After
AFTER
I stand amid the cold silence of Michael’s office, staring at the unfamiliar folder at the back of the cabinet. Its jammed-in angle disrupts the order of the entire row, as if my husband stuffed it there in a fit of emotion. Except Michael didn’t do fits of emotion.
I pull the thing out. I haven’t checked the filing cabinet in months. I’ve barely even set foot in this room, because of all the places in our home, this one belonged most thoroughly to him. Somehow, the idea of dismantling it has felt like a permanent admission of defeat.
The folder has no label, but it weighs a ton. When I crack the cover, glossy clippings cascade out.
Shock punches all the air from my chest. Michael’s face sears my eyes, only it isn’t Michael. No, this man has a scar bisecting one eyebrow, visible even through the crystalline snow clinging to his stubbled cheeks and abundant lashes.
It’s Grayson. My husband’s identical twin. The man I didn’t even know was an identical twin until I encountered this picture in the grocery store three years ago.
My breath shortens. Grayson stares out from the cover of National Geographic , his gaze as penetrating as it is tormented. He’s clearly only just escaped the avalanche that buried him alive, and his golden brows crook together. And there’s this... thing in his face. This horrible sort of longing, like he’s just glimpsed death and hasn’t decided yet whether to go chasing after it. His full lips are parted, frozen in the moment right before speaking, and I wonder, as I have a thousand times before, what he’s about to say. What critical message he feels compelled to impart after having stood on—and been hauled back from—the brink of oblivion.
I toss the magazine to the floor as if it’s burned me, but that still leaves a stack in my hands. There’s a clipping from some gossip magazine. Then another, and another. Which makes no sense. Michael eternally avoided the subject of Grayson after the last time they saw each other in Seattle. He wouldn’t have followed his brother’s every step, even from afar.
Yet my fingers flip through picture after picture. Here’s the man who looks so much like my husband, wearing a leather jacket Michael never would’ve been caught dead in. Here’s Grayson on the deck of a yacht, glaring across the water at whoever’s photographing him, one hand splayed over a bare chest so glorious it makes me hate myself for noticing. Inky lines feather out from beneath his fingers, but the photographer hasn’t captured what he’s hiding, and for all that I’ve avoided these awful articles, I know that will be the case for every photo here. No one has ever caught this particular tattoo on camera. Despite the speculation, only the women he’s loved and inevitably left truly know what it is.
The images scorch themselves into my brain. Grayson, one arm draped over the handlebars of a motorcycle while he flips the camera the bird. Him in a nightclub, turning away from a woman who probably models for Victoria’s Secret.
The photos abruptly end, and I find myself holding a stack of pages cut with exacting care from National Geographic itself.
Grayson’s work.
My hands tremble, but try as I might, I can’t stop flipping through. An African tribesman in traditional dress holds a cell phone aloft, searching for a signal beneath a full moon. An underground lake reflects the lush greenery of the jungle above. A school of a million silver fish bursts apart as a hungry seabird dive-bombs the water, its red beak gaping.
The pictures are like visual poetry, and I fling the pages away. They scatter to the floor.
My chest heaves. Amid the mess, a bundle of printer paper lies face down, and I bend to pick it up. For a moment, I can’t understand what I’m looking at, because shouldn’t these still be in the manila folder beneath my bed?
Except these aren’t the divorce papers I hid away last year. Those had blurry splotches from where my wet hair had dripped onto the still-warm ink.
These are pristine. Crisply aligned and stapled together. And they’re signed.
By Michael. In handwriting I know as intimately as my own voice.
My heart dies inside my chest. Just sputters out between one beat and the next, leaving me with a numb, lifeless lump beneath my ribs. What little spark remained has just been extinguished.
I hurl the divorce papers at the wall and walk out.
Downstairs, I find my cell phone. I have no idea what I intend to do with it until my disembodied fingers tap on my mother’s name.
Normally I would never call in August, which she clearly knows, because she answers on the first ring. “Mina? Honey? What’s wrong?”
I blink furiously. To my amazement, the force of habit proves even mightier than the jagged crack ravaging my soul. “Nothing, Mom. I’m fine. Hi.”
“Hi.” She releases a breath. “You scared me.”
“Sorry. I know we...haven’t talked in a while.”
I don’t state the obvious—that even though she and my dad live two miles away, we always maintain radio silence at this time of year. Even after nearly four decades, even after I’ve lost a husband, apparently, the anniversary month of my brother’s death still throws my mother into a tailspin. Under normal circumstances, I’d honor her withdrawal and hold off calling until September.
These, however, are not normal circumstances.
“It’s not your fault.” Her tone softens. “I’m... Well. We both know how I get.”
I close my eyes and clutch the phone until the plastic creaks, tethering myself to the timbre of her voice as if it has the power to coax something other than a gutting betrayal from what I’ve just seen.
“And I’ve been thinking about you.” She sounds tentative, fumbling. “I’ve actually wondered if...maybe you...did something special last week?”
My eyes shoot open. For my mother, Jasper’s death has forever marred the day I came into this world, a stain that no amount of time or distance has ever washed out. Back in my childhood, we never celebrated. While my friends all turned six, nine, thirteen, I got cake and balloons on my half birthday. I turned six and a half. Nine and a half. And, in a horrendous, fateful twist, thirty-six and a half on the day Michael died, ultimately leaving me with two cursed dates on opposite sides of the year.
Now this is the closest my mother’s ever come to acknowledging my birthday. My real one, that is.
And so, because I feel compelled to reward her in some way, I lie. “Yeah, Kate took me out for drinks. Then we got massages. It was great.”
“Massages! How wonderful. At Woodhouse Day Spa?”
“Yeah, Woodhouse.”
“Oh, I love it there. Jackie’s my favorite. Such tiny hands, but so strong. Who was your therapist?”
“Um...Lance?” I say, then clamp my teeth around a curled forefinger, because Lance sounds more like a guitar-wielding YouTube star than a Seagrove masseuse who kneads out soreness while Tibetan chants waft in the background.
Clearly, my mother has the same thought, or maybe she knows all the therapists at Woodhouse by name, because her tone goes flat as roadkill. “You didn’t go anywhere, did you?”
“Um...no. But I don’t want you to worry. I’m fine, Mom, really.”
“Are you?”
I fist a hand against my temple. I’m not fine. I am so much the exact fucking opposite of fine that I want to scream, but that would only terrify her.
“When’s the last time you left the house?” she presses.
“I don’t know, when’s the last time you left the house?” I shoot back, then immediately regret it. “I’m sorry, that was shitty of me. I’m just...on edge. Which is actually why I called. Kate suggested I take a vacation, and I think she’s right. I want to give myself a chance to heal, somewhere away from here.”
My mother draws a sharp breath. “By yourself? But where would you go?”
Into the woods , I think, because I can’t stand another second in this house. I no longer care if leaving betrays the man I loved so wholeheartedly. Because clearly, he betrayed me, too. By withdrawing. By sinking into his work.
By dying at thirty-nine after signing divorce papers he hadn’t mustered the courage to use.
I swallow, hoping my tone won’t give me away. “Don’t worry, nowhere crazy. I was hoping I could use the cabin. Being out in nature...helped me a lot the summer Margo died.”
“Oh, the cabin. Well, it’s wonderful that you want to go, but...”
My gut clenches. “But?”
“We sold it.”
My stomach drops. “Sold it? When? Why didn’t I know?”
“Dad and I just accepted the offer last week. We hadn’t been there in a year, and I didn’t think you had any interest anymore.”
I stem a breath, but I can’t argue. The cabin lies northeast of Seattle, in the wilderness near Skykomish—a long enough drive that I’ve only made the effort a handful of times in the past twenty years.
“Though you could still head up, if you wanted.” Her tone turns hopeful. “The closing’s not ’til next week. All our furniture’s still there, and the movers aren’t coming until Wednesday. You’d have four days.”
“Then I absolutely want to go. Right now.” Urgency ignites in my muscles. I dash for the stairs and vault upward two at a time. In my walk-in closet, I toss clothes into my ancient purple roller-bag. “Is the key still in the same place?”
“Yes, but...are you sure you’re all right? Why does this sound so urgent?”
I mumble something about changes of scenery. My mother defaults to worrying mode again, but I don’t have the mental energy to dig her out right now. I’m depleted, left with nothing but a scorching need to escape.
hanging up, I stuff my laptop into my suitcase, then grab my running shoes and haul everything out to the garage. A four-or five-hour drive awaits, depending on Seattle’s traffic, and it’s already well past three.
Halfway through loading my Genesis, I stop. Michael’s bullet-silver Porsche Cayman—his “splurge car,” not the SUV he died in—sits beside mine, silently begging to escape the concrete confines of the garage.
I never drove the thing when he was alive. I always worried that if I went near it, I’d ding the bumper or spill something on the precious leather, which would’ve made him go quiet for days.
Now a wild edge of defiance pulses beneath my skin. I don’t stop long enough to question it, just fling my things from the Genesis into the Cayman.
exchanging my keys for Michael’s, I gun the Porsche out into the driveway and execute a U-turn that makes the tires squeal.
My husband would’ve been horrified. Or proud. I can’t decide which, and in the moment, I don’t even care.
In the rearview mirror, the garage door descends, a guillotine marking the death of my nightmarish vigil inside a box of glass and steel.
God, Kate was right. Inside of a mile, I feel like I’m waking up. I have a purpose. A place to be. As Seagrove fades, the rush within me grows, joining the powerful roar of the Porsche’s engine. The car strains and pulls, eager for open road.
Only after reaching the highway do I remember I’m not nearly as good a driver as Michael was. Still, I power through each forested curve, feeding the car throttle. The hungry engine takes it all and asks for more.
Then the memories awaken, twining up from the floorboards like living shadows. I remember that first drive with Michael, this particular hairpin turn, the way he handled the Audi like he’d been born in the driver’s seat. I remember this gas station streaking past the window, the hitch-drop in my stomach as I tried to deny the allure of a man I suspected, even then, would change my life.
In hopes of banishing the ghosts, I fish out my phone and dictate a text, but after updating Kate, I still have four-plus hours to kill. Four hours to run the gauntlet of knife-bright memories that lurk around every corner.
So I command my phone to list my personal emails aloud. For months, I’ve avoided this, mostly because the endless platitudes from friends I haven’t spoken to in years only fatigue me. But right now, I’ll take what I can get.
Surprisingly, my strategy works, at least for a while. Until my phone announces a message that makes me jerk the Porsche right off the road.
The car screeches to a halt inches from a boulder. I barely register the close call, just stare at the marching trees beyond the windshield. “Repeat that,” I command.
“You have an unopened email from Grayson Drake,” my phone chirps. “Would you like me to read it?”
The cheery, robotic Australian voice I once selected on a whim does nothing to dispel the frost crystals forming in my bloodstream. Grayson Drake .
He didn’t attend our wedding. Never sent Christmas cards. He had no involvement in our lives whatsoever, except on that terrible day I still think of as That One Time. that, Michael asked me never to speak of him again.
And I didn’t—except for once. Not that the silence changed much. Whatever happened between them that day, it was the spark that lit the fire of my husband changing. Which is why I hate Grayson and always will.
I didn’t realize he even knew I existed.
Breath churning, I hit the hazards and snatch up my phone, which displays a message with a send date of two months ago and a single-word subject line: “Armistice . ”
Cold trickles down my spine. It’s a word not many people would use, yet it hauls the weight of an entire history behind it. It’s the pointed, terminal end of a long and painful war I’m left fighting even after one participant is gone.
I suck in the warm, stale air of the car and click.
Hi Mina,
I realize you probably have no desire to hear from me, and for understandable reasons. But with Michael gone, I find myself with a sense of unfinished business. I imagine you might feel the same way. Obviously, you have no obligation to grant me your time, but I’d like to meet for coffee sometime and put a few things to rest, if you’re willing. I’d be happy to drive down to Seagrove. Please let me know.
Hope to see you soon,
Grayson
His phone number lurks optimistically beneath his signature. I barely look at it before pitching the phone down and pulling back out onto Highway 12.
For the next twenty minutes, my mind grinds in useless circles. Grayson’s polite, apologetic tone baffles me, a glaring mismatch to the habitual drinker who flips off photographers and snubs lingerie models in nightclubs.
Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter whether I’m passing right through Seattle in a matter of hours. If Grayson thinks I’m going to call him, much less sit down for coffee, he has another thing coming.
I recite that like a mantra for the next three hours. By the time Seattle’s outskirts jockey for space beyond the windshield, my resolve has hardened. In the stop-and-go traffic on the 405, I open my phone and swipe left to delete Grayson’s message. Then I empty the trash folder, ensuring I can’t change my mind.
Only later, as I nose the Porsche into the cabin’s gravel driveway, does a heaviness descend between my shoulder blades like an ache.
I ignore it. In the fading light, I focus on the cabin’s familiar brown siding and pine-green trim. In the background, the jagged, toothy mountains of the Wild Sky Wilderness rear up like the serrated fangs of some sleeping beast, their tips frosted with snow. The waning day catches on the glistening spires, splashing them with dusky, bloody crimson.
I pop open the car door. Outside, the crisp scent of pine mingles with the spice of the burbling creek, but even the evening’s briskness can’t clear my mind.
Grayson Drake. I can’t believe he emailed me.
I grab my phone and slam the car door harder than necessary, then wander into the cabin’s overgrown backyard. Beyond the swaying grass, the forest awaits, a tangle of gleaming blue shadows that seems to beckon.
A sense of familiarity enfolds me, as if this place has been waiting. As if it always knew I would someday need it again.
I shake myself. Time enough for that later. On the porch, I find the key beneath a carved wooden grizzly bear, and let myself in without unloading the car.
Inside, I zigzag through the shadowy living room to my old bedroom, where I curl up with the knitted afghan from the foot of the bed.
Within moments, my eyes drift shut. Hours later, I awaken to total darkness. The rush of the creek and the mournful sigh of wind-bent pines fill the night.
I feel for my phone and tap the screen, then jerk back: 11:11 p.m.
Ugh. Of all the minutes between dusk and dawn, it had to be that one.
Swallowing hard, I wait until 11:12 arrives, then open my email inbox. I don’t scroll up or down, but stare at the place where Grayson’s message was. For the first time, I admit that, of everyone I know—or don’t know, as the case may be—he’s the only person who might actually understand what this feels like. Who’s loved someone so deeply that their death broke him to pieces.
But his message is gone. No matter how long my eyes scorch a hole in the screen, the email doesn’t exist anymore.
And now it’s too late to get it back.