To the Sea (Follow your Bliss) (4 page)

Chapter Four

As
the memory of the salty smell of the ocean faded, Kira remembered to stop at
the hospital and auto body to collect Jeremy’s belongings. Using the GPS to
navigate the labyrinthine streets of Boston proper was futile. Trying to
navigate the streets without it was worse, so with a few landmarks she knew
from her days on foot, along with the GPS,—in a tone that bordered on begging
as it repeated, recalculating—Kira managed to arrive at “Sully’s Garage.” After
waiting in the unattended office for ten minutes, she timidly poked her head
into the garage itself.

“Can
I help you?” a mechanic called from beneath a Toyota.

“I’m
here to pick up Jeremy Annandale’s things.” Kira willed herself not to fall
apart. The mechanic rolled out on a dolly and picked up an oil-stained box.
Peering in, she saw Jeremy’s laptop, his iPod, and a few other incidentals.
Back in the car, Kira let out a deep breath.

In
the daylight, the daunting ride to Mass General was surreal. The fluffy clouds
looked like doodled cartoons and the people, as they passed going about their
everyday lives, like caricatures.

The
familiar, yet aseptic scent of the hospital slapped Kira in the face as the
automatic doors whooshed open. She faltered, but forced herself on.

An
older woman, her face lined with kindness, signed out the paper bag labeled
Jeremy Annandale. Kira took it delicately in her hands. As she passed the
nurses’ station, Nurse Laura caught her attention.

“Mrs.
Speranza-Annandale,” she called, her sneakers squeaking as she trotted down the
hall. Her face looked carefully arranged as she handed Kira the familiar black
leather wallet she’d given Jeremy for Christmas.

“The
woman who was brought in with him, well, it was with her things, must have been
a mix-up. Realizing it didn’t belong to their daughter, the family just
returned it this morning. Mix-up,” she said flustered.

Kira
suddenly felt lightheaded, the overhead fluorescents shone too bright, and the
sound of an ambulance behind her dizzying. Laura pressed her lips together as
if stopping them from saying more.

“I
don’t understand,” Kira said.

“I’m
sorry,” Laura said with a look of empathy on her face.

“What
do you mean
the woman
?” Kira asked carefully.

“The
passenger in the accident, her family was in the waiting room with you.”

“Don’t
worry she’ll be okay.”

Kira
looked at her blankly.

“I
thought you knew each—”

A
speaker crackled, “Nurse Laura Ramirez ER Room 3B.” The nurse gently squeezed
Kira’s arm and then hurried down the corridor.

Kira
felt like someone had picked her up, turned her upside down, shook her, and all
the inside-matter wasn’t sure where to settle. A woman, a coworker, a friend
or—? With Jeremy? She didn’t allow herself to progress to the next possibility,
but instead staggered to her car, driving immediately home, the collection of
Jeremy’s possessions arranged around the urn on the passenger seat.

Kira
set the black container, the cardboard box, and the paper bag on the counter
next to Jeremy’s wallet. Tentatively, she opened the paper bag and found
clothing, Jeremy’s watch stopped at six twelve—a.m. or p.m., she wondered. They
must have had to remove it in the ER, along with his wedding band, his key fob,
and his cell phone. It was dead, his car destroyed, he was no longer married,
and time didn’t matter, she thought darkly.

Following
this, Kira dug through the box from the garage and aside from a map, his
electronics, some gum, and sunglasses; everything depressingly reminded her
that, like his cell phone, Jeremy was also dead. The word sounded so harsh. She
tried to summon a synonym, but the four letters remained as if forever etched
into her vocabulary.

Just
then, Kira’s cell rang, and the caller ID showed, Alice Schulz, her partner on
the Foster-Davis account.

“Alice,
hi,” Kira said clearing her throat, still knocking off the rust from not having
interacted with humanity for a while. 

“I’m
so sorry,” she started, “how are you?”

Although
Kira could vaguely recall the appropriate response to this question, something
along the lines of okay, fine, good, or great, for some reason she paused to
assess how she truly felt. Crushed. Dazed. Crippled. Agonized. The smell of the
grease from the cardboard box, the memories of the hospital in the paper bag,
and the question of why Jeremy’s wallet had been with another family, clogged
her mind.

“Alice,
I’m —” No words formed. Gutted. Depressed. Lost. Confused.

Alice
politely filled in. “I can’t imagine Kira, I really can’t. I’m so sorry.” There
was nothing to fill the silence. “Listen, I’d tell you to take as much time as
you need, so I’m sorry to ask you this; Brinkman is breathing down my neck. Or
more accurately, the clients are breathing down his. He’s reasonable, really,
but I need your data files. I can come pick them up,” Alice offered
apologetically, but sounded tired from late nights doing the job of two people.

“I’m
sorry. Everything is here,” Kira said, hardly remembering the material. She
looked at the file drive on the counter and realized she could open it and
email it to Alice with Jeremy’s computer. “I told Frank I’d be in on Monday. In
the meantime, I’ll email you everything.”

“Thanks,”
Alice said sounding relieved. “Monday, if you’re ready.”

“See
you then.”

Once
off the phone, Kira turned to Jeremy’s computer, but the battery had drained.
She went upstairs to look for the cable in his home office.

She
stumbled upon several unpacked boxes, from their move, crammed under his desk.
Written in black Sharpie on the side and top of each box was Jeremy’s name.
When they’d moved, Kira designated black for him, red for her, purple for
bathroom items, green for the kitchen, and so on. Like a schoolgirl, she traced
the letters, started to open the one nearest her, but behind the box, she spied
the cable, one end plugged into the wall outlet, and the other tucked under a
glass paperweight on his desk.

Kira
dutifully returned to the task with the computer, and as she waited for it to
boot up, she clutched Jeremy’s wallet in her hands. She wondered what she ought
to do with it. She considered putting it upstairs with his other boxes. Then
decided she’d offer these things to his parents.

She’d
imagined, perhaps a bit unfairly, that she’d be the first one to go, never
thinking about what people did with a lifetime’s worth of possessions. When her
father died, the communal household absorbed everything except his eyeglasses,
which she kept, and a few keepsakes her sister rescued.

Kira
opened the wallet and found a couple hundred-dollar bills, Jeremy’s license,
along with credit cards, memberships, and business cards. A folded gas station
receipt fluttered to the floor. The address indicated the same street where
they found his Beemer. The time printed read
nine-forty-seven p.m
., just
after they’d spoken. She imagined him, shielding his hair from the rain,
pumping gas, innocently unaware that it would be his last time. Not allowing
herself to define the leaden heaviness in her stomach, she wondered who the
passenger was.

Tears
pricked the sides of Kira’s eyes. As she set this aside, the laptop chirped to
life. The home screen displayed a bird’s-eye-view photo of Jeremy’s Harvard
crew team on the Charles. Kira plugged the file drive into the USB port, but
before she could open it, a speech bubble popped up with the words:

Waiting
for you…

Kira
hovered the little arrow of the touch pad hesitantly, and then she clicked the
bubble. A site called
Ivy League Singles
filled the screen.

“What
the?” she said aloud. It loaded and then on the top left hand corner, a photo
of Jeremy with a series of stats appeared.

Height:
5’ 9’’

Weight:
165

Hair:
Brown

Eye
Color: Brown

Listed
below this was Jeremy’s University and graduating year, his career, and a little
blurb that said,
Looking to meet smart girls who know how to have fun.

Kira
stared unblinking in the screen’s glare. She clicked around the page a little
more, found a list of potential dates, and then went to the account page. She
tried to come up with an explanation, but the nervousness in the pit of her
stomach, transformed into something like the truth, sitting squarely on her
chest. His account page indicated he’d been a member since August of the
previous year. There, she found his credit card information that she checked
against the cards in his wallet to be sure. Kira gasped for breath.

“How
could—? Jeremy, why?” she said. Kira closed the laptop. She cried, clutching
her arms around her chest. She paced as her tears slowed, thinking back to August.
Jeremy had just helped win a big case and received a promotion. He’d celebrated
with the guys from the office. The following day they decided to postpone the
honeymoon in Paris until the spring because they were so busy. They married the
next month, September. That was also when he’d started working longer hours.
She didn’t want to feel what this meant. However, she had to know the facts.

Kira
opened the laptop again, and a new speech bubble appeared.

Still
waiting…

She
clicked on it, found a history feature, and scrolled through messages Jeremy
had exchanged with several women. Disgust mixed with hurt and nausea channeled
from her head to her chest and down to her stomach. She followed thread after
thread of conversations between him and women who had profiles on the site,
feeling sicker with each one.

After
reading an exchange about favorite sexual positions, Kira navigated away from
the Ivy League Singles page and opened up Jeremy’s email account.

After
some fooling with the password, she figured out it was,
The Hammer,
the
nickname Jeremy’s rowing buddies and frat brothers called him. There were
three-hundred-forty-eight unopened emails, and she started at the top. Kira
systematically deleted advertisements and work-related emails. With ninety-eight
left, she determined about half were from friends and associates. The remaining
were from women whose names she recognized from the dating site. 

After
reviewing enough to confirm her suspicions, Kira clicked to the sent folder and
found countless emails to these same women, and others, about meeting up,
dates, restaurant reservations, and one to his best friend Blain that read,

She
has no clue. Such a hippie, you were so right about her. Pathetic, really. She
plays the good wife. Makes me dinner. Cleans. Obsessively neat. She thinks
everything is just perfect, all sunshine and rainbows. She practically has
unicorns jumping out of her ass, though I wouldn’t know, she’s such a prude. I
can’t even remember the last time we slept together. She’s more clueless than
the blonde lawyer in that movie we had to watch during rush. She has her house
to decorate; won the hot husband who brings home the g’s while I get to go out
and still have my fun. Win, Win Annandale. So meet me tonight at Ashe and don’t
be late. I need my wingman. –J

A
thick lump rose in Kira’s throat and she turned to the kitchen sink, throwing
up. As she lifted her head and wiped her mouth, she looked out the window.
Darkness had fallen. Reading the emails was torturous. Like a cat watching a
ball go back and forth, her mind switched from not wanting to believe what she
read, mixed with a deeper sadness than she had yet felt, to a rage so raw and
primal, it threatened to erupt from her veins.

Chapter Five

Kira’s
cell phone vibrated. Nicole. She answered without letting it ring again.

“I
need you. Here. Please. Now,” Kira said, her jaw tight, hardly letting the
words slip through her lips.

“Funny
thing, I’m just down the street,” Nicole said. 

In
no time, Nicole stood in the tiled kitchen. She held a plastic bag that wafted
the sweet and sour smell of Chinese take-out, but stared, mesmerized at the
granite countertop littered with what now amounted to evidence.

“I
had a meeting in Boston, though I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to break away. I
thought I’d come and check on—”

Kira
lunged for Nicole and wrapped her arms around her. She cried on Nicole’s
shoulder, the familiar grief mixed with relief, and a new element. Anger. A
friend had come, serendipitously, to, perhaps, her most difficult trial
yet—betrayal.

The
women relocated to the living room; certain the array in the kitchen would have
robbed them of their appetites. A symphony in her mouth, the Chinese food
tasted far better than the crackers and assorted pantry items she’d barely been
subsisting on over the last few weeks. In her grief, she was unable to bring
herself to the market. Now, fury brought on a new appetite.

“I’ll
tell you everything, but first, let’s eat.”

“I
see you’ve been keeping things orderly,” Nicole said, referring to shelves of
photo albums and the coffee table books hidden within stacks of boxes on her
last visit. Kira had arranged them artfully with bowls, a tasteful lovebird
sculpture she and Jeremy had received on their wedding day, a couple’s golf
tournament trophy they won at his family’s country club, and several framed
photographs of family and friends. The moment she started thinking about Jeremy’s
death, a lump rose in her throat forcing itself passed anger. She pushed the
white take-out container aside. 

“It
was the only thing that I could do without thinking,” Kira said.

Nicole
set her Lo-Mein aside. “Tell me everything.” 

However,
before she did, Kira returned to the kitchen, retrieved Jeremy’s urn from the
counter, and demoted it from the mantel to a table toward the corner of the
room, like an insolent child sent to a time out.

“He
should hear my heartbreak,” she said seriously.

Nicole
looked slightly amused.

Anger,
an unfamiliar companion, licked like fiery, hot flames at the edges of Kira’s
mind. Her lips sunk into the flat line they’d become accustomed to. Anger and
sadness vied for domination.

Kira
explained the computer, the wallet, and the cell phone. Like Sherlock Holmes,
Nicole pieced several things together.

“On
Friday night, there’s the call from you around nine p.m., and at 9:47 he got
gas from the Shell station. Then he met Viveca from Dartmouth, possibly at a
club called Ashe. Then his phone shows he responded to a text from Ainsleigh
from Brown at 10:55, agreeing to meet her as well. And a text out to Blain at
eleven asking, ‘Where the hell are you? I’m getting hammered. Come for the fun,
man,’” she read verbatim. She clicked through these various communiques and
then again, just to be sure.

“Son
of a bitch.” Nicole’s words mimicked Kira’s anger, but a part of her, the wife
who’d pledged herself to Jeremy, or perhaps the mind that wanted to deny pain,
kept her quiet.

As
if Nicole could read Kira’s mind she said, “Kira Speranza, you’ve been in this
house suffering for the better part of a month, and no doubt losing someone you
love is heartrending, truly, but all of this is proof.” She motioned to the
laptop. “At your wedding, I saw him—” she stopped, reading Kira’s expression.
She took a breath and let her hackles settle. “He was flirting with Justine. I
heard from William, who was at the bachelor party, that he was—” She fluttered
her hands around searching for the right word. “Debaucherous. He—” but she
stopped again. For now, Kira had heard enough, her vacillating emotions having
shifted back to sadness.

“Would
you like some wine?”

The
smooth red tempered the despairing loss and the dark anger, mellowing Kira with
curiosity.

“I
wonder if there’s anything in his office that might explain things,” Kira said
plaintively. If there was anything else, Kira knew Nicole would help her
process it.

When
they were younger, Nicole was dauntless, always up for adventure and danger.
Kira, who lived lawlessly on the commune, avoided trouble and rarely stepped a
toe out of line. She witnessed enough oddities in her daily life that she had
no desire to seek them out. Nicole, who had rules and expectations to break,
was the one who tested boundaries and charged forward fearlessly.

Nicole
edged her upstairs.

The
smell of the office: paper, leather, and wood polish, all a distant reminder of
the Jeremy she thought knew, overwhelmed her.

Nicole
flipped on the light.

“Where
to start?” Nicole said absently gazing around at the shiny desk, leather
reading chair, the filing cabinet, the books, the awards, certificates,
diplomas, and a surfeit of trophies. “Rather self-indulgent, isn’t it? It’s a
bit of an ego-trip in here.” She snorted.

Nicole
also had the ability to cut through to the brutal truth, a trait Kira seldom
allowed herself. Kira looked at the space differently, not a single photo of
her and Jeremy was on display.

Nicole
poked around, not finding anything unusual. She went through the boxes at
Kira’s feet and again, nothing out of the ordinary: notebooks, birthday cards,
keepsake tee shirts, and photos of teenage Jeremy with girls and friends before
they knew him.

Nicole
jiggled the handle to the oak filing cabinet, but it didn’t budge. She walked
slowly along the bookshelves, her head tilted to the side reading the titles.

Feeling
dismal, looking at all the memories of young Jeremy, Kira absently watched
Nicole slide a leather-bound book out and read its back. Then just as she was
about to replace it, a slip of paper fluttered to the floor. It had the letters
CL and an address on it written in Jeremy’s tidy writing. Kira didn’t recognize
the location.

“Hmm,
we’ll hang onto this.”

“Well
it’s not like we’re running an investigation. Jeremy isn’t a criminal,” Kira
said, hedging.

“Depends
on how you define criminal. He broke your heart, twice.”

***

Kira’s
dreams that night were a disturbing confluence of young and present-day Jeremy,
women, and salty rainfall.

The
next morning, Kira awoke to the muffled sound of her kitchen alive with the
makings of breakfast. For the tiniest of moments, she imagined Jeremy
downstairs, ready to surprise her with breakfast in bed. As quickly as the
fantasy flashed into her mind, she recalled he’d never done anything like that.
In fact, she couldn’t come up with a truly romantic moment in their entire
relationship.

The
smell of fresh coffee, orange juice, and eggs with cheese brought Kira back to
life. Nicole motioned to a box of doughnuts. “I sneaked down the street to that
bakery, the one on the corner. It’s so old-fashioned and quaint. For some
reason, I really needed a chocolate frosted. Woke up early; apparently my body
forgot it’s the weekend.”

After
the take-out the night before and breakfast, Kira felt nourished and cared for.
While she savored the meal, she noticed the evidence, as they were calling it,
was conspicuously absent. Kira poured a second cup of coffee.

Nicole
cleared her throat. “So, I was thinking. This may sound a little crazy, but
what if we sent a message to all those women on Jeremy’s dating list on the Ivy
League website instructing them to meet us, or rather him, tonight at Jeremy’s
office. A little rendezvous. Then we can tell them in person that he was a
creep, you’re a widow, and determine which one is missing, that may lead us to
the woman he was with that night. Maybe this will give you some answers.”

Nicole
had a plan. It was bold. But Kira couldn’t bear the thought of it.

“I
don’t want to meet them. I don’t want—”

“The
truth?”

Kira
nodded. The weight of that single word was almost more crushing than the grief
she’d shouldered. “But—”

“The
truth will pull you out of the back and forth between sadness and anger.”

“I
know, but—” Kira wanted to be the strong woman she was when her father died,
when her mother left, when she put herself through school. But she realized in
the last few years spent molding her life into perfection, she’d lost sight of
that part of herself. “It’s going to—”

“Hurt.
I know. It will. But I’m here with you. We can do it together. Plus, if they
know what an asshole he was, maybe they’ll think twice about who they date.”

At
that, Nicole’s cheeks flushed, the recent memory of her mother having an affair
with one of her colleagues, still fresh. Her parent’s worked it out; they’d
gotten through the pain. Kira just wasn’t sure she had the strength. Yes, she
was angry, but the part of her that still grieved losing him had not fully
processed the new information. She felt torn and confused, not ready to
confront the truth.

“I
may have found the key to that filing cabinet up in the office.” Nicole held up
a small silver key. 

After
cleaning up, they ventured upstairs, a sense of foreboding increasing with
Kira’s every step.

Once
in Jeremy’s office, Nicole slid the key into the filing cabinet.

“Voila,”
Nicole said opening the drawer. She pulled out a few files and an old newspaper
with his rowing team on the front. Nothing appeared unusual, until she reached
underneath a book and found a cache of DVDs, each titled with a woman’s name in
uppercase handwriting. There was Heather, Denise, Bunny… It went on and on.
Kira knew what Nicole was thinking, the four-letter expletive that paired well
to emphasize the word asshole.

“What
do you think?” Kira asked dumbly, nonetheless.

“Kira,
I think Jeremy was a man-whore,” she said deadpan.

Kira
glimpsed the dark humor of Nicole’s joke causing a sound she hardly remembered
to erupt out of her. She laughed until she gasped for breath. Nicole joined in
and those moments of laughter stretched across Kira’s heart like a Band-Aid, a
salve to her wound.

Nicole
brought food, a warm embrace, and now they shared laughter, what her
grandmother argued was the best medicine, something conspicuously absent from
her relationship with Jeremy.

Nicole
grabbed a ruler from the desk drawer and poked at the DVDs as if they carried
some undesirable contagion.

“I
count twelve. None of the names match the ones downstairs, though. Ah, I stand
corrected; there’s Britney and Candace here, which explains why he wanted to
meet both of them together.”

“How
could I have been so stupid? So naïve?”

“Don’t
beat yourself up. Jeremy was slick. I thought as much when you first introduced
him to me, but you said he was the one, so—”

“You
trusted me. I trusted me—my judgment. I feel duped, tricked by him and my lack
of perception. I just wanted—”

“The
perfect man,” Nicole said. “The perfect marriage. It’s a myth,” Nicole said
delicately.

“The
house—everything I didn’t have growing up, everything I thought would make a
family, make me complete.”

“You
already are.”

“You’re
so wise,” Kira said choking back tears.

“You
were in college. You didn’t really have much experience with guys back home. Of
course, he flattered you. He was desirable. All the girls in your sorority
encouraged you. They wanted him. The guys wanted to be like him. By certain
standards he was a catch.”

Slumped
in the leather chair, Kira put her hands over her face as if to lift the
invisible veil of ignorance or shield herself from the whole ordeal.