Page 70 of Statler

She went on, even though it was all still painful to think about. “His parents had money. Quite a bit. But they were good people, and wanted Holden to learn how it felt to have a job. So he went to work, part time, at the factory. He was…a prodigy, to put it mildly. Before long, my…um, the owner saw a huge potential in him, and offered him a high-ranking job upon graduation.”

Eliza wasn’t ready to tell them that William Flazer was her father.

Not yet.

“But Holden’s parents had decided they wanted him to eventually follow in their footsteps in the financial world.” She chuckled ruefully. “He disappointed them all. Turning up his nose at both opportunities, he enlisted in the Navy. He was in for⁠—”

“Seven years,” Sherbert finished, his fingers flying over the keyboard on the laptop that sat on his knees.

“Oh.” Eliza blinked. “You looked him up.”

“I did.” Sherbert was unapologetic. “It seems that once he separated from the Navy, he returned to Liminal. There’s an announcement here that was put in the local paper of him taking a management position within the factory.”

“That’s right. He made that decision when he was offered a rather large salary. He took the job.”

There was more to her story, and it was the part that to Eliza, always seemed like a fairytale.

“I’d been working in the office since I graduated high school, and once he came back to work at the factory, Holden began making a lot of trips to the upper floors.”

She almost wanted to sigh, but didn’t.

“I couldn’t quite believe it, but within the first year of his employment, he began expressing a romantic interest in me.”

She’d been so thrilled at the time.

“We started dating, for real, then once another year passed, we were married.”

Statler, who’d been quiet up until this point, nursing his beer, spoke out.

“You loved him very much.”

Dare she air the concerns that had begun eating at her during the last year of their marriage?

Why not? These people would be here and gone before the winter was over, so even if they judged her, it wasn’t something that would haunt Eliza for long.

“I did love Holden. At first. But then he…changed during that last year we were together. He became…paranoid, I guess is the word. He was constantly telling me to keep my head down, do my work, don’t socialize. Which was rich, coming from him because he’s the one who got me out in public; playing games, joining clubs, fishing…”

She trailed off, still unable to understand the change in Holden.

“I think he loved me, but he became preoccupied with work; going out late for things he wouldn’t discuss, taking copious notes regarding his job, and spending far less time at home than normal.”

Eliza hadn’t been able to bring herself to read the notebook he’d compiled.

It was in her closet, under a stack of his clothing that she still hadn’t had the heart to donate. But even though she hadn’t had the courage to look at what his notes contained, she’d snapped pictures of every page, and stuck those on thumb drives along with the other research she’d been conducting.

“He wrote things down?”

Now, Statler was sitting up straight, his beer forgotten.

“Yeah. In a notebook that was kind of his diary, which I still haven’t dared to read,” she admitted. “It kind of scares me what might be in it. Holden had become a little…obsessive.”

That was a good word to describe how Holden had evolved into someone she’d almost not known.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she amended her tone to give them the full picture. “I think he still loved me in his own way,” she reiterated. “He kept assuring me that we’d only be in Liminal for a short time longer. Then we’d move, and our lives would go back to how they’d been before.”

“But he was killed before that happened,” Blue put in, solemnly.

“He was,” Eliza confirmed. “So, I may never get out of Liminal, and I’ll never have closure over why he changed so much in that last year of our marriage.”