Sometimes he missed Melanie, though most of the time, he tried not to think about her. She went into the bucket of emotions that included his mom’s death and the med school rejections and the hopelessness that his life was going nowhere. It wasn’t that he forgot about her. The posters all over campus made that impossible. But they’d dated for only a little while, and he hadn’t even liked her all that much. She’d wanted more than he was willing to give.
Back in his apartment, he dropped the sunglasses on the kitchen counter, adding to the crowded mess of backpacks and mail and empty beer cans, and downed four ibuprofens with the lukewarm remnants of a Moosehead. He needed to go shopping. He needed to do laundry. He needed to clean up the wreck that was his apartment, and he desperately needed to study. He needed a lot of things. Instead, he got a fresh beer from the fridge and plugged in his brand-new Xbox, a Christmas present. A few rousing kills in Halo would set him straight.
The door crashed open half an hour later, making him jump. His roommate, Peter Johnson, burst into the living room looking like he’d sprinted all the way from the arboretum. Johnson’s hair was a drenched mess, and his face was red as fire. Park hit Pause on the game.
“Dude. Did you hear?”
Park pulled down his headphones, pointed sarcastically at them. “Hear what?”
“They found her. They found Melanie.”
A crappie fisherman had caught the edge of the girl’s cardigan and dragged her from the depths of University Lake. Her bloated body was put through an autopsy, which determined she’d been murdered. Cause of death, either a subdural hematoma, or manual strangulation. Or both.
The students on campus held prayer vigils and Take Back the Night rallies. Park attended them all. Then they had September redux: the questions from the police, the stares from the coeds, the suppositions from his professors. This time he handled things more soberly. No more drugs, no alcohol. He wanted to be clearheaded, clear-eyed, in case someone thought to try and hang Melanie’s murder on him.
Melanie, no longer missing. Murdered.
The funeral was awful. He went, buttressed by his loyal fraternity brothers, but it didn’t feel right, listening to her parents crying in the front pew, the oversized portrait of Melanie in her high school graduation gown, wispy bangs and a secret smile, and NSYNC on the church speakers singing “Bye Bye Bye”—Melanie’s favorite song, but really, it seemed too on the nose for a funeral—and at the wake after, her sister got drunk and screamed at him to leave, which he thought was totally unfair, since he wasn’t a suspect and no one thought he’d actually killed her. He was a good target for fury, though, and he understood the need to blame someone when there is no one to blame.
Melanie’s murder stayed unsolved through his graduation, through his tenure in graduate school. It was still unsolved when he got his first teaching gig. Still unsolved when he hooked up with Olivia again.
He assumed they’d never know the truth about what happened the night Melanie Rich died.
He was wrong.
Peter Johnson was arrested a year after Olivia and Park married.
Park couldn’t believe it.
The roommate.
Peter couldn’t either. He claimed innocence. The police claimed they had a DNA match. The police won.
Peter went to prison, his lawyers promising him he’d be released on appeal because the case was so thin. But six months later, he got shanked in a dispute over three cigarettes, died of sepsis in the prison’s grungy hospital wing, and the case was closed forever.
Melanie, dead. Peter, dead. Park, out in the world with his lovely young wife, trying for a baby.
Life is strange sometimes.
13
THE WIFE
Morning sun stretches across Olivia’s comforter. Normally a happy lark in the early hours, now she feels gritty and exhausted. She’s been sleeping poorly, tossing and turning after going to bed alone, wondering if Park is going to join her or if he is going to sit in his shed all night, avoiding her, avoiding them, hoping for the latter but strangely needing the former. Each night, she’s given up waiting and shut off the light, sinking alone into the darkness before the dawn. Her dreams are full of amorphous beasts and heartbreaking visions, and she wakes feeling utterly unrested.
It is chilly this morning, despite the sun. Park isn’t beside her, but she smells coffee; he must be in the kitchen. She snuggles on the bed with a cozy blanket and her phone, idly scrolling through Instagram, looking at her favorite accounts. Her feed is full of architecture and design. Vision boards and paint schedules and herringbone marble patterns. French country home tours and farmhouse chic renovations. All relevant to her business, and to her life.
And a few others. The hashtags are preprogrammed; she’s looked at them so often all she needs to do is press the little magnifying glass that indicates Search and up they come, a parade of want and need. Happy tags: #motherhood #momsofinstagram #momslife #pregnantbelly #pregnantlife #maternityshoot #pregnantstyle #IVFlife #babygirl. （She does want a girl, no matter what she tells Park—and herself—about not caring what gender their little darling is. A boy would be lovely, of course. But a mini-me would be precious.）
She loses herself in this rabbit hole of glorious, distended bellies and cradled hands and fingers in the shape of hearts and radiant joy and sometimes even feels happy for the mothers-to-be in the photos. It certainly isn’t an issue for her. She isn’t addicted. There are just moments when she finds comfort in the idea of what might be.
Today, though, it is punishment, and she won’t pretend otherwise. Seeing the joy and happiness on these strangers’ faces makes her ache inside. For the past few months, she’s scrolled these hashtags full of excitement and wonder, cataloging the changes in her own body with comparisons to #12weekspregnant and #excitingnews. Now she wonders why there aren’t more hashtags that deal with the trauma of losing a child. The horrors of miscarriage. The injustice of a body’s biological betrayal. Something more visceral than #rainbowbaby.
#bleedingagain #lostit #loser #wonteverbeamother.
She’s handled this one well, she thinks. She’s been strong. She hasn’t whined. She hasn’t obsessed. She hasn’t gotten obliterated on white wine and screamed at Park. The Ativan is helping, for sure. Every evening, half of a small round tab lingers on her tongue, sweetening her own bitter recriminations.
Park comes into the bedroom carrying a cup of coffee for her as if this is just any other day. He hurries to her side, placing the coffee on a coaster by her phone. “Honey? Are you okay? Tell me why you’re crying.”
Park is so good at asking the hard questions. He’s never shied away from her sadness, probably because he doesn’t know it’s driven by her own guilt. She did this to them. She is responsible.
She wipes her face, surprised to feel the wetness. “I hadn’t realized I was.”
He joins her on the bed, pulls her to his chest. He is strong, and warm, and despite herself, she snuggles in, letting the tension release from her body. She is still mad at him—furious, in fact—but she wants comfort more than rage right now.
She feels him relax as well. They need this. The touching. It’s so easy to forget the importance of a simple hug. The chemicals that release when they love each other, making them both feel better. They haven’t spoken more than the necessities in days. They certainly haven’t touched.