His Other Life

Chapter 9

NINE

ISLA

Present day

Isla sat on the floor in front of the TV again, the remote in her hand as the familiar wedding march played on the screen. The dress, the smiling faces, the vows, the confetti. The party where the videographer had made his rounds, asking people to record messages for the newlyweds between dances.

She studied the faces. Her own and Jonah’s most of all. There had to be something there. A clue or at least something to jog her memory. Why they’d decided to celebrate their seventh anniversary all the way down in Bend at the rather pricey hotel where Jonah had once popped the question. Why they hadn’t been at the hotel the night of the accident. Why Isla, who never drove, had been in the driver’s seat. Why she’d had the vision of Nana. It seemed a fallacy of logic that the woman on that dance floor seven years ago was the same person sitting here on Mom’s rug, still in pajamas at eleven in the morning on a regular February Monday.

A door opened somewhere behind her, Mom’s keys jingling onto the small table in the hallway. Footsteps followed but stopped in the doorway to the living room. Isla knew what would come next and paused the video as Jonah lifted his own camera to capture the photographer in action.

“Not again, Birdie.” Her mom entered the room, unzipping her jacket. She was in her walking clothes—warm sweats and a headband—her cheeks red from the winter air. “I thought we decided it wasn’t good for you.”

Isla put the remote on the table. “It’s not what you think. Maverick—he’s one of my clients—thinks I need to figure out what happened. I was hoping this would give me a place to start.”

“Your wedding video?”

Isla shrugged. When she said it that way… “I don’t know.”

“And we already know what happened. It was an accident, Birdie. A terrible, awful accident. Looking for reasons that aren’t there will only bring more grief.” Mom slung her jacket over the couch’s armrest and proceeded to lean forward for a calf stretch.

Was she right? She had a point about the video—Isla could admit that much—but would Isla really be better off leaving this alone? Wasn’t that what she’d done for the past two years?

“I think you’re wrong,” she said. “Remember when we had that sit-down with Dad’s doctors after he passed? You got to ask your questions, they walked you through his treatments and why they didn’t work.” Of course, they’d already known he was unlikely to make it once put on the ventilator, so in his case, the outcome had been anticipated.

Mom straightened again. “That’s not something you forget.”

“And do you think it helped you? Not having to wonder about his last moments?”

Mom’s gaze traveled from Isla to the TV, where the video hovered on Jonah. “I take your point.”

Isla’s shoulders lowered. “Okay, good. But you’re probably right about the video. It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“What about his camera?” Mom asked, somewhere else in thought. “Did he bring it to Bend that weekend?”

A flutter of something kicked off inside Isla. She’d long since printed and organized all the photos from Jonah’s laptop into a stack of albums that rested in a box in the back of her closet, but now that Mom mentioned it, she didn’t actually know where his camera was. She stared at the TV, where Jonah’s face was covered by the big lens. She couldn’t imagine him not having brought it along, which either meant it was lost or…

“If it wasn’t in the car with us, Katelyn might have it,” she said. It was Jonah’s sister who’d grabbed their belongings from the hotel in the aftermath. She’d dropped off Isla’s things and some of Jonah’s with Nancy, like his rings, watch, and phone, but Isla wasn’t sure what had happened to the rest. At the time and in the grand scheme of things, it hadn’t seemed important. “She texted me the other day.”

Nancy dropped the arm she’d been stretching. “She did?”

“After Dean Abbot shared the news.” Isla got off the floor and pushed her hair off her forehead with a tight stroke. “Crap—this means I’ll have to text her back.”

Nancy studied her for a minute. “You really weren’t wallowing over it today, were you? You’re doing something.”

Isla didn’t have to ask what she meant by that. She knew the idleness of her recent existence had been a source of worry for her mom. Any change, then, would signal hope.

“I’m trying.” Isla gave her a tight smile, making sure it didn’t promise too much.

Nancy nodded. “Well—I’m off to take a shower. You should text her now, while it’s fresh in your mind.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She watched her mom disappear up the stairs. Text Katelyn now . Isla bit down on the inside of her cheek. Fine. She sighed. Fine .

Katelyn responded within a minute, her exclamation points betraying her surprise at hearing from her sister-in-law. After a couple of polite back-and-forths, Isla sent the question at the forefront of her mind.

I was looking for Jonah’s camera. Do you guys have it?

Her fingers shook typing her husband’s name and sending it off like that. Not asking about him but about one of his belongings. Like it was in bad taste.

But Katelyn’s response was free of accusations. We do. Simon has been using it for a photography class in school.

Isla wrinkled her nose. If her fifteen-year-old nephew had it, what were the chances of pictures from two years ago not having been deleted?

I was wondering about old photos , she texted. If there were any on it. Then, because she didn’t quite know what she was hoping to find or how to explain it, she added a white lie. Organizing some albums.

I’m not sure about that, Katelyn wrote. But I’ll ask him when he gets home and will let you know .

Hours. That was hours she’d have to wait for an answer. Isla sighed again. Sounds good, she typed back. Thank you.

The afternoon dragged on. Perhaps in a gesture of goodwill, Mom drove them to the grocery store, so even that provided only marginal distraction. She checked the auction and found her bid was still the highest, which she reported to Louise with three fingers-crossed emojis. When she received no response, she sent another text about the camera, too, to fill her time with something. She didn’t want to read, or watch TV. Her room was tidy, laundry done, and her collection in order.

Finally, she pulled on her sneakers and went for a walk around the block. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something like that just because, but there was something new stirring inside her. A need to move. An urgency.

She’d looped around the neighborhood twice and was walking alongside the middle-school fence when her phone rang, but it was Louise, not Katelyn.

“What do you think is on the camera?” she asked. “I’ve never heard you talk about it before.”

Isla told her that she’d forgotten about it until Mom pointed out Jonah having it in the video. “It could be nothing. Even if he had it with him, I don’t know if he was using it. But it’s at least a place to start. Mav thinks I have too many questions and not enough answers.”

“And if it’s a dead end?”

Isla looked both ways as she crossed the last street before her mom’s block, skipping over the puddles of water by the curb. “I don’t know. Like I said—I’m short on answers.”

Louise was quiet for a while. “You know,” she said eventually, “maybe I could help. I ask questions all the time as part of my job. Maybe if you think of someone I should call or, you know… Do you have the, um, the police report?”

Isla pulled up short in front of Nancy’s house. She’d read it at some point; she was certain of that. Had someone handed it to her while she was still on bedrest? There was a vague memory of lying down, struggling to hold up the pages. “I’ve read it,” she said. “But I don’t have a copy, and I feel like I would have remembered it there was anything important in it.”

“You never know. I could contact the police department for you. See what I can find out. They should be able to send it to us.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course.”

Isla continued up the stairs and opened the door, considering this. It was another thread to pull at.

Louise cleared her throat. “I’d need to know what police department to contact. Do you know?”

Isla didn’t. The accident had happened on a rural stretch of road south of Crescent, Oregon, but she couldn’t remember if they had their own sheriff’s office, and she told Louise as much. More she didn’t have time for because she had another call coming through—Katelyn was finally getting back to her.

After promising Louise she’d talk to her later, Isla hung up and accepted Katelyn’s call.

“Okay, yes, so there is a memory card,” Katelyn said after their initial greetings.

Isla started to sweat. “Really?”

“Apparently, Simon swapped it for a bigger one when he started this class, but after digging around in his drawers, he found the old one.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you’re planning on coming up this way soon?”

The question made Isla realize for the first time that if she was to go back to work like she’d said, she would eventually have to return to Bellingham. Find a new place to live. Start over in what had been her and Jonah’s domain. The thought made her knees weak. “Not for a while,” she said, forcing her voice light. “Would you be able to email me what’s on it?”

“Sure. Yes. I guess I could do that. It’ll be after basketball tonight though.”

Isla let out a breath. “Great. Thank you. And say thanks to Simon too. How is he doing?”

The question steered the conversation to safer waters, and when Isla eventually hung up, she stared at the screen, a small smile reflected in the dark glass.

She’d been plagued by nightmares since the accident—some infused by abstract threats, others sharply outlined and painted in realistic strokes. A recurring one was ringing the doorbell at her in-laws’ house and when they opened and saw it was her, their faces would twist with fury before they chased her off, shouts of “Murderer!” cutting through the air.

Now, after speaking to Katelyn, one of the many bogeymen hiding in her mental closet had retreated a few steps.

The photos arrived in her inbox a little after nine that evening. Isla had Louise on speaker, too nervous at what she might find to open the zipped file alone. The album populated with thumbnails, and Isla hovered over the first one with the mouse. Then she clicked it open.

“It’s me posing in front of the hotel,” she said, examining the woman in the photo—the cocked hip, raised arms, her smile. Every rational part of Isla knew it was her, but without the memory, it was like looking at a stranger. She clicked down the list, backward in time. A view of a river. Isla sipping a to-go cup of coffee. A funny sign inside a restaurant. Disappointment flooded her system and made her shoulders slump.

“Anything else?” Louise asked.

“I thought there’d be something here to make me remember. But it’s only mundane stuff. Things he found interesting.”

Jonah’s ability to appreciate his surroundings that way had been one of the qualities she’d fallen for—that he at times saw things from different perspectives. Of course, there had also been times when she’d wished he’d put the camera down. Not every sunset needed capture—sometimes just experiencing it together in the moment was enough.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You only just started looking.”

Isla hummed a response as she continued browsing the thumbnails. There were a couple more shots from what must have been their road trip to Bend, then several studies of ice-clad branches after a particularly heavy snowfall, and a few snaps from New Year’s.

Isla stared a long time at the group photo where champagne glasses and sparklers glittered and gleamed in the hands of their smiling friends. There were Katelyn and Mark without a worry in the world. Pete and Tovah had moved to Denver a year ago, but Adnan and Sudita were still in Bellingham as far as Isla knew. The guys were originally Jonah’s friends from high school, but Isla had become close with Tovah and Sudita too. They’d reached out many times after the accident, but Isla had never responded. She couldn’t. She didn’t blame them when, eventually, the phone calls and messages stopped.

“Anything?” Louise asked.

Isla had almost forgotten she was on the phone. “No. Just holiday stuff now.”

“Gotcha.” Somewhere on Louise’s end, a doorbell rang. “Oh, shoot, I forgot my aunt was coming over.”

Probably for the best. So far, it seemed Isla had made a big deal of nothing. “You go. No worries.”

“You sure?”

“We can talk later.”

After disconnecting, Isla opened her text thread with Tovah instead. The last communication they’d had was ten months ago—a photo of her friend’s new house. Isla hadn’t even said congratulations. Snip, snip and her tethers to the world had been cut one at a time.

She put the phone down and returned to the computer.

Next were Christmas photos. Mom had stayed with them that holiday as it was the first one without Dad. Closeups of their gingerbread house, moody shots of golden lights illuminating Douglas Fir branches. On Christmas Eve, they’d gone over to Katelyn’s house for a large family gathering. A smorgasbord of treats, wreaths, smiling kids, gifts. At some point, someone else must have gotten their hands on the camera because Jonah was in a few of them, wads of wrapping paper at his side.

Isla moved on, and soon the series turned to random snaps of festively lit cityscapes, a red bridge over an icy river, Jonah in his car, and finally, an impressive town-square Christmas tree, probably taken somewhere in Portland on Jonah’s last trip there in December.

Isla’s finger stiffened on the mouse. Her ears were suddenly tingling with the absence of noise in the room. She clicked through the last three pictures again. Red bridge, Jonah, tree, Jonah, red bridge, Jonah…

She stared at the familiar slant of his brow for a long moment. In the photo, he was driving, but he’d taken his eyes off the road for a moment, and a smile played on his lips. Unguarded.

“What the hell?” she mumbled.

The room spun as what she was looking at sank in. The tree and bridge were both in Portland, which meant the photo of Jonah must have also been taken there. There was only one problem—Isla hadn’t been with him on that trip. And if she hadn’t taken the photo, then who had?