A gunshot wound to the head.
Cautiously I ask, “What does she mean when she says a gunshot wound?”
Lily shakes her head in denial. Some feral sounds rise up to her throat. Her hand moves to her mouth, where she holds something back, a cry or a moan. She utters to herself, “No. No. No,” all the while still shaking her head.
“Answer me, Lily,” I say, my voice more firm. “What does she mean when she says a gunshot wound?”
“I don’t know,” Lily says. Her head whirls in my direction. Her eyes are wide and gaping, and, in them, there are tears. She shakes her head harder. It’s vigorous, her hair whipping around to slap her in the face.
“I thought you killed him with a rock. Did you…did you shoot him, Lily?”
My words are incredulous.
“I… I did kill him with a rock,” she asserts. “I did. She must be mistaken, Christian. She must have her stories mixed up, or the medical examiner got it wrong. Someone must be wrong.” She reaches for me. “You have to believe me.”
I find myself staring at her. Lily’s hair parts down the center. She has high cheekbones, a small forehead and big, round, larger-than-life eyes that remind me of those characters from Japanese anime. I love her eyes. They’re a rich, warm brown and always make me think of integrity and goodness.
But what if there is something in those eyes I’ve failed to see?
I ask, “When is a news reporter or a medical examiner ever this wrong?”
Lily’s mouth just falls open.
My chest feels heavy, like there is something weighing it down. It’s hard to breathe, to push up against the weight of whatever it is—shock, dread—to let my lungs expand.
There is the taste of something bad in my mouth, like metal.
I wish more than anything that I could go back to five minutes ago, to a state of blissful ignorance, when I believed that what my wife told me was true.
NINA
My mother is standing in the hallway when I step out of the bathroom. I didn’t expect her to be there. I thought she was still asleep when I went into the shower a few minutes ago. I barely even see her as I come out of the bathroom, practically running straight into her. Her voice stops me dead. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asks, and I startle, throwing my hand to my heart.
“Mom. You scared me. I thought you were asleep,” I say.
“Where are you going?” she asks again.
“Work,” I say.
“Honey,” she says, her voice gentle like a lullaby. “You can’t go to work. Jake is dead, sweetie. You’re mourning. You’re grieving. No one expects you to go to work today.”
I hadn’t forgotten that Jake is dead. I only thought that if I kept busy, if I kept working I could somehow outrun grief and that the grief wouldn’t catch up with me.
There is closure in knowing that Jake is dead. There is resolution, a finality to the events of the last few weeks. With that comes comfort. I know where Jake is now. I don’t need to look for him anymore.
My phone has been pinging nonstop with calls and texts from nearly everyone. Lily is practically the only one who hasn’t called or texted to express her condolences, which is revelatory. The truth sometimes lies in what we don’t say, rather than what we say.
My mother comes to me in the afternoon and gently says, “There are things that we’ll need to do, Nina, when you’re ready. We’ll need to go to the funeral home to make arrangements and pick out a casket for Jake. We’ll have to call the hospital and let them know that he’s gone, and call the life insurance company.” I appreciate that she says we. I am not alone. She and I will do these things together, though Jake’s funeral will have to wait, because for now, my husband’s body is evidence in a murder investigation.
“You just look so tired, Nina,” my mother then says, reaching out to stroke my hair. “We don’t have to do any of this today. Why don’t you go back to bed for a while. Sleep. It doesn’t matter if we do these things now or later.”
She’s right, it doesn’t, because either way Jake will still be dead.
CHRISTIAN
That night after Lily is asleep, I search the house for a gun.
I leave the lights off. I don’t want to risk waking her. I start in the bedroom, where Lily sleeps less than ten feet from me. I inch open a dresser drawer, though my eyes remain fixed on Lily lying in bed to make sure she sleeps through the sound of it.
I open the drawer only as far as necessary to slip a hand inside, running my hand under and over her clothes and along the niches of the drawer. I feel between articles of clothing, and then I inch the first drawer closed and guide a second drawer open. Lily’s is an upright five-drawer dresser. I start at the bottom, working my way to the top, feeling less conspicuous as I search the bottom drawers but then, the higher I go, the more upright I stand, the more fully exposed I become. I don’t want Lily to know what I’m doing.
The fourth drawer is open when suddenly Lily flounders in bed. She’s like a fish out of water, suffocating, kicking its fins. I watch her struggle, the white sheet getting tangled around her legs and feet. She mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep. I push the drawer gently closed as Lily bolts upright in bed and she gasps, though I can see in her unfocused eyes that she’s not conscious, that she’s still somehow asleep and dreaming, having a nightmare.
I go to her. I press lightly against her shoulders and lay her back into bed, where she rolls by instinct onto her side, pulling her knees into her. I draw the blanket over her, and then I lie there beside her, flat on my back, biding time until her breath evens and I can get back out of bed and resume my search.
I finish the last two drawers. I search her bedside table. I check her vanity.
Downstairs I drift around the house. I search in drawers and cabinets. I carry a chair over and search things like above the kitchen cabinets where neither of us go. I lift up the floor registers. I look inside a wide vase, beneath flowers. I come up empty.
I don’t find a gun.
But just because I don’t find a gun, doesn’t mean there isn’t one here.
Lily’s work bag is on the floor by the garage door. It’s a large tan leather tote bag, big enough to hold textbooks and a laptop. I go to the bag. I crouch down beside it and unzip it. It has pockets, both on the inside and the outside of the bag, which Lily was ecstatic about when I bought her the bag for her birthday years ago. Now I run my hand along the inside of the leather, rubbing up against a book, a wallet, keys, feeling for something hard and cold like gunmetal.
I hear the rustle of something from behind me.
“Christian,” she says.
I rise up, looking slowly back over a shoulder, blinking the world into focus.
I turn to find Lily behind me. She stands ten feet away, by the window in the moon’s infinitesimal glow. She wears a thin white nightgown that hangs to the upper thigh, though in the near absence of light, she’s almost translucent, like a ghost. Her hair hangs long. It’s tangled, falling into her face where she leaves it, not bothered by the fact that she can barely see past the bangs. I can just make out the whites of her eyes. Her head is at an angle and her hands are hidden behind her back.