Page 63 of Happy Wife

I can feel the world starting to spin. I must have a dire look in my eyes, because suddenly both Ardell and Fritz have either side of me and they’re pulling me into Este’s house. I can hear Este screaming.

“Beau! Beau, get in here!”

I have no idea how much time passes after that. I’m just sitting on the edge of the couch where Ardell and Fritz set me down, trying to see if my heartbeat will slow down, or if it will race to find the end of my time on Earth.

I have lost Will every hour since that first morning I realized he was gone, but until now, I could find him again. I could picture some cosmic loophole, a silver lining, some impossible comeback where I was wrong and he was alive, and we could fix…everything. But now he is gone for good, and I’m free-falling through space. I close my eyes, trying to conjure his face, but I can’t. My brain won’t let me even go into a liminal space to see him again. One more time.

“I can’t—” I start to stand up, but I’m so wobbly I sit back down. Beau comes over and just scoops me up into a bear hug.

“We’ve got you, Nora. We’ve got you.” Pressed up against his chest, I hear the quiver in his voice and feel his stuttered breath.He’s crying. I sink into him, but I’m numb. There’s nothing there. No feelings. Just—air and silence.

Ardell comes over and sits on the coffee table across from me.

“Nora, I’m so sorry. About all of this.”

“How do you—What—Where did you find him?”

“A pair of kayakers found him snagged in a lily pad near one of the canals. Our best guess is that his body took some time to surface.”

I nod like I am taking this information in, but I know that I am going to have to hear it all again. Someone is going to have to tell me multiple times. Maybe for years. I might never believe it.

Because this can’t be happening. This can’t be real.

“Fritz came down to identify him.”

Fritz steps over. “I didn’t want you to have to be the one.”

I nod at him. He’s right. I didn’t want to be the one to see whatever that was.

That…Will…Oh god.

“He looks to have suffered blunt force trauma to the head. We’ve got our homicide unit involved, trying to get to the bottom of things.”

“Homicide?” Este looks like she’s been slapped.

“We’ll clearly have to wait for our medical examiner’s opinion on it, but given the wounds he sustained, this doesn’t appear to have been an accident.”

I stare at him. So unable to process his words that my entire body goes numb.

Will Somerset doesn’t die. He drifts off in his sleep surrounded by his family at the enviable age of a hundred and four. He passes gently into the eternal, shrouded in dignity like some fucked-up American Gothic bullshit.

And hereallydoesn’t get murdered.

I stand. “I think I’d like to go home, please. I need to go home.”

“The press is en masse. Let’s take her through the back.” Fritz looks out the window to the front.

Her.

They’re talking about me like I’m not here. Like I’m a thing to be shuttled around. That feels about right. Take me through the back. Put me in a padded room. Strap me to a spaceship and send me to the moon. It doesn’t matter. Will’s gone.

But he can’t be gone.

He can’t be murdered.

That doesn’t make any sense.

I study Fritz’s expression like it’s a weather pattern, searching for proof, for signs of the grief and horror of being the one to identify your best friend’s body. Like maybe seeing his grief will crack open my own. It’s barely there, underneath the surface of his eyes. He looks tired, even a shade of broken. But he’s in damage control mode—like any attorney. Solve the big problem first. Have feelings later.

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