Page 21 of When I'm Gone
He’d already looked up his contact information on the phone, briefly, after seeing Dr. Neal’s name on the Maranatha envelope. But upon further investigation, the phone numbers didn’t match. Luke took it as a sign he was jumping to conclusions. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He stared at the sleeping phone, its screen black and covered in smudges. Avoidance had been the right choice. While the phone was dark, it was as if he could keep a little part of Natalie in suspended animation, like some Disney princess May was always watching on TV. He wanted nothing more than to leave the sleeping princess in peace, but his list of questions was getting longer than his list of excuses.
Luke entered her password. Apps sprawled across her touch screen, never organized in any way he could easily understand. Maybe that’s what had kept him from getting a smartphone for so long; they had so many useless applications on them, so many things that consumed time like it was endless. Well, it wasn’t endless.
He tapped the green messages button, feeling a little uncomfortable searching through his wife’s phone—like a jealous lover. Top and center in black letters was the name Dr. Neal. If his name was on top, Dr. Neal was the last person on earth to send his wife a message. His finger hovered over the name, and he touched it cautiously, as if it could bite him.
The message screen opened instantly, one blue message glowing on the screen. It said: “I’m glad we found each other.” Then ... nothing. Luke tried to scroll down, searching for more messages, for some explanation as to why this guy’s moniker was all over his wife’s life. But the blue text bubble bounced back into place. “I’m glad we found each other.”
What the hell? That wasnota normal message to get from your college professor no matter how many times he helped you out of a difficult situation. And no way he’d sent her only one text on the day she died. An unnerving thought came to him. If there were no previous texts from Dr. Neal, Natalie must’ve been deleting them.
Luke switched over to the recent calls. The first four names made him let out the breath he’d been holding, fogging up the screen. This was more normal. Natalie talked to her mom, Annie, Luke, and the hospice nurse Tammy. But he couldn’t help swiping his finger up one more time. The fifth name on the recent-calls list was Dr. Neal. They talked for twenty minutes the week before she died. Damn it.
Luke dropped the phone as if it was on fire. He rubbed his eyes with closed fists, and the tears he’d successfully held back for three months burned angrily against his eyelids. No, he wouldn’t let an old envelope, Natalie’s letters, one text, and a few phone calls make him question the sixteen years they’d had together. Right?
Luke was about to grab the phone again when his bedroom door swung open. Clayton, blurry-eyed and disheveled, squinted against the light.
“Hey, buddy, whatcha doing? It’s almost ...” He glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand, but it blinked 12:00 from a random blackout over a week before. He’d never reset it. What did a three-year-old know about time anyway? “It’s really, really late, buddy. Do you need a drink? To go potty?”
Clayton hoisted his tattered baby blanket over his shoulder. “I need Mommy.” He stuck the tip of his forefinger into his mouth. He looked so tiny standing across the room, his head barely up to the doorknob of the bedroom door. Luke put out his arms and waved his son toward him.
“I know, buddy.” Clayton crawled up on Luke’s lap, curling up into a ball like a little lapdog. Luke kissed the crown of his head, surprised he still smelled a little of Annie’s perfume. “I miss Mommy too. But we have each other. You can sleep in here tonight if you want.”
Clayton gasped and yanked his finger out of his mouth.“Mommy!”He lunged across the bed, wrapping his wet fingers around the blue cover of his mom’s phone. “I found Mommy.” He expertly flipped through the app icons, tapped the video application, and searched through the videos Luke still didn’t have the heart to watch.
So, now Clayton’s mommy was a phone. When her voice came across the speakers, Luke tried not to look as he crushed the pause button glowing on the screen.
“I’m sorry I took the phone. Do you want to keep it in your bed?”
Clayton nodded. “I want to sleep with Mommy tonight.”
“That’s fine; you can sleep with the phone.”That phone is not your mom,Luke wanted to say. He had a real mom, with flesh and blood and a heartbeat he could feel and hear. A heart he grew under for nine months. A body that fed him for another ten. Arms that held him for three years. How did he forget? How could he think this piece of technology could replace his mother?
Luke didn’t say anything. He carried Clayton back to bed, tucked him under his pirate sheets, and kissed his forehead before hitting play and running out the door. When he guided the door to a quiet click, he could hear Natalie readingGoodnight Moonand Clayton sleepily repeating the words like they used to do when she was alive.
He shook his head; he wasn’t angry with Clayton. That child knew who his mother was, and thanks to Natalie’s recordings, he’d have some special memories of her even as his real ones started to fade with age. Hewasangry though with Natalie and those letters, for making him doubt her in a way he’d never doubted her when she was alive.
Luke didn’t care how late it was; he had to take some time to think. In the corner lay an uneven pile of dirty clothes he’d been putting off washing. Rummaging through the heap, he found a pair of shorts and an old Michigan T-shirt. Within minutes he was in the basement, colder than the rest of the house by at least ten degrees. Almost sick with anticipation, Luke rushed through the ritual of wrapping his hands, forgetting to count how many times he circled his hands with the cotton strips, not caring that he could barely feel his fingers.
Right now he needed two things—to hit the bag hanging in the corner and to think. As soon as he tore the last bit of tape with his teeth, Luke lunged across the room, landing a blow in the center of the heavy maroon punching bag. Jogging back and forth, he hit again, and again, losing himself to the rhythm of the routine. Sweat gathered on his forehead and soaked his hair as if he’d just taken a shower. Each blow he landed sent drops of perspiration flying through the unfinished storage room.
When his lungs burned and he could no longer feel his hands, Luke stepped back from the bag with a little clarity. Wiping his face with the towel hanging from one of the pipes in the ceiling, he knew what he had to do. Even if his fears were irrational, even if he was jumping to conclusions, he needed to know what Natalie was hiding about Dr. Neal. If anyone would know Natalie’s secrets, it was Annie.
CHAPTER 8
By the time Luke unwrapped the sweat-drenched bands from his hands, he had a firm, simple plan for the morning. Basically he’d rap on Annie’s front door and ask, or demand, anything she knew about Dr. Neal.
But in reality, as soon as Annie appeared from behind her door the next morning, he lost his nerve. There was a part of him ashamed he could be suspicious of Natalie. She’d never given him any reason to doubt her while she was alive. Then there was another part of him, a small but significant part, that worried he’d been made to look the fool.
Not sure how to bring up such a sensitive topic, Luke avoided his plan altogether, walking around in a fog, grouchy and preoccupied.
Yet he had to do something. He considered calling Dr. Neal’s number, the one that seemed to mock him every time he opened the phone. Or he could use his advanced tech skills and try to get access to the deleted texts on the phone. Or he could go to dinner with Annie and Brian like Annie had begged him to do for a week. There, he could find an opportunity to ask some of the questions he needed answers to. Dinner seemed like the least insane of the options.
Luke smelled of cologne and was wearing a pair of jeans with a belt. He balanced on a wobbly barstool in a somewhat seedy bar while Jessie was at home with the kids. Will was technically old enough to watch May and Clayton, but Luke never felt comfortable leaving him with them for very long, at least when bedtime was an issue. Clayton and May gave Luke a hard enough time going to bed every night; he wasn’t going to make his fourteen-year-old son take over that responsibility. He’d rather pay Jessie to do it. Maybe he should pay her to do it every night?
He took another swig of his beer, wondering if it was the alcohol or the silence helping him relax. He didn’t drink often, always afraid he would follow his father down that slippery slope, but tonight he thought it was a good risk to take. Somewhere between the beer and pure desperation, he hoped to finally find the courage to talk to Annie about Natalie’s professor.
Luke was there early, waiting for the Gurrellas at the bar. He watched Annie’s face as she walked in the door and noticed Jose and Tanner, cops about ten years Brian’s junior, hanging out at a table with two pitchers of beer and a plate of wings. She dropped Brian’s hand and pulled off her plum-colored winter coat. She was wearing a black skirt and gauzy white top that plunged in the front and was tucked in at the waist. When Brian went over to see his friends before meeting Luke at the bar, she seemed disappointed but not surprised.
