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After Willa moved, we talked even less. The tragedy with our mom became sealed off, rock hard. We went on our separatetrajectories, doing our own things. I became the Kit Manning who married Martin and got pregnant at twenty, who scrambled to find child care so I could finish my last year of college. Willa became the Willa Manning who, well, I don’t really know. Works as a reporter? Avoids nondairy creamer? Is celibate? Even though she comes home for holidays and weddings and such, she never shares much.
Out the window, three news vans shimmer through the lifting fog. The reporters sit on the curb with cups of coffee and a box of Dunkin’ Donuts, having a little party. “Have you seen Facebook?” I ask. “It’s the weirdest mishmash of posts about Greg ever. There are all these judgmental comments about his e-mails... and then once the murder story went up, some of those same people also posted stuff likeOMG, RIP, he was always such a good man.” I shake my head. “Such hypocrites.”
“Wasn’t that what the hacker said, too? Called everyone hypocrites?”
My head snaps up. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I read it in the news.”
God, all the stories: the hack, Greg’s affair, his murder. It’s almost too much to keep track of.
“Have they let you see him yet?” Willa asks.
“Who?”
Willa cocks her head and gets an uncomfortable look, as if to say,Who else?I feel a tug of dread.“Not since the hospital. They’re performing an autopsy. I don’t understandwhy. I mean, he obviously died of blood loss from the stab wound. What else do they think they’re going to find?”
“Maybe they can find out what he was stabbed with. They didn’t find the murder weapon, right? Or maybe to see if he’d taken any medications. If he was drunk.”
“And what, stabbedhimself?” I sigh. “The thing that’s the hardest? I’m still so angry with him. Thosee-mails.”
Willa averts her eyes. I feel embarrassed, though I know Ishouldn’t. Everyone’s read them, probably even my ninety-two-year-old grandmother in the nursing home. “What did Greg say about it?” she asks.
“That he’d never seen them before. His theory is that someone hacked into his account—a spammer or something—and planted them in his deleted messages.”
Willa looks skeptical. “May Greg rest in peace, but I bet every guy who’s been caught in an affair says that exact same thing.”
“I know. But I’m not sure I blame him for cheating. Our marriage had hit a rough patch.”
Willa blinks. “Really?”
“Lately, all we did was roll our eyes at one another. All the things I found adorable about him at first became annoying. He was just so cynical. Nothing was ever right. It was with everyone, everything. The attitude began to wear on me.”
“Huh,” Willa says.
“But I sat with my irritation for months. It’s not like I said to him, ‘Hey, Greg, you’re really negative, and that needs to change.’ I just... quietly seethed. It wasn’t until Philly that I had a moment of clarity. I knew I had to snap out of it.” I sigh. “But I guess it was too late.”
“Philly? What happened in Philly?”
I feel drunk. Jesus, I can’t tell Willa about Philly. “Just a wake-up call in the form of too much to drink,” I hedge. “I came home even more committed to fixing things. Or at least broaching the subject with him again—I brought up therapy a few months ago, but...” My eyes lower. “And then I saw those e-mails. So...” I shrug.
“God, I can’t imagine what this is like for you.” Willa’s spine is bent. “I mean, to be mad when everyone expects you to be sad... it’s a roller coaster.”
“Exactly.”
A motor starts on the street. Mr. Leeds, one of our dad’s neighbors, is off to work. The reporters jog alongside his car. I wonder what Mr. Leeds is saying about me.
Willa takes a breath. “So what happened that night? I mean, you went to the benefit. I had some missed calls from you. Greg didn’t go, I guess? And then I got a message where you sounded kind of... drunk.”
I forgot about calling Willa until this very moment, but now it rushes at me like a freight train. It had been after I’d seen Patrick at the gala. I had thought, fleetingly, that maybe I’d book a plane ticket to LA and head straight to the airport. Disappear for a little while. So I’d called Willa in the ladies’ room, but when her voice mail came on, so did the pressing need to vomit. So I dropped my phone, and... I can’t remember the rest.
“I actuallydidn’thave that much to drink,” I say. “But it was like I was suddenly bombed. Nerves, I guess.” I sigh. “The next thing I remember is waking up on my powder room floor, and it was hours later. I was back home.”
“How’d you get home?” Willa looks horrified. “Did youdrive?”
I stiffen. “I’m not proud of it. But yes, they have me on a surveillance camera driving my own car out of the museum parking lot.” I don’t like to think about that. The idea of operating my car while wasted is terrifying.
“But you don’t remember anything else from the benefit?”
