Chapter 39
Sawyer
Three Years Ago
The funeral was yesterday. Today I’m back at work because I don’t know what else to do with myself.
The house feels too empty, too quiet, like the walls are closing in.
At least here at the station I can pretend everything is normal.
Pretend my wife didn’t just die. Pretend my life isn’t completely shattered.
I’m reviewing reports at my desk, not really reading them, just staring at words that won’t stick in my brain, when someone knocks on the front door of the station.
It’s after hours, but the door’s still unlocked for emergencies.
I look up to see a man I vaguely recognize from Lila’s school—mid-thirties, nervous energy radiating off him, fidgeting with his car keys like they might save him from whatever he’s about to do.
Who the hell is this guy?
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Sawyer Edwards?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Tom Bradley. I worked with Lila at the school.” He shifts his weight from foot to foot, can’t seem to meet my eyes. What is this dude’s deal? “We need to talk.”
About what? If this is condolences, I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.
“If this is about flowers or whatever, I’m working—”
“It’s not about that.” The way he says it makes my stomach drop. There’s something in his voice, something guilty and desperate. “It’s about Lila. About something I need to tell you.”
What could you possibly need to tell me about my dead wife?
I lead him to the break room and close the door. Tom sits down heavily in one of the plastic chairs, running his hands through his hair like he’s trying to pull the words out of his head.
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he says.
“What is it?” Just spit it out.
“Lila and I were having an affair.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. My vision tunnels. I sit down across from him or maybe my legs just give out. My mind struggling to process what he just said. There’s no way. She wouldn’t do that to me. Right?
“Excuse me?”
“For about eight months. I’m sorry, Sawyer. I know how this sounds, but I couldn’t live with the guilt anymore.”
My hands grip the edge of the table. Eight months. Eight fucking months. While I was coming home every night, kissing her, asking about her day, telling her I love her, she was with him.
How did I not see it? How did I not know?
“Why are you telling me this now? She’s dead, Tom.”
“Because I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I keep thinking about the accident, about how she died thinking I was going to tell you everything.” His voice cracks. “I can’t carry this anymore.”
“She knew you were going to tell me?”
“We had a fight the morning she died. I told her I couldn’t keep lying anymore, that she needed to tell you or I would. She was upset when she left for work.” He looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I keep wondering if that’s why… if she was distracted because of our fight…”
So now you’re here to clear your conscience? To make yourself feel better about fucking my wife for eight months? Way to be noble.
I stare at him, this man who’s been sleeping with my wife. This coward who waited until she was dead to tell me. Eight months of lies. Eight months of me being a goddamn fool.
“She was going to leave you,” Tom continues, like that somehow makes this better. My chest feels like it's caving in. “She said she wasn’t happy, that you two had grown apart. That she felt like she was just going through the motions.”
Going through the motions. With me. While she was falling into bed with you. She had been distant with me lately, but I figured it was work stress.
“So she decided to sleep with you instead of talking to me about it.”
Tom looks miserable, but I don’t give a shit about his feelings right now. “I know how it sounds. But Sawyer, she really did care about you. She was just… confused.”
“Confused?” My voice sounds hollow even to my own ears.
“I’m sorry. I know this doesn’t help anything now, but I couldn’t carry it alone anymore.”
Couldn’t carry it alone. Like I'm going to carry it now. Forever. Not only do I have to mourn my dead wife, but I have to deal with the fact that she was cheating on me.
I stand up, my chair scraping against the floor, the sound harsh and final. “Get out.”
“Sawyer—”
“Get the fuck out of my station.” My hands are clenched into fists. Leave before I do something I’ll regret.
Tom scrambles to his feet and hurries out. I hear the front door close, hear his car start in the parking lot, and then it’s just me alone in this fluorescent-lit break room with the weight of his confession crushing my chest.
After he leaves, I sit alone in the break room for I don’t know how long. My hands are shaking. I press them flat on the table to steady them. My chest feels tight, like I can’t get enough air. Like I’m drowning on dry land.
Eight months of coming home to a lie. Eight months of thinking we were happy when she was planning to leave me.
And now she’s dead, and I can’t even ask her why.
Can’t ask her when it started, or if she ever really loved me, or if our entire marriage was just her settling until something better came along.
Was any of it real? Was I just blind? Stupid? Both?
I drive to Clint’s Bar that’s down the road from the station because I don’t know where else to go. Home feels impossible now. Every room, every photo, every memory is tainted with the knowledge that while I was building a life with her, she was planning her exit.
I order a beer, then another, then switch to whiskey. The bar smells like stale beer and cleaning solution. The glass feels cold and solid. Real. The only thing that feels real right now. The bartender keeps pouring without asking questions, which I appreciate.
I buried her yesterday. I stood at her grave and cried for her. And she was cheating on me.
I’m on my fourth drink, maybe my fifth, when Nora walks in.
“Sawyer?” She looks surprised to see me, concern immediately crossing her face. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be at home.”
“Couldn’t be at home right now.” Couldn’t be anywhere that reminds me of her.
She slides onto the stool next to me, and I can feel her studying me. “Everything okay? I mean, besides… you know.”
Besides my wife dying? Besides having to bury her yesterday? Everything is just peachy.
“Found out today that my dead wife was having an affair for eight months. And apparently she was planning on leaving me.”
Nora goes completely still. “Oh, Sawyer.”
“Her boyfriend felt guilty and decided to come by the station and confess. Real nice of him, right? Wait until after the funeral to tell me my marriage was basically a lie.” I take another drink, welcoming the burn.
“Tom Bradley. History teacher. Nice guy, apparently. Nice enough to fuck my wife behind my back for almost a year.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“She was going to leave me. Did you know that? She was planning to ask for a divorce, and I had no fucking idea.” How did I not see it? How was I so blind?
Nora signals the bartender for a drink of her own. When it comes, she just sits with it, quiet. Waiting.
“You want to talk about it?” she asks finally.
“What’s to talk about? She’s dead, and I’m angry at her, and I feel guilty for being angry at someone who’s dead. It’s fucked up.”
“It’s not fucked up. It just means you’re human.”
Is it? Because I feel like a monster for being furious at someone I just buried.
For the next two hours, Nora sits with me while I work through my anger and pain and guilt. She doesn’t try to fix anything. She just listens when I want to talk and sits quietly when I don’t.
“I don’t know how to grieve someone who betrayed me,” I say finally, staring into my empty glass.
“Maybe you grieve the person you thought she was. And you’re angry at the person she actually was. Those can be true at the same time.”
Can they? Can I love someone and hate them at the same time?
“I loved her, Nora. But I don’t know if she ever really loved me back.”
“She married you. She spent five years with you. That has to mean something.”
“Does it? Or was she just going through the motions like Tom said?” I signal for another drink.
“Was I just convenient? Safe? Boring Sawyer Edwards with his steady job and his predictable life? You know I wasn’t going to be a patrol officer forever.
I just never knew what I wanted to do or where to move up. ”
“You’re not boring.”
“Apparently boring enough that she needed someone else.” Someone more exciting. Someone better.
By the time the bar closes, I’m too drunk to drive and too emotionally wrecked to care. Let me sleep in the parking lot. Let me disappear.
“Come on,” Nora says, helping me off the stool. “I’ll take you home.”
“I don’t want to go home. Everything there reminds me of her.” Her coffee mug in the sink. Her shoes by the door. Her side of the bed still unmade from the last time she slept there before she died.
“Then I’ll take you to your mom’s.”
My mom’s. Like I’m a kid again who can’t handle his own life.
We walk out to the parking lot together, Nora’s arm linked through mine to keep me steady. My legs feel unsteady. Everything feels unsteady. It’s cold, and I can see our breath in the air. Even that reminds me of Lila. She always complained about the cold.
“Thank you,” I say as she helps me into her car. “For sitting with me. For not trying to tell me everything happens for a reason or some bullshit like that.”
“That’s what friends do.”
Friends. At least I have one person in this town I can trust.
“I don’t know how to move forward from this.”
“One day at a time. That’s all you can do.”
I don’t remember much about the drive to my mother’s house, but I remember Nora helping me to the door, making sure I got inside safely. Remember my mom’s worried face when she opened the door. Remember collapsing on my childhood bed and staring at the ceiling, wondering how my life became this.
The next morning, hungover and emotionally destroyed, I wake up on my childhood bedroom floor to my mother making breakfast in the kitchen. The carpet smells like my teenage years. The walls still have posters I never took down. How did I get on the floor?
“How are you feeling, honey?” she calls from the kitchen.
“Like my life was a lie and I’ll never trust anyone again.”
“That bad, huh?” She appears in the doorway with coffee. Black, the way I like it. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” What’s there to say?
Three weeks later, someone at the grocery store made a comment about seeing me leave Clint’s Bar with Nora the night I found out about Lila’s affair.
“I saw them two,” she said, loud enough for half the produce section to hear. “Leaving together. That was awfully soon after Lila’s funeral, don’t you think?”
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
By the end of the month, half the town was convinced I was having an affair too. That maybe Lila’s death wasn’t an accident. That maybe I’d had done something about it.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Lila could have an affair for eight months and nobody knew. Nobody whispered. Nobody gossiped. I have one innocent evening with a friend while grieving my wife’s betrayal, and suddenly I’m the bad guy. The cop who maybe can’t be trusted.
Welcome to Pine Hollows, where the truth doesn’t matter as much as a good story.
I stopped going to Clint's after that. Stopped going anywhere I might run into people who looked at me with judgment or pity. I went to work, went home, studied for exams I didn't care about anymore, and tried to figure out how to be a person again.
Tried to figure out if I'd ever be able to trust anyone again.
Three years later, I'm still trying.