“I know.”
“And he did it to himself.”
I don’t say anything.
“When Nora and I come up, we can all toast to the future.”
“I’d like that,” I tell him, just to get off the phone. “I’d like that a lot.”
I HAVE A landline at home, but I don’t remember the last time I used it. It’s one of those things I keep telling myself I should get rid of, but there’s something that keeps me from doing it—my last tie to the past, I suppose. Plus, the turquoise rotary phone in the living room—a Salvation Army find from my college days—would be dead without it, and I don’t like that thought. I never sprung for landline voicemail. Instead the phone is attached to an answering machine that’s nearly as ancient as it is. At one point, there was a recorded message on it featuring Matt, four-year-old Emily, and me, but it got erased when she was around nine—I think by Emily herself—and it’s been the default robot voice answering that phone ever since.
That is, on the rare times it needs to be answered. Telemarketers call it on occasion, but I can’t remember the last time the red message light read anything other than 0. Once I get into my house, though, and set my laptop case down on the coffee table, that glaring light is the first thing I notice: 23. Twenty-three messages.
I push the button. “Hi, Camille.” The voice is chipper, female, and unfamiliar. “How are you feeling? This is Katie Mitchell from the Daily News, and I just wanted to see if I could talk to you about Harris Blanch—”
I press delete. The next message is almost identical, except that it’s from a New York Post reporter named Daphne something or other, and besides wanting to know how I’m feeling, she’s also “wondering if I plan to attend Harris Blanchard’s funeral.” Delete.
A serious-sounding young male voice follows, this time from the Times Union, calling me “Mrs. Gardener” and wondering how I “feel about everything.” Next up is a man from the Daily Freeman in Kingston and then there’s a producer from some radio show I’ve never heard of and then a guy calling from TMZ （Must be a really slow day for celebrity news . . .）， each and every one of them posing different variants of the same question: How do you feel? As though, after five years, a light’s been switched on, and how Camille Gardener feels is the only thing that matters.
I know I stoked this interest with my Brayburn Club outburst, but still. Still. I delete the reporters’ messages, one after another after another, until it becomes reflexive and rather satisfying. I don’t let them speak long enough to learn their names or where they’re calling from. I just listen for the hello and push delete . . . until I’m twenty messages in and for the first time, I recognize the voice of the person leaving the message.
“Hi, Cammy. It’s Matt.”
I lift my finger from the button.
“I was hoping to catch you at home. I’m sure you’ve heard the news about Blanchard.”
“Heard it?” I whisper. “I made it.”
“I don’t want to say I told you so about karma, but . . . actually, maybe I do.” Matt makes a noise—half-laugh, half-cough. “It’s going to be weird, don’t you think? Not waking up every morning knowing he’s still alive? What are we going to do with ourselves, without all that hate?” A dog barks in the background, the sound of it echoing against the walls of Matt’s house—a house I’ve never seen, never even imagined. A dog I never knew he had. “Anyway, I’m free now, and you are too. And I hope you know that. I hope the reason why you’re not around to pick up the phone is that you are running down that mountain with the wind in your hair, feeling everything it is to be alive when he’s not. I mean . . . if it isn’t too cold out.”
I place my hand on the machine, my eyes hot from the threat of tears.