce.”
Griff shrugged. “I don’t know why they think that. She served me with papers and then she took off. She wasn’t about to come back home like nothing happened. I assumed she left town.”
“Well, you were wrong. She didn’t go off on some Caribbean cruise. She turned up dead. Aren’t you worried they’ll come after you? Because you should be.”
“I have no control over what the cops do. Aubrey told me they already searched my house.”
“Anything I say about that, I’d be disclosing confidential information.”
“Don’t tell me then. I don’t want to put you in a bad position,” Griff said.
“I’ll do it, Griff. I just want you to understand, you can never say I told you.”
“Honestly, Jenny, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care what happens next. I just want to see Kate.”
“I have a contact inside the police department. He called me a little while ago with the results of the search. You should know, the police found a shirt of yours, with bloodstains on it.”
He leaned back in the passenger seat and closed his eyes. “It’s not Kate’s blood. It’s mine. I didn’t kill her, Jenny. I loved her.”
“I know that.”
He opened his eyes. “But somebody killed her?”
“The chief of police thinks so. He’s a royal terror. I wish I could control him, but I can’t. Honestly, he’s focused on you, Griff.”
“Figures.” Griff shook his head in disgust. Fucking cops. “What about you? What do you think?”
Jenny sighed. “Personally, I hope it gets ruled a suicide. That would be best for everybody. Let her rest in peace.”
He didn’t contradict her. By the time they reached the funeral home, it had started to snow, in sharp, icy crystals that struck the back of Griff’s neck and chilled him to the bone. The funeral home was new construction, meant to look quaint and New Englandy with white-clapboard siding and green shutters, but inside, smelling of cheap carpeting and air freshener.
“Who picked this place?” Griff asked.
“It’s the only funeral home in town. Once the medical examiner released her body, she had to go somewhere.”
“It’s so bleak,” he said, and his voice caught.
“You don’t have to do the service here. We can do it at a church and go straight to the cemetery, then do a reception at my house, if you like.”
“Mem Church?” Griff asked.
Memorial Church, in the center of the Quad, with its soaring transept and stained-glass windows, was where Carlisle held its sacred events. Graduations, swearings-in, weddings. Griff had wanted to get married there, but Kate wouldn’t hear of it.
“If you think that’s what she’d want,” Jenny said, reading his mind.
Of course Kate wouldn’t want that, but Griff wanted it on her behalf. She should’ve graduated. It was a travesty that she didn’t. Let her at least have a Carlisle funeral.
“She wasn’t an alum,” Jenny said, “but Keniston could probably arrange it. He’s getting released tonight, and Benji’s driving him up here in the morning. It’s only—”
“What?”
“The press has their teeth in the story, Griff. If you hold the funeral in the middle of campus, it could turn into a circus. I’m even worried they’ll show up here.”
“I’ve been through worse,” he said with a shrug, thinking of his father. “You just ignore it.”
“Kate’s in there,” Jenny said, nodding toward a side room. “I’ll wait in the lobby. I’m sure you want some time alone with her.”
It was the only thing he wanted.
As Griff stepped into the room and caught sight of Kate lying on the bier, his breath left him. They’d dimmed the lights, so the space seemed candlelit, almost romantic, and she looked so beautiful. He approached her reverently. The undertaker had done a remarkable job. She was herself, except with a heavy sheen of pale foundation makeup, which Kate never wore, and carefully brushed hair, where Kate’s hair was free and wild. Otherwise, it was just Kate, looking fast asleep. Jenny must have selected the outfit. She wore her favorite dress, a chic black sheath by a famous designer that hugged her figure, from the days when they could afford to spend thousands on a single item of clothing. Griff gazed down at her, ignoring the faint chemical smell that pervaded the air. He’d expected to want to throw himself on her body, to rant and rave, but instead he felt calm and light. He felt peace and joy. Until he touched her.
He drew his hand back as if he’d had an electric shock, but it was just the opposite. The life force had left her. Her flesh felt cold, plastic, inert. Like a refrigerated doll. Like she was dead. Only in that moment did it become real, and he sank to his knees beside her and sobbed.
“Why?” he shouted, through his tears, then remembered where he was. This place could be bugged. The cops might be listening.
“Who did this to you?” he said aloud. “Was it him? Or did you do it to yourself?”
He went to sit in a nearby folding chair, staring at her in the oppressive silence as an Eagles song played in his head. And the storybook comes to a close, gone are the ribbons and bows. Their love affair had been a storybook, to Griff at least. But if he was honest, they’d only had four or five good years before things went downhill, followed by nearly a decade of a slow, agonizing unraveling. But Kate was Kate. What could you do? He never stopped loving her.
Their best times were in New York, those first few years. There was a moment, after rehab, after they got married, when he truly believed she’d changed. Her guilt over Lucas was the cause, but if it helped manage her demons, he’d take it and be grateful. At some point in Paris, Kate had added a fourth star to that tattoo inside her wrist. Griff would come upon her sometimes, sitting quietly with a faraway look in her eyes, tracing that fourth star with her finger. He never asked her if it represented Lucas; he never let on he noticed it at all. But he knew. The guilt seemed to do her good. Kate took Griff up on his offer of an introduction to his friend who ran the charity, and for a while she volunteered in a shelter for homeless kids. She went so far as to write away for brochures on master’s programs in social work.
But then … what? It was hard to say what went wrong. The corrosive effect of his money surely played a role. It took willpower to instruct your driver to bring you to the homeless shelter in the Bronx when you could be sitting in the front row of the couture shows instead, and willpower was never Kate’s forte. Griff felt partly responsible, for setting a bad example. His job on Wall Street was a charade, his duties limited to playing matchmaker between his own firm and various powerful clients who were associates of his father’s. It was an endless round of lunches, drinks, and dinners—contentless, well suited to a charming schmoozer who wasn’t smart with numbers, which was how he thought of himself. He should’ve resisted the path laid out for him and done something else, something he liked, though he’d never liked anything much. He’d been a devotee of the gentleman’s C at Carlisle; call it the gentleman’s B-minus with grade inflation. The only classes he ever aced were Intro to Marine Bio and Literature of the Sea, because he loved boats and the ocean, and he loved to sail. Maybe he should have made a meaningful career out of that somehow, instead of being content to cruise the BVI in his yacht, watching the sun set with a mojito in his hand. Although boats turned out to be part of the problem: he took Kate away from New York when she didn’t want to go, so they could spend time on the water.
Around the time of her thirtieth birthday, Kate had begun to slip away from him. It started with a trip they made to Belle River, after Griff was asked to serve as financial chair of his tenth-reunion committee. They were only in town for a few days. She was excited about it at first, planning girl time with her old roommates, but at some point, something went awry. He never found out exactly what, or even if there was a particular triggering incident, though he imagined it had to do with Lucas Arsenault. In any event, depression overwhelmed her, and Kate fell into a deep, dark hole. He got her doctor to prescribe antidepressants, but Kate claimed they made her bloated and stupid. She stopped taking them, and turned instead to her old friends drugs and booze. He hated to see her to get wasted alone, so he joined her, as if that made it better. Pretty soon, they were both partying too much.
There were no natural brakes for their bad behavior. No children who needed care, no fixed hours at work, no financial constraints. Whatever substance they felt like indulging in, they could afford the purest, and in unlimited quantities. They’d go out to clubs or to friends’ estates in the Hamptons, start doing lines, and before Griff knew it, Kate had left with some other guy. He was usually trashed out of his mind by then, and numb to the pain of it. If she left with someone, he’d leave with someone, too. Pretty soon they’d both slept with pretty much everyone they knew, Kate was on the verge of blowing out her septum, Griff’s liver was in trouble, and the whole scene had gotten toxic. They could either get out of town, go to rehab, or get divorced. Kate said rehab was a drag. Griff couldn’t stand to lose Kate. So the solution was obvious—leave New York.
For her thirtieth birthday, he bought her a house in Anguilla, not far from the beach where they’d married. The house was set high in the hills, with views for miles to the aqua bay where the yachts were anchored like so many toys. He whisked her down there on his father’s jet and had her wear a blindfold in the car. They walked in the front door, and she could see straight through the double-height living room to a twenty-foot-high wall of glass, where he’d set up a telescope trained on the bay. He guided her over to it, and directed her gaze at a particular boat sitting proudly in the water, a sleek seventy-foot Hinckley, exquisitely crafted of mahogany, with a navy-blue hull and a white bridge. It was a classic—drop-dead gorgeous under full sail, not too big for Griff to skipper himself (with the aid of a small crew).
He said, “Take a look at the name on the side. I named her the Kate, she’s your boat, baby.”
They spent their days sailing her around to wherever the weather was fairest and the beaches the most secluded. They’d cruise the Caribbean all winter, then have the crew take the boat across and fly to catch it again in the Med, where they’d spend the long summers flitting among whitewashed islands. In between, they’d catch up with friends here and there at posh resorts, over gin and tonics, or land for a while in the best hotels in Palm Beach, Capri, or Gstaad—avoiding New York like that made their problems go away, as if New York was the only place you could be unhappy. Griff was having too good a time to realize they were living his dream, not Kate’s. Yet she didn’t complain. She didn’t seem unhappy with their life, until his father fell from grace, and the money spigot got shut off. Until that moment, Griff never understood that Kate was really only with him for his money. He believed it of everybody else, yes. But never her. He was wrong about that, as it turned out.
There was a knock at the door, and Jenny stuck her head in.
“Griff, I’m really sorry, but there are TV trucks out front. Three of them.”
“How do they know we’re here?”
“I’m not sure they do know, but they know Kate is here. I talked to the funeral director. He’s got private security people coming over right now to lock the place down and make sure she’s not disturbed.”
“Disturbed?” Griff said, going pale.
“I just mean, that nobody sneaks in to take pictures or anything.”
He leapt to his feet. “Where are they? Scumbags. I’ll give them something to photograph.”
Jenny came forward and put her hands on his shoulders soothingly. “Honey, trust me, that’ll just make things worse. We’re going to sneak you out the back, through the garage, and you can discuss the arrangements with the funeral director over the phone. Just give me a minute to set it up. Say your good-byes, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, and closed the door.
Say his good-byes? He walked over to the bier where she lay, and looked down at her knowing that good-bye was impossible. He was going to come out of this situation intact, except for his heart and soul and anything else about him that mattered. Oh, he’d go on—there was money for that. At noon on Friday, Kate’s fortieth birthday, at a moment when they were still legally married, she’d come into the balance of her trust. Griff suspected that that fact explained the timing of her divorce filing. After all those years when he supported her in style, Kate was planning to take her trust money and split. That money was Griff’s now, as her legal heir. It wasn’t much, two hundred and fifty K. Enough to buy a small boat that he could live on in a marina somewhere, to sail again on blue waters, have a drink at sunset and toast to her. Maybe eventually he’d get lonely enough to find some intrepid woman to keep him company. A Mexican girl who took things in stride and knew how to cook, or a South African or Australian who could go for months without seeing port and not mind. But he’d never love her. He’d never love anyone again. If only there was some way around it. If only he could bring Kate back to life.
Jenny was at the door. “Let’s go,” she said.
Griff leaned over and kissed Kate’s cold, pale lips. But unlike Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale, she did not wake.