Soulmates (2 page)

When I got back to New York I stopped all my Google Alerts. I thought about filing for divorce. I had tried to reach Ethan via an e-mail address I found at the end of one of his videos, but he never responded. Maybe Amaya deleted the missives before he got to them. I'll never know. I didn't have the energy to hire a private investigator and make Ethan divorce me, so I let it sit.

And, when I thought about it, there was a reason to stay married: I didn't want to pay him any alimony. I've always made at least four times what he did. Before he found Our Lady of the King Pigeon he was working as a part-time copy editor for an advertising agency. He never loved the work, but he seemed to be content with it.

I checked the Web one last time before I left the office to see if there was any new information on the case. But there was nothing. I gathered up my things against the dwindling light pouring through the windows and headed downtown to the home where Ethan and I were happy, once.

Over the years I had developed a nighttime ritual to stave off thoughts of Ethan and our old life. I would come home from
work and spend no less than thirty minutes but no more than an hour meticulously preparing a healthy meal. I would sit down at the kitchen table and eat my green vegetables and lean meats, making sure I chewed each bite at least ten times. At first I would actually count to myself, and the repetition would soothe me. But soon the
ten ten ten
became mechanically ingrained.

In those early days I would thumb through a hard copy of the
New York Times,
thinking that ascetic virtue could replace my unhappiness. But soon I shifted to reading the news on my laptop, then to the sale page of Shopbop, and ultimately to the mindless pleasures of early-evening television: local news, national news,
Access Hollywood,
reruns of
Gilmore Girls
.

By now, I still did the cooking and the chewing, but usually I turned on the TV the second I walked through the door. I liked to have it as background noise. Our apartment on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Thirty-Sixth Street was the perfect size for Ethan and me: one medium bedroom, a generous living room, a real kitchen, and even a small room that Ethan had used as an office, which we'd equipped with a pull-out couch for guests and a hideous ancient plaid chair he bought at an old lady's yard sale the summer before our senior year.

Ethan and I went to a small liberal arts college outside Minneapolis. We got jobs in town and stayed over the summer every year because we loved it there so much. It was late July, and we had passed the old woman sweltering under the relentless sun several times while running our morning errands. Each time we went by her, she was slumped deeper in her lawn chair. Our
quiet street got very little foot traffic, and we'd seen only three or four people fingering her collection of 1950s-era suits and heavy mahogany furniture.

Though I felt sorry for her, we didn't need anything more for our apartment—we could barely fit a dresser in our tiny bedroom—so I didn't want to go to her yard sale and get her hopes up. But Ethan insisted. “She seems lonely,” he said. “I just want to talk to her.”

I watched from our kitchen window as he walked up to the old woman. She visibly brightened the second Ethan opened his mouth. She sat up straight in her rickety lawn chair, and as Ethan leaned toward her, she fixed her hair coquettishly, smoothed her floral dress, and cocked her head to the side. I could tell he was flirting with her, charming her with that aw-shucks Montana drawl that I found so irresistible.

After a few moments I turned away from the scene unfolding across the way and smiled to myself. When he opened the door twenty minutes later, with the yellow plaid monstrosity sitting in all its 1970s glory behind him, all I could do was grin.

I could not reconcile that man with the man who had left me. After I got back from Minnesota and cured myself of Googling Ethan, my final step was to get rid of that chair, setting it out with a sad thump late on a Sunday night so I wouldn't have to look at it again before the garbagemen picked it up early the next morning.

Now that I'm the only person who lives in our apartment, a hollow quality has settled over the once bright rooms that can be drowned out only by the soothing baritones of nightly newscasters. When I got home that night, I went over to turn
on the TV after I set my briefcase down, but then I hesitated: I wanted to find out more about Ethan, but I was afraid to hear his name come out of a newscaster's mouth. I didn't think I could stomach moving images of the cave where he and Amaya were found, or actual footage of their body bags.

I decided to leave the TV off for the time being, but after a few minutes of trying to prepare a small, homely meal of bagged salad and a can of vegetarian chili, the sounds of the can opener cranking, the fridge door creaking open and shut, and the plastic bag rustling started to grate. I put my utensils down and paced the uneven wood floors.

I had thrown out almost everything that Ethan owned in the months after he left, but there were a few things that seemed too cruel to toss—mostly things that related to his mom. She had died in a car crash when he was fourteen, so I never met her. I had put everything I saved in a drawer in the spare room, and I went to go see what was left.

The first thing I grabbed was a photograph. It was in a cheap metal frame, but the image itself was lovely. Rosemary looked to be about seven months pregnant, and she was wearing a frame-hugging maternity dress that accentuated her protruding belly. The photo had the slightly brownish tint of lots of photos taken in the late seventies, and it gave her blond hair an almost reddish gleam. She was smiling at the camera, looking serene, and her left hand was supporting her stomach, like she was protecting its contents from the camera's eye. At the bottom of the picture, Ethan had written in ballpoint pen
July 1978
.

Looking at the picture reminded me of the heart-destroying discussions Ethan and I had about kids in the year before he
left. Right after he split I thought about our phantom children all the time. I even had obvious dreams about babies dressed in frilly Victorian garb with blank spaces where their faces should have been. I thought we'd have children by now, at least one, maybe two. I pictured a little girl with Ethan's sweet expression and my light hair.

One thing Ethan and I had agreed on was that we wanted two children. Just like I have Beth, he has a younger brother, Travis, who is in the air force and stationed outside Doha, Qatar—or at least he was the last time I heard from him. I had met him only a few times, and though he tried to be a good sibling to Ethan, his efforts didn't always land. Ethan was a sensitive kid and he'd read his brother's concern as judgment.

Their dad's another story. He works for the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks department. An army vet who met Ethan's mom in San Francisco after the Vietnam War, he never knew how to relate to his striving, gentle older son. Ethan had zero interest in hunting, which was Ray's primary method of bonding with his boys. It didn't matter so much when Rosemary was alive. On weekends she would take Ethan to the nearest community bookstore and leave him there while she went about her errands. Ethan spent hours in a cozy chair in a distant corner of the shop, reading Jack London and Ernest Hemingway and Thomas McGuane and other bards of wide-open spaces while Ray and Travis would be out hunting deer, elk, or bighorn sheep, depending on the season.

In the months after Rosemary's death, Ray tried to take Ethan on a few hunting trips. But, Ethan told me, he always did something wrong. Make too much noise or get bored and
stare up at the sky. Ray didn't get mad about this, exactly. He'd just turn silent and cut their trips short. Soon Ray would just go hunting with Travis or his buddies from the Montana FWP and leave Ethan at home. So Ethan would read whatever he could find around the house instead of whatever he could find at the bookstore. That's how he became an expert on indigenous flora and fauna. He could talk for hours about bears. I used to love the depth and oddity of his knowledge.

Looking at the picture of Rosemary, I thought about Ray. The way he looked proud and almost happy at our wedding. The sad, downturned lines at the corners of his mouth in repose, the ones I noticed the one time he came out to my family's house in Minneapolis for Christmas. Despite our difficult mother, Beth and I tried our best to include him, but our rituals seemed to make him uncomfortable. He left a day early, without any real explanation. Ethan looked crushed but never wanted to talk about it. “That's just how Dad is,” he said at the time.

Ray and Travis had always done the best they could by Ethan, and he appreciated them for it. As much faith as I had lost in Ethan's integrity, I never thought he would cut ties with Ray or Travis. I knew that Travis had been in touch with Ethan—at least he was when we broke up. Travis called me all the way from Qatar about two months after Ethan left to lend me his support. Loyalty and a man's word were important to him, and he told me he didn't respect Ethan's choices. What he said was “I think that boy's lost his damn mind.” It buoyed me for about an hour, but the brief elation of being right was no match for the misery of being left.

I started and deleted sixty-four e-mails to Travis, since I felt closer to him than I did to Ray. I wondered if Travis had even heard the news yet, if he was even still in Qatar. And what would I say anyway?
Hi, we haven't talked in a few years, but do you know what happened to your poor dead brother?
I couldn't bear to be the one to break it to him.

Fortunately, my attempts at composing a straightforward yet sympathetic e-mail were interrupted by my phone ringing in the kitchen. I walked over, picked it up, and saw that the call was from a 575 area code, which my phone helpfully told me was in New Mexico.

“Hello?” I croaked out.

“Is this Dana Powell?” a twangy male voice inquired.

“Dana Morrison. I used to be Dana Powell.”

“You are married to Ethan Powell. Is that correct?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Ma'am, this is Sheriff Matt Lewis from the Sagebrush County Sheriff's Office. I have some upsetting news.” His voice got sensitive. “You might want to sit down for this.”

“Spare me,” I said, more harshly than I meant to. “I saw it all over the
New York Post
. What took you so long to contact me?”

“Well, ma'am, it took us a while to figure out that Ethan still had a wife. I was not aware the case had become news in New York City. We found your information among his personal effects and thought you might be able to aid us in our investigation.”

I sighed deeply and sat up. I hated everything that I had been feeling since I found out about Ethan's death, but I wasn't a
monster. I was a good girl. I would always cooperate with authorities. “I'm happy to help in whatever way I can.”

“I appreciate that. Ideally we'd interview you in person here in New Mexico, but I understand if that's not feasible at this time.”

I paused, my head spinning. Could I take time off from work? “It depends,” I said.

“Well, let's chat now and we can go from there,” Lewis said. “I'm going to need to ask you some difficult questions. I apologize in advance.”

“I understand,” I said, trying to stop my voice from quavering.

“How long were you and Mr. Powell together?”

“Ten years. Married for about three.”

“And why are you living apart?” Lewis asked.

“He got involved with Amaya and left me.” I tried not to sound bitter, but I don't think I succeeded.

“In that time, was Mr. Powell ever violent with you?” he asked.

I laughed out loud. Ethan made us get those useless no-kill mousetraps when we had an infestation at our apartment. When they didn't work—as I predicted—and I called the exterminator, he refused to speak to me for half a day.

“Ma'am? “Lewis said, his voice still even. “Can you answer my question?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, pulling myself together. “No, no. He was never abusive toward me.”

“Was he abusive toward others?”

“No. Never. Why are you asking me this?”

“Well, ma'am, one of the possibilities based on the evidence is that what happened to Mr. Powell and Ms. Walters was a murder-suicide.”

“No,” I said plainly. “That's not possible. What is your evidence for that?”

“I'm not at liberty to say. I don't want to jeopardize our investigation.” Lewis maintained his monotone. “But we haven't officially ruled either death a suicide at this time.”

“I don't believe that Ethan would ever kill another soul, much less himself. Are you investigating the possibility of foul play at the retreat?”

“We're looking at all angles right now,” Lewis said, “but at this point we do not have anyone we're calling a suspect.”

“I think you should be looking a little harder,” I snapped. “How many murders does your department investigate a year?”

“Well, ma'am, this county only has about a thousand full-time residents. So this is the first one in quite a while.”

“Maybe you should be handing this over to someone with more experience. Maybe the FBI or the New Mexico State Police. Because there's no way the man I love is a killer, and you'd know that if you did a little investigating.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but it started to get louder. I slowed down my speech to make my point. “It. Is. Not. Possible.”

Lewis sighed. “Listen. Between you and me, I do think there's something hinky going on at the retreat. But the guy who runs the place . . .”

“Yoni?” I offered.

“Yes. Yoni, John Brooks, what have you. Mr. Brooks has a
very expensive team of lawyers, and he's greased a lot of palms over the past few years among the people who run this county. Additionally, Mr. Powell and Ms. Walters died on unincorporated land and not at the retreat. As of yet, we have not been able to get a warrant to search the grounds, and we have not been able to interview Mr. Brooks or anyone else over there.” I detected a bit of frustration in the sheriff's voice.