The screen fills.
---
I read.
I read for an hour. I read for two. I sit on the sofa with the tablet on my knees and the quilt from the bedroom over myshoulders, and I read every story the internet has about the fire and about Daniel and about me.
Daniel's body was recovered Tuesday morning. Cause of death: smoke inhalation with second-degree burns, as the medical examiner. He did not burn alive. He did not wake up. That is the one thing I find that I am glad to know, and the gladness is small and I do not look at it long.
The cause of the fire is listed asunder investigation.Kessler's preliminary report, leaked to the local paper by somebody whose name has been kept out of it, sayspossible electrical origin in the lower-level panel room, pending arson board review.The paper has put quotes aroundpossible.
My name and face is everywhere.
Evangeline Clark, thirty-six, wife of the late Daniel Clark. Missing since the night of the fire. Last known to be booked on a trip to Aspen that was not claimed at the hotel. The paper has a photograph of me at a benefit dinner two years ago. The photograph is the three-quarter profile, pearls, hair up, the mouth not quite smiling. I look at her and she looks like a woman I do not know and used to be.
The press conference.
My father gave a press conference on the steps of his house in Sag Harbor yesterday afternoon. He wore a dark sweater and a dark coat and he stood behind a small microphone that his attorney had set up. He read a statement. He said,Evangeline is my only child. I have not spoken to her in six months. I am asking anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact the Redwater City Police Department. I have lost enough already in my life. Please.
The please.
I watch the clip three times. I watch him sayplease.
My father has not saidpleaseto me in my adult life.
He looks old. He looks small. His hair is gray along the part. The woman he lives with stands two feet behind him and does not touch him. He does not cry. He reads the statement and he steps back and the attorney takes the microphone and says they will not take questions, and my father walks back into the house, and the clip ends.
I sit with the tablet on my knees. I put my hand flat on the black screen after it fades. I sit with my hand on it.
I think:he would be so relieved.
I think:I cannot call him yet.
Both are true at the same time.
---
I read about my husband.
Daniel's business interests are being laid out across the business section of three different papers. Investments in shell companies. Offshore accounts. A real estate holding company whose partners are under FBI indictment. A commodities brokerage with ties to a man in Chicago who is currently serving seven years. The phrase that keeps coming up islong-standing concerns.The phrase that comes up once in the third paper and then gets picked up by the first isfederal grand jury empanelment.
There was going to be a grand jury.
He was going to be indicted. Within six months. The fourth paper says so plainly in the last paragraph, sourced to a person they callan official familiar with the investigation.
I sit with that.
My husband was going to be indicted. He was going to be indicted and he was sleeping alone in the east wing since Tuesday because he knew it was coming and he had been drinking through dinners in the primary suite and the suite had started to smell like his fear and he had moved rooms to give that smell somewhere to live that was not where I slept.
I did not know he was going to be indicted.
I did not know because Daniel did not tell me. Daniel never told me. Daniel had been carrying a thing he could not put down for three months and he had gone into the east wing with a decanter and a reading lamp and he had not shared the weight of it with me, which was the last kindness he ever did me in a marriage whose kindnesses had been thin.
I am not surprised.
I am not surprised that he was dirty. I have known he was dirty for six years, in pieces, in hallways, in the cast of men who came to his Thursday dinners whose names I was not allowed to ask about twice. I have known. I have not known the grand jury. I have known enough.
I am not surprised that someone wanted him dead.
