I split my practice. Three days a week in Chicago, a couple in Sugar Grove. If I’m honest, it wasn’t what I would have chosen, but with him, it’s hard to explain; it was perfect. He made it that way. I did prefer the lull of sirens at night and self-righteous baristas with man buns, microbreweries, and a public radio station I could tune into without static, but now... I didn’t know what to say to Ellie. I tell her I’ll think about it.
* * *
The night it all happened, we left the restaurant in Logan Square. We were fourteen miles from home when we crashed. On a highway of vast nothingness. Maybe I associate finding him with being closer to the house in Sugar Grove than the condo we had barely been to in the last year in Chicago. It’s nonsensical. If someone took him...or if he left, like they think he did, it would be unlikely he was hanging out in Sugar Grove, population 8,997. I know that. It’s a logical argument as Ellie has made on more than one occasion, but I can’t help but feel that if I leave, I’ll—I don’t know—abandon him. I should search in Chicago, but this is where I last saw him...in a way. Now that I’m mobile again, it has crossed my mind, but I don’t want to think about it now. I just want the liquid euphoria to buzz between my temples and warm my chest. I close my eyes and trace the rim of my glass with my finger as I listen to her.
“Oh, Jiminy Crickets. Joe’s got Ned out on the fire escape changing diapers so he doesn’t stink up the kitchen. It’s a miracle any of this family is still alive.” I hear her stop hard in the middle of her last word. I can tell she wishes she didn’t say it. She starts at an apology.
“Oh, Faith—I meant—”
“I know. Hey, I gotta go, but I’ll talk to you this week,” I say. There is a beat of silence. Knowing Ellie, she wants to say something to end on a better note, but knows I just want to go.
“Okay, love you,” she says with a forced lightness. I hang up.
Nobody thinks Liam is dead. But it’s the tiptoeing around the topic and the way the register of someone’s voice changes when they speak to me, like I’m a child around whom you must use simple and carefully chosen words, that makes me crave solitude.
I pay my tab and walk the fifteen minutes home. Since being restricted from walking for months, now it’s all I want to do. It’s already dropping down to the midforties at night, and I never wear a warm enough coat. “Fashion before function,” I’d tell Liam, but that was when I was used to dipping into cabs a few feet from a warm building in the winter. I pass a sad, man-made lake and feel sorry for the birds gliding on top of it, suddenly concerned for their body temperature. A sparrow swoops past the dried stocks of goldenrod along the road, which, even after an early frost the other night, still reveals hints of growth. Fragile veins cling to life inside the brittle, russet stems.
When I round the corner to my street, I see a car I don’t recognize in the drive. It’s idling, and the person inside sits with a square of blue light puncturing the dark that is beginning to fall so early now. I freeze a moment, trying to imagine who it could be. Then I walk up slowly and tap on the window, startling the man inside.
“Jesus!” He leaps. I see that it’s Len Turlson from Liam’s office. What the hell could he possibly be doing here?
“Faith, hi.” He puts his phone down and opens the door. Len was always my favorite of Liam’s colleagues. A stout man with a round, ruddy face but always uniquely fashionable in his Irish fisherman sweaters and wool newsboy caps. He wrote for Arts and Culture, but we’ve been on a few trips abroad with him when he and Liam had crossover stories, and my memories of him are mostly laughing, and once drinking too much whisky at a pub in Scotland, him getting into an embarrassing arm-wrestling match with Liam. I have no earthly idea what could bring him all the way to Sugar Grove. For a second I wonder if he has news that Liam’s okay, but his face would have communicated that immediately, so now I feel a hollow wave of nausea, wondering what else would bring a man this far out of his way besides in-person sort of news.
“Len. Um...hi.”
“Sorry to drop in like this, but I wondered if we could talk a minute,” he says.
“Of course. Yeah.” I lead the way to the front door. Inside, he takes off his newsboy hat and holds it, a gentlemanly gesture. I invite him to sit. He does, but holds himself at the edge of the sofa like someone ready to leave.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“A drink sounds great. Whatever you’re having.” He smiles. When I return with two scotch whiskies in lowball glasses, he’s taken out some documents from somewhere. His jacket pocket? They just sort of materialized and are now smoothed out in his lap. I hand him a glass.
“So...there must be a good reason you’re here. As much as I’d like to chitchat about the early cold, could you please just tell me.”
“Bonnie didn’t think I should come. I guess I’m not completely sure it’s the right thing to do either.” My instinct was to ask how his wife, Bonnie, was. She’d suffered an illness earlier in the year, and I hadn’t seen much of her recently, but instead I sat, paralyzed, waiting for what he could possibly have to say. He was waiting for a response, to give him permission, I suppose, to potentially devastate me.
“What is it?”
“We finally cleaned out Liam’s office down at the Tribune.”
“What? Like they—got rid of his office?” Is this what he wanted to tell me?
“John thought it was time. They’re sending his things. You should get everything soon, I’m sure.” He takes a sip of his drink and looks at the papers on his lap nervously.
“Okay.” I wait. There’s more.
“Faith, we had his assistant go through his email, so we could retrieve some things we needed and forward contacts. And...anyway, the point is, there was an email that...I thought you should know about.” He hands it to me. A printout of something that Liam emailed to himself, as a reminder to print it perhaps, or send it to someone? Me? Was it a draft of a suicide letter? Was it a portion of a letter that was meant to explain his sudden move to some far-off place? South America or something? I read it. It’s not addressed to anyone, it just starts.
I wish there were a more eloquent way to put this. One that wouldn’t look so cowardly, but...I want out. I need to take a break, maybe a permanent one. I don’t know yet. There’s so much I wish I could explain to make this all make sense, but it’s complex, and frankly, I’m so tired of being misunderstood. I don’t want to explain to everyone what’s happened, I just want out. Of all of it.
I realize that my hands are trembling so intensely, that I’m barely able to finish reading it. I look up at Len, choking back tears. I can’t bring myself to say anything. It was like Liam to use an ellipsis to show his pause in that second sentence, but feeling misunderstood? I didn’t understand. He “didn’t want to explain what’s happened”? What had happened?