Chapter 2
Olivia
Iwas scrubbing casserole dishes when the police called.
The Millers wanted their Pyrex back. The Hendersons had left a note about their Corningware, blue painter's tape on the lid with a phone number I was supposed to call. I was grateful for that.
Clean and return. It was a sequence I could follow. I couldn't fix the silence in the house, but I could scrub a Pyrex dish until it looked new.
Most of the food had gone untouched. I'd managed half a serving of something—lasagna, maybe, or one of the tuna casseroles that all tasted the same.
Everything else had congealed into a solid mass, tomato sauce forming a skin, cheese hardening into plastic.
I scraped it into the trash, running the disposal until the sink belched and groaned.
I should have been hungry. Five days without eating more than a few bites.
But grief had filled me up, packed itself into every corner where appetite used to live.
I was running on fumes and the momentum of tasks: wash this, return that, sign here, initial there.
The water ran too hot and I didn't adjust it, just stood there letting it steam while I stared out the window at nothing.
Ryan's stone sat on the sill. We'd found them on the beach in Maui: two pieces of smooth black lava, nearly identical.
His idea. He'd pressed one into each of our hands like it was a ceremony, said we each needed something to keep.
His had lived on his desk ever since. Mine had ended up here, watching me do dishes.
The phone rang while I was elbow-deep in soapy water, scrubbing baked-on cheese from someone's casserole dish. I dried my hands on a towel and reached for it, expecting Ryan's mother, or the funeral home with another bill.
"Mrs. Hartley?" A man's voice. "This is Detective Park with the state police."
My stomach dropped.
"Yes," I managed, gripping the edge of the counter.
"I'm calling about your husband's personal effects. We've finished processing the vehicle, and his belongings are ready for pickup whenever it's convenient for you."
Personal effects. The phrase took a moment to land. His phone. Of course they'd have his phone. I hadn't thought about it, hadn't wondered where it was in the chaos of arrangements and services and casserole returns.
"Oh," I said. Then, because he seemed to be waiting: "When should I come?"
"We're here until six today. Tomorrow works too, if that's easier. No rush."
No rush. But suddenly it felt urgent… the wedding ring on his finger, the phone in his pocket. The last pieces of him I'd ever hold.
I hadn't thought much of it at the viewing, the pale band of untanned skin where the ring should have been. They'd removed it for the autopsy, I assumed, or maybe it had gone missing in the crash. Now the idea of having it back felt strange. Wrong, almost. Like he should have taken it with him.
"I can come now," I said.
"That's fine. Just bring your ID and we'll get you sorted."
Sorted. Like I was picking up dry cleaning.
I hung up and stared at the half-clean casserole dish in the sink, soap bubbles dissolving into nothing.
The state police barracks was on the access road behind the county courthouse, the kind of place you'd drive past a hundred times without noticing.
Inside, the fluorescent lights hummed over scuffed linoleum.
The air smelled of floor wax and stale coffee, a bureaucratic scent that stuck to the back of my throat.
A woman behind plexiglass barely looked up when I approached.
"I'm here to pick up personal effects," I said. "My husband’s, Ryan Hartley."
She nodded, already turning to her computer. "ID?"
I slid my driver's license through the gap in the plexiglass. She glanced at it, typed something, then disappeared through a door behind her desk.
I stood there, hands in my coat pockets, staring at a bulletin board covered in outdated safety posters.
I knew how to move through bureaucracy, at least. Eight years processing death certificates and land transfers at the town hall had taught me that much.
You sign where they tell you, you take what they give you, you walk out.
The woman returned with a manila envelope, a clipboard, and a thinner folder she set to one side. "Personal effects and the vehicle recovery report," she said. "Sign for both."
I signed without reading, my handwriting shaky. She took the clipboard back, checked the forms with the efficiency of someone who did this every day, then slid the envelope toward me.
"That's everything," she said. "Sorry for your loss."
The phrase was automatic. She was already looking past me to see if anyone else was waiting.
I picked up the envelope. It was heavier than I expected. I turned and walked out, clutching it against my chest like something fragile.
The cold air hit me as soon as I stepped outside. I made it to my car and slid behind the steering wheel. The lot was nearly empty, just a few cruisers lined up near the building.
I sat there with the envelope on my lap. The vehicle recovery report sat on the seat beside me. I didn't open it. Whatever was left of the car wasn't what I was here for.
I peeled back the metal clasp and tilted the contents onto the passenger seat.
His wallet, brown leather worn soft at the edges.
I held it to my nose, hoping for the scent of his cologne or the cedar of his dresser drawer, but it just smelled like cold plastic and the inside of an evidence bag.
His watch, the one I'd given him for our fifth anniversary, the face cracked.
A set of keys. And his phone, the screen spiderwebbed from impact but still intact.
The wedding ring came last, rolling out into my palm. Gold, simple, engraved on the inside with our wedding date.
I stared at it, felt its weight on my hand. It had been on his finger when he died and now it was here, in a parking lot, in my palm, and he was gone.
I held the ring, waiting for the wave of grief to hit.
For the memory of our wedding day, the way he'd slipped it on my finger and kissed me in front of everyone.
But all I could think about was someone collecting these things.
A deputy crouched on the shoulder of the road, picking through the wreckage.
The reservoir behind him, Route 9 stretching out into darkness.
I set the ring on the dash and picked up the phone.
The screen was dark, the battery dead. I turned it over in my hands, feeling the crack spiderweb across the glass.
There was a smudge of something dark along the edge.
Dirt, maybe, or dried blood. My thumb moved to wipe it away, a reflex, before I snatched my hand back.
I didn't want to know what it was. I didn't want to clean it.
I had a charger in the car. I always kept one in the console for emergencies.
I plugged the phone in and waited.