Soulmates

by Jessica Grose

  After a few moments I turned away from the scene unfolding across the way and smiled to myself. When he opened the door twenty minutes later, with the yellow plaid monstrosity sitting in all its 1970s glory behind him, all I could do was grin.

  I could not reconcile that man with the man who had left me. After I got back from Minnesota and cured myself of Googling Ethan, my final step was to get rid of that chair, setting it out with a sad thump late on a Sunday night so I wouldn’t have to look at it again before the garbagemen picked it up early the next morning.

  Now that I’m the only person who lives in our apartment, a hollow quality has settled over the once bright rooms that can be drowned out only by the soothing baritones of nightly newscasters. When I got home that night, I went over to turn on the TV after I set my briefcase down, but then I hesitated: I wanted to find out more about Ethan, but I was afraid to hear his name come out of a newscaster’s mouth. I didn’t think I could stomach moving images of the cave where he and Amaya were found, or actual footage of their body bags.

  I decided to leave the TV off for the time being, but after a few minutes of trying to prepare a small, homely meal of bagged salad and a can of vegetarian chili, the sounds of the can opener cranking, the fridge door creaking open and shut, and the plastic bag rustling started to grate. I put my utensils down and paced the uneven wood floors.

  I had thrown out almost everything that Ethan owned in the months after he left, but there were a few things that seemed too cruel to toss—mostly things that related to his mom. She had died in a car crash when he was fourteen, so I never met her. I had put everything I saved in a drawer in the spare room, and I went to go see what was left.

  The first thing I grabbed was a photograph. It was in a cheap metal frame, but the image itself was lovely. Rosemary looked to be about seven months pregnant, and she was wearing a frame-hugging maternity dress that accentuated her protruding belly. The photo had the slightly brownish tint of lots of photos taken in the late seventies, and it gave her blond hair an almost reddish gleam. She was smiling at the camera, looking serene, and her left hand was supporting her stomach, like she was protecting its contents from the camera’s eye. At the bottom of the picture, Ethan had written in ballpoint pen July 1978.

  Looking at the picture reminded me of the heart-destroying discussions Ethan and I had about kids in the year before he left. Right after he split I thought about our phantom children all the time. I even had obvious dreams about babies dressed in frilly Victorian garb with blank spaces where their faces should have been. I thought we’d have children by now, at least one, maybe two. I pictured a little girl with Ethan’s sweet expression and my light hair.

  One thing Ethan and I had agreed on was that we wanted two children. Just like I have Beth, he has a younger brother, Travis, who is in the air force and stationed outside Doha, Qatar—or at least he was the last time I heard from him. I had met him only a few times, and though he tried to be a good sibling to Ethan, his efforts didn’t always land. Ethan was a sensitive kid and he’d read his brother’s concern as judgment.

  Their dad’s another story. He works for the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks department. An army vet who met Ethan’s mom in San Francisco after the Vietnam War, he never knew how to relate to his striving, gentle older son. Ethan had zero interest in hunting, which was Ray’s primary method of bonding with his boys. It didn’t matter so much when Rosemary was alive. On weekends she would take Ethan to the nearest community bookstore and leave him there while she went about her errands. Ethan spent hours in a cozy chair in a distant corner of the shop, reading Jack London and Ernest Hemingway and Thomas McGuane and other bards of wide-open spaces while Ray and Travis would be out hunting deer, elk, or bighorn sheep, depending on the season.

  In the months after Rosemary’s death, Ray tried to take Ethan on a few hunting trips. But, Ethan told me, he always did something wrong. Make too much noise or get bored and stare up at the sky. Ray didn’t get mad about this, exactly. He’d just turn silent and cut their trips short. Soon Ray would just go hunting with Travis or his buddies from the Montana FWP and leave Ethan at home. So Ethan would read whatever he could find around the house instead of whatever he could find at the bookstore. That’s how he became an expert on indigenous flora and fauna. He could talk for hours about bears. I used to love the depth and oddity of his knowledge.

  Looking at the picture of Rosemary, I thought about Ray. The way he looked proud and almost happy at our wedding. The sad, downturned lines at the corners of his mouth in repose, the ones I noticed the one time he came out to my family’s house in Minneapolis for Christmas. Despite our difficult mother, Beth and I tried our best to include him, but our rituals seemed to make him uncomfortable. He left a day early, without any real explanation. Ethan looked crushed but never wanted to talk about it. “That’s just how Dad is,” he said at the time.

  Ray and Travis had always done the best they could by Ethan, and he appreciated them for it. As much faith as I had lost in Ethan’s integrity, I never thought he would cut ties with Ray or Travis. I knew that Travis had been in touch with Ethan—at least he was when we broke up. Travis called me all the way from Qatar about two months after Ethan left to lend me his support. Loyalty and a man’s word were important to him, and he told me he didn’t respect Ethan’s choices. What he said was “I think that boy’s lost his damn mind.” It buoyed me for about an hour, but the brief elation of being right was no match for the misery of being left.

  I started and deleted sixty-four e-mails to Travis, since I felt closer to him than I did to Ray. I wondered if Travis had even heard the news yet, if he was even still in Qatar. And what would I say anyway? Hi, we haven’t talked in a few years, but do you know what happened to your poor dead brother? I couldn’t bear to be the one to break it to him.

  Fortunately, my attempts at composing a straightforward yet sympathetic e-mail were interrupted by my phone ringing in the kitchen. I walked over, picked it up, and saw that the call was from a 575 area code, which my phone helpfully told me was in New Mexico.

  “Hello?” I croaked out.

  “Is this Dana Powell?” a twangy male voice inquired.

  “Dana Morrison. I used to be Dana Powell.”

  “You are married to Ethan Powell. Is that correct?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  “Ma’am, this is Sheriff Matt Lewis from the Sagebrush County Sheriff’s Office. I have some upsetting news.” His voice got sensitive. “You might want to sit down for this.”

  “Spare me,” I said, more harshly than I meant to. “I saw it all over the New York Post. What took you so long to contact me?”

  “Well, ma’am, it took us a while to figure out that Ethan still had a wife. I was not aware the case had become news in New York City. We found your information among his personal effects and thought you might be able to aid us in our investigation.”

  I sighed deeply and sat up. I hated everything that I had been feeling since I found out about Ethan’s death, but I wasn’t a monster. I was a good girl. I would always cooperate with authorities. “I’m happy to help in whatever way I can.”

  “I appreciate that. Ideally we’d interview you in person here in New Mexico, but I understand if that’s not feasible at this time.”

  I paused, my head spinning. Could I take time off from work? “It depends,” I said.

  “Well, let’s chat now and we can go from there,” Lewis said. “I’m going to need to ask you some difficult questions. I apologize in advance.”

  “I understand,” I said, trying to stop my voice from quavering.

  “How long were you and Mr. Powell together?”

  “Ten years. Married for about three.”

  “And why are you living apart?” Lewis asked.

  “He got involved with Amaya and left me.” I tried not to sound bitter, but I don’t think I succeeded.

  “In that time, was Mr. Powell ever violent with you?” he asked.


  I laughed out loud. Ethan made us get those useless no-kill mousetraps when we had an infestation at our apartment. When they didn’t work—as I predicted—and I called the exterminator, he refused to speak to me for half a day.

  “Ma’am? “Lewis said, his voice still even. “Can you answer my question?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling myself together. “No, no. He was never abusive toward me.”

  “Was he abusive toward others?”

  “No. Never. Why are you asking me this?”

  “Well, ma’am, one of the possibilities based on the evidence is that what happened to Mr. Powell and Ms. Walters was a murder-suicide.”

  “No,” I said plainly. “That’s not possible. What is your evidence for that?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. I don’t want to jeopardize our investigation.” Lewis maintained his monotone. “But we haven’t officially ruled either death a suicide at this time.”

  “I don’t believe that Ethan would ever kill another soul, much less himself. Are you investigating the possibility of foul play at the retreat?”

  “We’re looking at all angles right now,” Lewis said, “but at this point we do not have anyone we’re calling a suspect.”

  “I think you should be looking a little harder,” I snapped. “How many murders does your department investigate a year?”

  “Well, ma’am, this county only has about a thousand full-time residents. So this is the first one in quite a while.”

  “Maybe you should be handing this over to someone with more experience. Maybe the FBI or the New Mexico State Police. Because there’s no way the man I love is a killer, and you’d know that if you did a little investigating.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but it started to get louder. I slowed down my speech to make my point. “It. Is. Not. Possible.”

  Lewis sighed. “Listen. Between you and me, I do think there’s something hinky going on at the retreat. But the guy who runs the place . . .”

  “Yoni?” I offered.

  “Yes. Yoni, John Brooks, what have you. Mr. Brooks has a very expensive team of lawyers, and he’s greased a lot of palms over the past few years among the people who run this county. Additionally, Mr. Powell and Ms. Walters died on unincorporated land and not at the retreat. As of yet, we have not been able to get a warrant to search the grounds, and we have not been able to interview Mr. Brooks or anyone else over there.” I detected a bit of frustration in the sheriff’s voice.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “How can you know anything about Ethan’s life without seeing where he worked and ate and slept?”

  “Well, ma’am, we can’t get someone in there, at least not someone who is employed by Sagebrush County. But that doesn’t mean a regular citizen couldn’t stay there as a guest.”

  I thought I detected a little wink in the sheriff’s deadpan. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Lewis said, sans wink. “I’m just bringing you up to date on the current status of our investigation.”

  “I see.”

  “My number is 575-555-7849. If you find yourself here in Sagebrush County, or if you think of anything that might be pertinent to our investigation, please give me a ring.”

  I was so surprised by the sheriff’s suggesting I should stay at the retreat that all I could do was say “Okay.”

  I looked down at my phone. I couldn’t actually go out to the place where Ethan died, could I? I pictured the ample hair on his arms falling out and scattering in the desert wind, his body disintegrating and melding with the sand. My eyes blurred with tears and I doubled over. I cast the phone aside and sprawled out on the floor, crying so hard I thought I might throw up.

  I stayed on the floor for a long time, even after I stopped crying. I turned on my side and propped my head on my hand, then started tracing the lines between the wooden floorboards. The physical occupation calmed my mind. Did I still love Ethan, present tense, like I’d told Sheriff Lewis? Even after all those bitter years, all those hours logged in therapy? Hadn’t that affection been talked out of me?

  Maybe it didn’t matter. I moved my hand from the floorboards to the moldings, tracing the old-fashioned detail with my pointer finger, flicking off dust that my cleaning lady must have missed. I never would have missed that dust were I cleaning myself. Ethan’s gone now, I thought, so whether I love him, or I loved him, is irrelevant.

  I tried to focus on what did matter. Part of what made me a good litigator was my ability to zero in on the details that would help build a case, and the companion ability to discard the information that didn’t help me. What mattered was that Ethan, even in death, was possibly being accused of a crime there’s no way he committed. I knew it in my soul.

  So what did I care? I cleaned the last mite of dust off the moldings and sat up. I looked around the apartment, which had seemed spacious when I left it in the morning but now felt like it was suffocating me with its familiarity. Despite everything that had happened between Ethan and me, I could not allow him to go to his grave labeled a murderer. That’s not who he was. I wasn’t someone who would have married someone capable of that. I needed to go to New Mexico.

  I jumped up to my computer to make arrangements. According to the Zuni Retreat’s website, the easiest way to get there was to fly into Albuquerque, rent a car, and drive. The sound of a babbling brook auto-played on the site, which was light blue and white and had perfectly lit photos of the serene, treeless grounds and the spare but luxurious rooms.

  Those six-hundred-thread-count sheets didn’t come cheap. If I wanted my own room, it would cost $400 a night. If I was willing to share a room with a total stranger, it was $225. If I was willing to sleep in a bunk bed in a big open room, European hostel style, it was $100 a night, but the website was clear that it “cannot guarantee a bottom bunk.”

  I opted for the room share. I didn’t want to blow several thousand dollars going to some godforsaken corner of the desert filled with people who described themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.” I figured I could handle one stranger for a few nights—I did it for a whole year in college. And it occurred to me that I would get a better sense of Ethan’s life by mixing with the other people there as much as possible.

  I booked three nights there, then the flights and the car. I looked at the clock—by this time it was about nine P.M. I called Matt Lewis. “This is Dana Morrison . . . Powell. I’ve booked a stay at Zuni. I’ll be in Sagebrush County by tomorrow evening,” I told his machine, leaving my cell phone number.

  I called Phil to tell him I had a family emergency and would be out for the rest of the week. He picked up on the first ring and wasn’t thrilled. “Dana,” he said, “we’re in the middle of this case and I really need all hands on deck.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him what was going on, at first, because I didn’t think it was any of his business. But after that insensitive dig I decided I just didn’t care what he thought. “Phil, my estranged husband was murdered. I’m taking the rest of the week. If you have a problem with that, you can bite me.”

  With that, I turned my phone off, took an Ambien, and got into bed. As I drifted into the brief, trippy nether region before an Ambien-laced pass-out, I saw Ethan’s face smiling serenely at me. Usually I would dismiss this as a drug-addled hallucination, but that night I took it as a sign that I was doing the right thing.

  I woke up with a start and squinted at the clock, which read 6:07. That’s when I woke up for work, and it took me a minute to remember that I wasn’t going to work, that Ethan was dead, and that I needed to pack and get a cab to LaGuardia. I checked the weather for Sagebrush County’s only town, Ranchero. It would be in the eighties during the day and the fifties at night.

  I rifled through my wardrobe to find some appropriate clothes. I wanted to fit in at the Zuni Retreat. I searched for leggings and colorful tank tops, anything that resembled what those yoga girls had been wearing in their Instagram pi
ctures from Zuni. I found a long wrap sweater that Beth bought me for Christmas a few years ago that had been languishing in the back of my closet.

  That reminded me that I should probably tell Beth where I was going.

  “Dana, are you okay?” Beth said before I could even say hello.

  “I’m fine,” I said tersely. I didn’t want her sympathy right now; I felt like it would slow me down, make me sad instead of determined. “I’m calling because I’m going to New Mexico today so that I can talk to the police about Ethan in person.” I didn’t tell her my ulterior motive. Beth would lose it completely if I told her that I was going to creep around the retreat where Ethan had lived. Visiting his final home was about fifteen levels up from just Googling him obsessively.

  “Why the fuck would you schlep all the way out there? Don’t they have Skype?” Beth could sniff out the obsessiveness in this trip, of course, even with my trying to hide it.

  “They think Ethan killed Amaya,” I explained. “And I know that’s not possible. That’s not Ethan. I think it will be more convincing if I go out there in person and tell the police everything I know about who Ethan really was.”

  “So you’re going to tell them that he’s a coward who left you as soon as things got a little difficult?” Beth asked. She was always so tough on me.

  “I knew you’d be like this,” I said, trying to keep myself from yelling. Fighting with Beth always made me regress to our childhood dynamics of screams, tears, and threats. “I wasn’t going to tell you I was going because I didn’t want to hear this shit. But I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Beth sighed and said nothing for a few beats. Then she said much more gently, “I get it, you’re grieving.” She paused again, then said, “And I guess I don’t think Ethan could kill someone, either. But I just don’t think this is the right thing for you to be doing in this moment.”

  “I understand where you’re coming from,” I said, trying to be conciliatory. “But it’s something I need to do. I’m doing it for Ethan, but I’m also doing it for me. I want to know more about his last days. For closure.”