Chapter 1
“William,” Selma says, her voice crackling through the car’s speakers from the less-than-stellar phone connection, “why in God’s name you are driving to, of all places, Ohio?”
“I was actually born and raised there,” Will says.
He changes lanes, and in spite of using the turn signal, his rental car’s dodgy lane-detection feature beeps angrily at him before it shuts off again.
“You don’t have to say it like it’s a curse word.
And don’t call me William; nobody calls me William. ”
He can practically hear Selma rolling her eyes as she says, “That’s because you don’t know anyone but me. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“I know people,” Will mutters, sullen. “Lots of people. People I work with; people who live in my building; you, unfortunately. A whole collection of exes—”
“You know what I mean,” Selma says. He can hear the faint tapping of her nails—always long, always painted a different color—against the polished oak surface of her desk.
“You’d think you lived in the middle of nowhere instead of Chicago.
You never leave that stupid lab, you haven’t been to a single one of my networking events—”
“Which are for lawyers,” Will points out. “Because you are a lawyer. But I, Selma, am not a lawyer—I’ve never been a lawyer—I’ll never be a lawyer—so I don’t see why I should network with them.”
“Because you could meet one.” Selma groans, but Will, knowing where she’s going, also groans; the effect has a brief choral quality, like they’re complaining in harmony. “A nice responsible man, you know, with a good job and a clean apartment and absolutely no lizards—”
“Seriously, why can’t you just have a couple of kids?
” Will demands, nearly missing his exit in annoyance.
He’s reached the part of this drive where he almost remembers where he’s going, but not quite, and he barely makes it onto the correct state route.
A truly unsettling billboard that was definitely not there sixteen years ago—a single, contextless green eye, ringed with half of a pair of cat-eye glasses—stares bone-chillingly down at him as he continues, “That’s who you’re supposed to be like this with, you know: your own children.
Not your middle-aged friends who are older than you—”
“You’re not middle-aged,” Selma says, clucking. “Don’t say that; I’m only three years younger, so if you’re middle-aged that basically means I’m middle-aged, and if that’s what you’re saying, I’m sending someone to have you killed.”
Will rolls his eyes, glad she can’t see the amused smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sel—you’re twenty-nine. You’ve been twenty-nine for years now. But I, I’m sorry to tell you, will turn thirty-five on Halloween night—”
“Ahhhh!” Selma’s fake scream is nothing to write home about, but Will can’t quite suppress a chuckle, anyway.
“The horror! The ancient, wretched horror! I can’t bear it!
” Her voice drops into a more serious tone as she adds, “I know that, and it’s part of my point.
You’re too old to be going out with guys who steal your wallet—”
“That was one time—”
“Or leave you stranded at a rest stop in Lake Forest—”
“There were extenuating circumstances—”
“Or let his iguana loose in your bedroom while you’re sleeping—”
“Well, okay, he…” Will starts, and pauses. That had been Anthony, Will’s most recent ex; he doesn’t, honestly, have much in the way of excuses to make for Anthony. Weakly, he has no choice but to go with: “I mean, she was a pretty laid-back iguana, at least?”
Selma sighs. “Why are you driving to Ohio, Will? When I met you in that bar—what was it, ten thousand years ago now?”
“Couldn’t be more than five or six,” Will lies. He falters, briefly, as he drives past another strange billboard, with what seems to be: “Good Lord, is that the other eye?”
“What?” Selma sounds more put-out than worried when she adds, “If you’re hallucinating eyeballs, okay, you’re way past the point where you should have pulled off to the shoulder—”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Will says quickly, shaking his head as if to chase the thought away.
As he passes beneath what does, indeed, appear to be the counterpart to the first weird eye he saw, he reminds himself that Ohio is a bizarre place, and, also, that they were talking about something else.
“Just, uh, really odd billboards out here. But I was saying, it can’t have been that long ago that we met, Sel, because you were, what, twenty-three then? And you are now twenty-nine, so—”
“When I met you in that bar before recorded time began,” Selma says, cutting Will off by way of drowning him out, “you had four shots of tequila, and then, totally unprompted, you told me that Ohio was the world’s armpit and you’d never go back even if someone offered you the unlikely sum of ‘ten bajillion dollars.’”
“Why do you remember that,” Will complains, as he flips a brief middle finger at a Mercedes that cuts in front of him, “but never what time I tell you to meet me for lunch?”
“Well, it was the very first thing you ever said to me,” Selma says, in tones that ride the line between sarcastic and sentimental. “So I suppose it made an impression. And I don’t forget what time you tell me for lunch, Will; I just don’t show up at that time unless I feel like it.”
“Faaaaantastic,” Will mutters. “Why did I call you, again?” Then his mouth drops open slightly as he passes yet another wildly strange billboard; this one features the rest of the face that goes with the eyes, though only the face, and shot from very close up.
In the white space on either side of the woman’s head are the words Need to close?
Call Catherine Rose. But there’s no phone number listed, Will notices. Not even a website.
“I think it was a cry for help,” Selma snaps, pulling him back to the conversation. “Because I can’t think why else you’d dial me up, tell me you’re halfway to your hometown, and then refuse to explain! Why are you going to Ohio, Will!”
“Oh,” Will says, his mouth going suddenly dry as the purpose of this phone call circles back to the forefront of his mind. “Did I, uh… did I not mention, last month, that my—my dad died?”
There’s a sharp, sucked-in breath on the other end of the line, and then a long pause. Eventually, tightly, Selma says, “You know, it must have slipped your mind. I sort of think I’d remember something like that.”
Will winces out at the highway. “We weren’t… close, or anything. I hadn’t talked to him in—”
“Oh, shut up, you don’t need to tell me your tragic backstory,” Selma snaps.
“I am still your best friend, even if you don’t bother to keep me informed about the most basic—” She cuts herself off, takes another breath, and then, in a tone that sounds quite carefully modulated, says, “Sorry. I just mean—you should have told me, that’s all. Are you, like… okay?”
“Oh, sure,” says Will, who’s actually had the sneaking suspicion for some years that maybe he’s never been okay, at least not in the way most people are, and never will be, either.
But his voice is breezy as he adds, “It’s not like it changes anything about the relationship, right?
He didn’t speak to me before; he doesn’t speak to me now. It’s just a… detail adjustment.”
“A detail adjustment.” Selma’s voice is flat. “And what stage of grief is that, do you think?”
“Realism?” Will shrugs, even though there’s no one else in the car to see it. “Look, it’s not—it doesn’t have to be a whole thing. I didn’t call you to cry or anything. Bill was alive, and now he’s dead, and my life will carry on more or less like it did before; case closed.”
“You know, I loved being an only child,” Selma says, in the tones of fond reminiscence.
“I used to think about it all the time, how glad I was my parents didn’t make me suffer some snot-nosed little brat.
Now I wonder if you might be cosmic punishment for my hubris. My universe-assigned little brother.”
“I am, again, older than you,” Will points out, not that it will matter. He knows that really, she’s doing this to avoid saying something like, Will, your emotional constipation makes me want to rip out all my hair and then yours, and he appreciates her containing it.
“So you’re going back for the funeral, then?” Selma says. “A little late, isn’t it, if he died last month?”
“Oh, no, I… wasn’t invited to the funeral,” Will admits, wincing a little on the lie. Or, well, it’s—it’s not quite a lie. But it’s not quite the truth, either.
The truth is, a month ago Will received a call from an unfamiliar number.
He’d answered it, even though he doesn’t usually answer calls from unknown numbers; the voice on the other end had been unknown, too, one Will could swear he’d never heard before.
It was deep and male and hesitant as it said, “Uh, hello, is this—is this William Robertson?”
“Speaking,” Will said, cautious. “But if this is a spam call, I should warn you, I’m not interested and I don’t want it and you’re wasting your time with this number.”
“Uh, no,” the caller said, and cleared his throat. “Not spam. It’s—uh—look, sorry, I’m. I’m calling to tell you your father is dead. That’s probably not the best way to do that, but I’m not… I’m not an expert at, uh… at telling people their fathers are dead?” A pause. Then: “Uh, I’m… very sorry.”
Will was silent for a moment, less out of grief than surprise; it didn’t quite seem possible.
Though he was more intimately aware of the impermanence of life than most, he’d realized in that moment that part of him really thought Bill would be storming around the farm forever, searching for something with which to find fault.
That’s why he’d said: “Sorry—you mean—Bill? Bill Robertson? Is dead?”