“I’ve got you,” Will says kindly. He tucks his arm through mine and draws me into the cool, dark interior of the pub. Molly trails after us.
A spotlight shines on a photograph of Justin on an easel. As my eyes connect with the eyes in the image, a shiver courses through my body. For a moment, it was like looking right into Justin’s beautiful living face. A sharp, angry slice of regret and loss pierces my gut.
I still can’t believe he’s gone. Maybe none of this is really happening?
Will guides me to a table. I find a glass of whiskey in my hand. I lift the glass to Justin’s photograph in a toast. Take a sip. Feel a single tear slip from the side of my right eye.
Is this the beginning of the end? Will the tears start now and never stop?
Will places a box of tissues and a plate loaded with cheese, crackers, olives, and carrots on the table in front of me. Molly follows with a glass of water. “You should eat something, Annie,” Will admonishes me. “Don’t want to drink on an empty stomach.” He puts one of his large square hands on my shoulder and I feel instantly comforted.
When I first met Justin, he told me there were two essential people in his life, his business partner, Will, and his mother, Carol.
He described Will as his best friend and “the brother I hadn’t known I was missing, until he was found.”
He said Carol was “the person who taught me everything I know about love.”
I met Will first, which was only natural. We all lived in L.A., while Carol was still living on the East Coast back then. Justin and I had been dating just a few weeks, six maybe, when he casually suggested Will join us for dinner, that very night.
Justin had built a mythology around his friend Will, so much so that he loomed larger than life. Will had saved Justin’s life their first year of B school. Will knew Justin better than anyone. Will had sacrificed his steady job and staked his savings to partner with Justin in their startup VR venture, Convincer Media. Will was Justin’s hero.
Talk about pressure.
I must have changed outfits a dozen times before I finally settled on jeans, boots, and a featherweight cashmere sweater in a flattering shade of coral. Casual but put together, attractive but not flaunting it. I wanted to make the right impression, whatever that meant. I just knew I desperately wanted Will to like me.
That night was so like Justin. He picked me up, that glint of mischief in his eyes. Told me not to ask questions.
We met Will at the OUE Skyspace LA, and though it’s a popular tourist destination now, somehow Justin got the three of us in for a private tour before the place’s official opening. Located on the sixty-ninth floor of an office building downtown, the exhibit is a loving ode to Los Angeles. Soon we were darting around the interactive exhibits: at the shadow wall watching our mirrored reflections dissolve into particles, circling the 360-degree panoramic view of the city, staring down into the infinity mirror, which creates the illusion of staring straight down to the very bottom of the skyscraper.
Justin saved the “best” for last, a ride down the Skyslide, a forty-five-foot glass-enclosed tube that carries brave souls from the seventieth floor down to the sixty-ninth on the outside of the building.
Talk about pressure.
I was terrified, but Justin and Will were ebullient, high-fiving, jostling each other to see who would go first. It was Justin in the end, no surprise.
Will and I watched him take off down the slide with a mighty whoop!
“Do you want to go next?” Will asked. Our eyes met and his softened. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
He was trying to be kind, but I bristled. He and Justin were a club and I wanted in.
“I’ll go,” I answered, struggling to control the waver in my voice.
“He has that effect, doesn’t he?” Will said gently.
“What do you mean?”
“Justin. He gets people to push their boundaries. He sure as hell gets me to push mine.” Will gifted me a warm smile. “Hasn’t killed me yet.”
Unsure how to reply, I entered the slide. Squeezed my eyes shut and didn’t open them once on the way down. Fell into a pair of familiar arms. Peeled my eyelids open. Justin gazed at me in a way that made me squirm with desire, to kiss him, to fuck him, to please him, to enchant him.
“Wasn’t that incredible?” His eyes shone. He rocked back and forth on his heels as if gravity was struggling to contain him.
Will whooshed down into the soft landing pit. “Woot! Woot! Woot!” he shouted. “Amazing! Fucking amazing!”
Lit up with adrenaline and adventure, we went on to drinks and dinner and more drinks. Near the close of the night, Justin christened us “JAWs.” After we shut our last bar down, the three of us roamed the streets humming the iconic shark theme from the movie, arms linked, with me in the middle.
We felt invincible. Or at least I did.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WILL
A car horn startles me. I was so lost in thought, I was completely unaware of the traffic. I lift my foot off the brake and accelerate as a metallic tang fills my mouth. I’ve worried at my inner bottom lip with my teeth until I’ve drawn blood.
I was seven the first time I did that, gnawed at my lip until it bled. Cowering under my covers in my bedroom upstairs while my parents raged in the kitchen below, the rise and fall of anger and recrimination that I couldn’t quite decipher, punctuated by the sounds of crashes, thuds, and shattering glass.
Ours was not a violent household. My father is an anthropology professor at Stanford (his specialty, the study of tools and their effect on society); my mother is a clinical psychologist. Palo Alto is a wealthy liberal enclave; we had family councils about how I might have disappointed, but I was rarely punished, never struck.
Alarmed by my own bloody mouth, afraid to know what was happening and yet desperately needing to see, I chose to brave the sounds of violence below. I crept out of my bedroom and down the stairs.
Just in time to see Daddy punch Mommy in the eye.
I don’t remember how I got there, but suddenly I was clinging to my father’s back, dribbling blood on his white collar, shrieking, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”
I rained my small fists on my father’s broad shoulders. He paused in his advance on my mother. Dropped his raised arm. My mother reached out to me and I leapt to her. We sank to the floor wrapped in each other. Through my tears, I caught the glinting wreckage of broken glass strewn across the floor.
My father squared his slumped shoulders, went to the pantry, and pulled out a broom. Meticulously swept up the shards of glass without saying a single word. Mom lifted me onto the kitchen counter and put paper-towel-wrapped ice on my bloody lip. Asked me to hold it there while she wetted down yet more paper towels and swabbed the kitchen floor for the finest particles of glass. Then she picked me up and carried me back upstairs and tucked me into bed, sitting with me until I dropped off to sleep.
The next morning it was as if the whole incident had been a nightmare, something I’d conjured, not quite real. My parents circled me and my little brother, Chris, barely two years old and plunked into his high chair, with their usual practiced routine. Coffee for them. Breakfast for us. Confirmation that Mom would pick up Chris at daycare; that Dad would get me after basketball practice.
After Dad grabbed his briefcase and darted out for his first class, I studied my mother’s face. She’d covered it with makeup, but there was a reddish bruise on the bloom of her cheek.
“I don’t want Daddy to get me after practice,” I announced.
Mom sighed. “He loves you very much, Will.” Her eyes were wet with tears, which surprised and alarmed me. “I promise you that. You are his everything.”
Dad did pick me up after practice, and though I was initially wary of him, he seemed to be the Dad I knew, affable, a little
distracted, kind, not the monster I’d glimpsed the night before. He took me out for burgers, just the two of us.
I was prepared for the worst; Allison Greenspan, a girl in my class, had recently announced at recess that her parents were getting a divorce. Allison had been delighted by the prospect, two houses, two sets of toys, two closets full of dresses, and no more fighting. I was more ambivalent.
But as we shared fries and sipped milkshakes, Dad surprised me. “Will, I want you to know how very sorry I am,” he launched in. “About what you saw last night, that you saw it, that it happened at all. I’ve apologized to your mother and I’m apologizing to you.”
I’d been forced to apologize by my parents on multiple occasions, to them and to others; this was the first time I could remember my father apologizing to me.
The salty potato in my mouth suddenly felt like it was choking me. I’d almost convinced myself that last night had been a dream. But no, it was real. And now Dad was apologizing?
“People lose their tempers sometimes. It’s not admirable, but it happens. I lost mine. I won’t try to rationalize it or justify it. But as you’ve gone seven years, five months, and four days without seeing me lose it like I did last night, I’ll do my best to make sure it takes at least another eight or so years until you see me like that again. Deal?” He smiled his same old Dad smile at me.
I took a sip of cold vanilla shake and dislodged the fry in my throat.
“Deal.”
Things went back to normal after that. We did our usual family things: We had our early Sunday dinners with the same faculty clique of parents with similarly aged children. Dad and I worked on projects together, from restoring an old car to building a coffee table. He taught me about his love of tools and the value of respecting them (the reason I always have a toolbox in my trunk). He took me to my first concerts and instilled his love of ’60s rock in me. He came to my games and cheered from the sidelines. Mom ferried Chris and me to the library, to the park, to playdates and practices.
Yet nothing was the same. In ways I could never quite put my finger on.
When Chris finally went off to college, six years after I’d done the same, my parents split up. The next summer when I was home for a visit, my mother announced over vodka tonics that Chris and I had different biological fathers, his being a former student of my dad’s with whom she’d had an affair.
My world spun on its axis. “Does Chris know?”
“Yes.”
“Does Dad know?”
“Yes.”
“How long have they known?”
“Chris I told the summer before he went away to school. As for your dad, you probably don’t remember, Will,” my mother replied. “But you might. You were seven or eight? Chris was still a toddler.”
Her eyes met mine and I knew exactly which night it had been when Dad learned the truth.
“And he stayed with you? All that time?” Hurt and anger I hadn’t begun to process made my words harsh.
Mom flinched, just a little. “We loved each other and we loved you boys. We decided we would work it out.”
“Until you didn’t,” I spat out bitterly.
“That’s fair,” Mom said. “But life is long and complicated, Will. You can live many lives in the course of one.”
I was angry at her for a long time. And at my dad too. That relationship never really recovered (particularly after he got remarried to a student named Brandy and had baby twin girls that he announced with oblivious joy were his chance to do fatherhood right).
I distanced myself from Chris, the tangible proof of my mother’s infidelity. I learned that no one can be wholly trusted.
Thinking about trust makes me wonder about Warren Sax, Justin’s mentor and our company’s biggest investor. I haven’t heard a word from Sax since Justin died, despite leaving phone messages and sending an email to the private address I found on Justin’s computer. I thought he would turn up for the funeral, but I haven’t spotted him.
Sax is notoriously reclusive. And while I loved Justin, he was admittedly a bit of a narcissist. I recognize that was part of the reason he kept Sax in such a silo. Justin alone could charm the legend, that was made clear.
Justin kept his line of communication with Sax so personal and direct that I’ve never even met the guy. I can’t help but wonder if he’ll continue to back us with Justin gone. My stomach knots.
Yet another fucking unknown. Questions have been throbbing in my head, a relentless drumbeat:
How and why did Justin go over that embankment? Accident? Suicide? Murder?
The Valium found in his system makes me wonder. He hated drugs. Never used them.
Did someone kill Justin? And if so, who? Why?
I pull into a parking space next to the bar I selected for the reception. I watch as black-clad mourners make for the entrance; I know most of them. It seems absurd, it seems insane, but I have to ask myself: Could one of them be Justin’s killer?
CHAPTER NINE
CAROL
A peal of laughter floats over the buzz of the crowd. I recognize the laugh; it’s Annie’s, a hearty bellow right from the gut. I don’t begrudge her; I’m glad. She’ll have enough tears later.
I flash to Mike’s funeral. Shards of memory pierce me like daggers: Justin clinging to my side, mute. Mike’s parents, as shell-shocked as I was. His sister, Robyn, tending to all of us. The fight that ensued when I walked in on her grinding a pill and snorting it in Justin’s bedroom after the service.
“Everyone deals with grief differently,” Robyn defiantly shouted when I challenged her.
She was right, of course, but she also died of an overdose four years later.
This bar Will picked is packed with hipsters. These kids all think they’re so unique and quirky, but they fall into obvious stereotypes. Tattoos, piercings, and leather are one set of signifiers. Then there are the proud nerds with their square glasses and jaunty hats, 1950s dresses and dainty handbags. The techies are identified by their streamlined silhouettes and sleek, futuristic fabrics.
I wonder if anything or anyone has the ability to surprise me anymore.
That sweet girl Molly brings me over a plate of food. She’s besotted with Will, that much is obvious. Poor thing. Men will break your heart one way or another.
After Mike died, I was our sole support. I got an insurance settlement in connection with his accident, but I put it in trust for Justin’s college education. We had to sell our home and move to a townhouse in a less desirable neighborhood. My boy and I leaned heavily on each other, isolated in a shared bitter grief.
I did the best I could. That’s all one can ask of any mother, right? I loved my son; I kept a roof over his head and food in his belly. I sacrificed most of my own small pleasures for his greater good and never regretted it. I had lost my parents, my sister, and my brother. I had lost Mike. Justin was my life raft.
Then Robyn died, and her parents followed shortly thereafter. Brokenhearted by the loss of both their children, they simply seemed to lose the will to live.
Justin was all I had. I was all he had.
I began to dream about my sister and brother. Each night as I slept, they rose up from a pile of burnt ash to circle me, locked forever at the ages at which they died, seventeen and eleven respectively.
My parents didn’t haunt me this way, and hard as I prayed, I couldn’t conjure Mike in my dreams either. Maybe it was for the best. I imagined seeing him would bring me solace, but my siblings’ visitations only brought a panicked fear.
Justin started getting into trouble at school. I didn’t blame him, I felt like picking fights all the time myself. But the third time I was pulled away from a house showing by a call from the school office, I was beside myself.
When I strode into the principal’s office, Justin was perched on a chair, an ice pack applie
d to his bloody nose. Our eyes met and he must have seen some of the steel in mine because he cowered.
I covered his ass with the principal, asking for time and promising counseling, playing the poor-widowed-woman-and-bereft-son card as hard as I could. It was true, after all, even if I was frustrated with Justin. And I was even more frustrated with myself. I couldn’t help him. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to help myself.
We walked in silence to the school parking lot. Climbed into my Volvo wagon. Sat in silence for what felt like an eternity.
Finally, I began. “Look, honey, I know this is a tough time. But I promise you that getting into fights is pretty much guaranteed not to make it any better. You’re angry. I understand that. I am too. But we need to figure out how to manage that anger, not turn it on other people. Or ourselves.”
I could see a pulse beat in his temple, even as he kept his gaze fixed out the front windshield.
“Justin? Do you understand me?” Exasperation wrenched my voice. “I can’t keep just abandoning clients! If I don’t sell houses, we don’t eat.”
True fear drove my words. The membrane that kept us from tipping off the grid into despair and homelessness felt very thin.
I could see that the harshness of my tone scared him, but I couldn’t stop. “You can’t do this anymore! Do you understand? I have enough on my plate! I can’t take on this fighting bullshit too!”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. The last thing I wanted to do was pass my worries on to Justin. It was my job to reassure him the world was safe, despite evidence to the contrary.
He stayed turned away from me. The idea of a division between the two of us was sickening. But I had to get through to him. I grabbed his arm. “Do you understand, Justin? Just say yes.”
Justin turned his troubled eyes to mine. “Yes,” he said so softly I could barely hear him.
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