Convince Me

by Nina Sadowsky

  Out loud the question seems even more ludicrous than when it was just banging around in my head. “I was already so in love with him, I would have forgiven him anything when he came back!”

  “Would you have, though? Think about it, Annie, if Justin had turned up after three weeks of no contact with some lame-ass excuse, would you really have welcomed him back with open arms?”

  I want to protest, but I fall silent. Cinnamon Toast stalks into the room, and twines around my legs as if sensing my distress.

  As mad as I was for Justin, Bella’s words of caution would have certainly resonated more soundly if not for his bravery at keeping the terrible news to himself in order to spare me.

  “I loved him so much.” The words escape my lips in a whisper.

  “I know. I did too,” Will replies gently. “That’s what makes it so awful. But we could both be up to our necks in the mess Justin left behind. So we better stop grieving and figure some shit out.”

  FACTS ABOUT MY HUSBAND

  1. Justin Childs, age 33, deceased

  2. Medical history: uncertain

  3. Pathological liar: quite certain

  4. Truly mourned

  Does that sound crazy? The depth to which we both still love Justin? It must. I’m beginning to suspect that our relationship was one of lies of commission and omission, the depth and breadth of which I’m only beginning to untangle.

  “Where do we even begin?” The question bursts out of me.

  “Do you still want to confront Hayley?” Last night’s burning energy to do something seems considerably more daunting in the light of day, but I need answers.

  “I do.”

  I can’t help but think of our wedding vows, mine and Justin’s, handcrafted and sprinkled with a chorus of “I do!”s as punctuation to each asked promise.

  Do you promise to love, adore, and court me forever?

  I do!

  Do you promise to be faithful to me and attentive to my desires?

  I do!

  Do you promise to not die in a car wreck, leaving me stunned and destroyed?

  We didn’t actually include that one. But maybe we should have.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  WILL

  I’ve never been to Hayley Hayter’s house. Pulling up to the modest stucco Spanish-style cottage in an enclave of Culver City known as Sunkist Park, I’m struck not by the house so much, or the profusion of hot pink bougainvillea that drapes it, but by the many MISSING posters that paper the house’s front archway. A picture of Hayley smiles from the poster’s center, a curly-haired girl with soft features and the slightly bucktoothed grin caught in this photograph.

  Four people wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the same image are assembled on the front patio, opening boxes of even more flyers.

  I glance over at Annie, who looks pale as a ghost. A lump of dread forms in the pit of my stomach.

  “Hayley’s missing?” Annie rasps.

  “Apparently,” I reply grimly.

  We exit the car and walk up the flower-lined path in front of the house. A soft breeze leavens the burgeoning heat of the day.

  I catch sight of a soft-featured face surrounded by a mop of curly brown hair and my heart leaps. For a brief moment I think it is Hayley herself, safe and sound. Then my eyes focus on the lines of the neck and jaw and I realize I’m looking at a male version of Hayley’s features. Upon catching sight of us, he strides toward us with an aggressive swagger.

  Annie sees him barreling toward us. “We’re stuck now,” she murmurs to me.

  “Hello,” she says to the curly haired man. “You’re Hugh, right? Hayley’s brother? I’m Annie Childs? I worked, uh, work with Hayley? This is my friend Will Barber.”

  Hugh’s soft features harden. “So you’re the famous Annie.” His voice drips with venom. I can see a pulse flutter in the hollow of Annie’s throat. “Here to help?” he continues snidely. “I would think you’ve done enough.”

  “Hey!” I interject. “I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, but Annie is Hayley’s friend. And she just lost her own husband. Show a little respect.”

  “What’s going on anyway?” Annie asks. “What’s happened to Hayley?”

  “Hayley’s gone missing. Hasn’t been seen for four days.”

  “God. I’m so sorry,” Annie blurts.

  “A little too late for that, isn’t it? I know all about your husband,” Hugh sneers. “Kept Hayley on the hook for months while he agonized about his precious vows. That motherfucker wanted Hayley and she wanted him, but he never went all the way downtown if you get my drift.”

  It occurs to me Hugh might be on something. Annie’s gone even paler, stricken by his crude words. “Look,” I assert. “There’s no reason to be a dick.”

  “There’s every reason,” Hugh spits back. “Her husband was jerking my sister around for months. Then Hayley goes missing and he turns up dead? Don’t tell me there’s no connection. I don’t know what he did to her or what he got her involved in, but you are not welcome here. Do you know that the cops interrogated me? For ten goddamn hours! Now get the fuck off our property.”

  The trio on the patio is staring at us now, beginning to mass protectively behind Hugh. One of them must be Hugh’s mother. Her exhausted face creases in distress as she reaches a protective hand toward her son.

  “Let’s go, Will,” Annie whispers. “Now.” We turn our backs on Hugh’s ugly leer and hurry back to my car.

  “You see why I don’t know what to think? What to believe?” Annie’s voice is shrill as we pull away. “Hayley’s brother confirmed there was something going on between them!”

  “But that they weren’t sleeping together.”

  “So what? An emotional affair is almost worse. It is worse. How could I be so stupid? And Hayley’s missing? What the fuck is going on?”

  I take a deep breath, about to put voice to something that I’ve hardly dared to think. “I don’t believe he was having an affair with Hayley, but he might have been using her.”

  “For what?” The tremor in Annie’s voice betrays the intensity of her emotions.

  “I don’t know exactly. It just fits his pattern.”

  “His pattern?” Annie’s eyebrows arch up.

  “It was a thing Justin would do,” I say carefully. “Even way back in B school. Turn on that love light. Make people think he wanted to sleep with them, be with them. Dangle it. In return they gave him anything he asked.”

  “But what could he have wanted from Hayley?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  We drive in silence as I steel myself for what I know I must do next.

  “Okay. Here goes,” I say finally. “I’ll call Sunil. As much as I’m dreading this conversation.”

  “Are you going to tell him about Sax?” Annie asks anxiously.

  “Not yet. Not outright. Too many people are depending on me. I need to figure out what the hell is going on first.”

  I dial Sunil, but the call goes to voicemail. Part of me is relieved, even though I know I’m just delaying the inevitable. I leave a message asking him to call me as soon as possible.

  “We should eat,” I say.

  “Whatever.” Annie shrugs. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You should still eat. Let’s go to Rae’s.”

  Annie nods.

  To fill the space between us, I flick on the radio. It jolts a ska punk riff into the car; an angry singer growls a raspy refrain of “No, not now, not ever,” on repeat. Annie reaches over and turns the radio off. Silence descends again.

  Annie finally breaks it. “Wherever this is headed, it’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”

  I can feel Annie’s eyes on me, but I keep my own eyes steadfastly on the road in front of me and my mouth shut. She’s right. This
is headed nowhere good at all.

  “You know all the palm trees in L.A. are dying, right? They’re not native to the city. So they’re all going to die and there are no plans to replace them. In a couple of years, the whole city’ll look different.”

  “They’ll have to reprint all the postcards,” I reply.

  “Yeah. Maybe we could come up with an idea for Shark Tank,” Annie zings back. “A Postcard Palm Tree Removal System.”

  I glance at Annie and see a quick flash of smile cross her lips. Surprised by the turn in the conversation, I hesitate, and Annie bursts into laughter. It’s full and rich and shakes her entire body. She clutches her sides, gasping for breath. There’s a touch of hysteria to it, and I just let her run her course without comment.

  Finally, she wipes her eyes and takes a deep shuddering breath. “I know nothing’s funny,” she affirms with a shrug. “But if I don’t laugh…” For a second she looks like she might cry.

  I take her hand and give it a quick squeeze. “No worries. You do you.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know how I’d get through all this without you.”

  “JAWs forever,” I pledge, only to sense her quick recoil. “Hey, no matter what we learn about Justin, I know he loved us both.”

  “In his fashion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Will. He may have loved us, but what does that amount to if he lied to us about everything? Warren Sax! Brain tumors! Affairs! God knows what else. Has it occurred to you that his brother, Tommy, might be another figment of Justin’s imagination?”

  “That’s…” I trail off, my protest frozen in my throat. Could Justin have created a fictional addicted, suicidal brother all those years ago? It suddenly seems possible. I have to acknowledge that everything I took for granted must now be tested. And what proof did I have that Tommy ever existed?

  “You may be right,” I agree. “We need to question everything. But more than that, we need to be prepared for wherever the answers take us.”

  Another slightly unhinged giggle escapes Annie. “No promises.”

  Annie’s phone buzzes. She glances at the screen. “Oh my god,” she says. “It’s Carol. I can’t answer it. I just can’t talk to her right now.” Annie hits DECLINE.

  “We could just ask her about Tommy point-blank,” I hazard.

  “Here’s the thing, though, Will. I mentioned Tommy to Carol at the funeral and she looked at me like I was crazy. And Justin told me to never talk about him with her so I just never did, before yesterday, I mean. Seems suspicious now, doesn’t it?”

  “He asked me to do the same. I didn’t think anything about it at the time except that he was being protective of Carol, like always.”

  “Right.”

  With sudden, penetrating doubt, I rethink everything I know about Justin’s brother and his addiction. We were in our first year of business school when Justin looked at a text on his phone one day and went pale. He hurriedly excused himself from the coffee shop we were in, throwing a twenty on the table for his turkey on sourdough.

  I didn’t see him for five days, despite texting to check in.

  He finally showed up at my door just as I was darting out for our nine o’clock class. I took a hard look into his eyes. They were red-rimmed. Hesitantly, he laid it out for me: He had a brother back in New York who had overdosed.

  “He’s alive,” Justin continued. “My mom found him in time and they Narcaned him. But they don’t know if it was an accident, or you know, an attempt at suicide.”

  “Shit. Did you go back to New York?”

  He looked at me strangely. “Why would you ask that?”

  I got flustered. I’m not sure why, but thinking about it now I wonder if there was something accusatory in his tone. He went on to say he just needed some time to get his head together. “It’s not like I can just drop everything and run back to New York because he fucked up.” His tone was angry; his brow creased.

  “Yeah, of course.” Suddenly I was rushing to reassure him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

  As the semester went on, he had the occasional unexplained disappearance. He’d reappear after a few days, mutter something about his brother, but not offer up much in the way of details. Upon his return, he always seemed haunted, like his very life force had been sucked, so I did my best to buoy him along. I shared my notes and essentially carried him on my back through midterms, drilling him with the flash cards I’d made for myself. He was always so generous with me, buying meals, sharing his designer haul; I was happy to repay his generosity any way I could.

  The morning of our financial accounting final, a frantic pounding on my front door woke me from a deep sleep. With bleary eyes, I checked the time: 4:37 A.M. Shit.

  Justin was at my door, suitcase in hand.

  “What’s up, man? You going someplace? Facing the final can’t be that bad.”

  “Actually, I have to miss it. Tommy finally got it right. I’m on an eight A.M. flight to New York.”

  My sleep-fogged brain took a minute to process what Justin meant by Tommy “got it right.” He’d killed himself. Or ODed, which was tantamount to the same thing.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said and hesitated. Anything else seemed inadequate.

  “Yeah. The stupid idiot. Anyway, I’ll email the school, but I’m out. My mother needs me at home.” He gave me a pained smile and gripped me in a tight, fast hug. “Didn’t want you worrying about me, buddy,” he said as he released me. “Hopefully, I’ll get some kind of accommodation on the finals and I’ll be back in January.”

  I didn’t see or hear from Justin again for almost four years. Until he showed up in my office one day and made April Riley giggle.

  My head spins as I look at this piece of my history with Justin with brutal new perspective.

  The silence between us grows stickier as my thoughts spiral. My brain frantically sorts and categorizes every fact I know about Justin, my best friend and business partner, looking for holes and inconsistencies. There was so much I accepted, just because Justin told me so.

  * * *

  —

  This time it’s Annie who flicks the radio on, filling the car with a pulsing beat and screeching vocals. It’s angry music, edgy and defiant. We keep the volume up high.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CAROL

  Annie doesn’t pick up. I’m not surprised; I didn’t actually expect she would.

  I’d dialed Justin’s cellphone number at least half a dozen times just to hear his voice before trying her. Overwhelmed by the futility of hearing his same cheerful recorded refrain, “Leave a message and I’ll hit you back,” over and over again, I called Annie. I leave her a voicemail, asking how she’s doing and if she’d like to have a meal one day this week. Low key. No pressure. Kind.

  Then I throw the phone across the room and watch with satisfaction as it smacks into the wall and clatters to the floor, the screen shattered. That felt good.

  I barely slept last night, despite the two Ambien I gobbled down. Restless, I sweated right through two sets of pajamas and had to strip the still damp sheets as soon as I pulled my ragged body from the bed shortly before dawn. My infrequent dips into slumber were punctuated by fragments of terrifying dreams: images of looming strangers, car crashes, and, of course, fire, all underscored by a pervasive sense of uneasy longing and desperate failure.

  After I remade the bed, I showered, dressed, and had a cup of tea and a slice of whole grain toast with my favorite orange marmalade. It was five forty-five in the morning and I had absolutely nothing with which to fill the rest of my day.

  I curled in the sofa opposite the window in my living room for quite some time, watching the sun creep across the geometrically patterned area rug that dominates the space. I never would have expected to find myself in California, alone in this sta
rkly modern apartment, in this city that never really feels like a city.

  I remember the day Justin first told me he was moving to California. He’d been out of college for about eighteen months, living at home, but hardly ever there. He was following in my footsteps, selling real estate, although he was working for a slick Manhattan outfit that sold commercial buildings as opposed to the middle-class Long Island homes that had been my stock-in-trade.

  While I was, of course, happy to have him back home, it was also an adjustment. He was a man, a college graduate and a working professional, and at the same time every time I looked at him I saw the baby in diapers, the toddler grinning, the serious little boy, the gregarious young adolescent.

  And while I knew Justin, of course, I also didn’t know him at all.

  Where he spent most of his nights, who his friends were, if he was dating, these were all mysteries. He breezed in and out of the house without warning, sometimes making me jump when I discovered him inside, sometimes disappearing so soundlessly that I wandered around our place convinced he’d be around the next corner, only to discover it was empty.

  I hadn’t been happy exactly while Justin had been away at school, but I’d found a peaceful rhythm to my existence. I also had the comforting schedule of school breaks and summers; every visit home was defined by his eventual return to college. I found this new order unsettling, which in turn unleashed waves of guilt. Shouldn’t I be thrilled without reservation to have my boy at home?

  But I did my best. What any mother would do. I tried to ask minimal questions. Gave him his space. I’d periodically announce I was going on a “cultural weekend with friends,” and I’d book a room at one of my old haunts in the city. Spend the days wandering solo, the nights in the arms of a stranger.

  During one of those weekends, on a brisk and breezy Saturday, two vaguely familiar profiles caught at the corner of my eye as I turned in to the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park. It was their height, the dark slashes of their eyebrows. The man’s eyes met mine and he smiled, an open, genuine smile that I felt down to my core.