Page 101 of Middle of the Night

I remained in the Chicago area for as long as I could, reluctant to leave the house I’d shared with Claudia and the place where she was buried. But it all got to be too much. The pain. The grief. The stress of trying to keep it together when every fiber of my being wanted to fall apart. So when my parents told me they were moving and suggested I come back home and take over the house, I said yes, even though I knew bad memories of Billy were waiting for me.

That’s the irony of this whole situation. Billy wasn’t the most devastating loss in my life. It was Claudia. And when forced to decide which memories were easier to face, I chose Billy.

Had I known Billy himself was still waiting here, well, that would have changed my mind.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to change Ashley’s.

“You think this is about Claudia,” I say, using my fist to swipe the tears threatening to leak from my eyes. Christ, I feel so stupid. So weak. And that’s without Ashley knowing how I never canceled Claudia’s cell phone plan. How I still dial her number just to hear the sound of her voice and pretend she’s not gone. How I continue to text her as if she’s still around to read them.

“And Billy, too,” Ashley says. “Grief is weird that way. It can make you think things you shouldn’t be thinking. Or believe things that, deep down, you know are impossible. And I suspect you desperately want to think Billy is back because it means—”

“That Claudia can come back, too.”

I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t crossed my mind. That this experiencewith Billy is a sign that I’m—I don’t know—touchedsomehow. That if he can leave me messages from beyond, then so can Claudia.

Now, though, the idea has been muddied somewhat by the things Fritz Van de Veer told me last night. What if Ezra Hawthorne was right about the different realms—earthly, spirit, and in between? If I was somehow able to communicate with Claudia, does it mean she, like Billy, isn’t at peace? In many ways, that’s a worse thought than knowing I’ll never talk with her again.

“I know it’s hard to deal with when someone you love dies,” Ashley says. “I was devastated when my mom died. And I miss her every day. But I’ve also learned to let her go.”

“What if I can’t?” I say.

“You can at least try.” Ashley stands and gives me a hug so warm and tender that it breaks my heart a little when it ends. “Maybe that’s the point of all this. Instead of Billy trying to make you solve his murder, maybe it’s your subconscious telling you it’s time to say goodbye to both of them.”

She leaves after that, going back into the yard and gathering Henry from the tent. He gives me a wave through the patio window. I wave back, thinking about what Ashley said. Maybe she’s right and this is all my doing. I don’t know how I’d forget throwing baseballs in the yard on a regular basis, but it wouldn’t be the first time my memory has failed me.

As for saying goodbye, I’m willing to give it a try. Not for my sake, but for Claudia’s. I know she’d hate seeing me like this. I know she’d want me to be happy.

In my new bedroom, I go to the closet and a cardboard box hidden away in a back corner. Inside is the purse Claudia had with her when she died. A kindly ER nurse gave it to me, pressing it into my numb hands as she said, “You might want to look through this at some point. Not now. But someday.”

Which turns out to be today.

I open the purse, finding Claudia’s sunglasses, a pack of gum, her favorite lipstick. I pull out her wallet and sort through it, my heart aching at the sight of her driver’s license and the photo she hated but which I adored because it showed off her smile.

When she died, my wife had twenty-six dollars on her, plus two credit cards—one she never touched and one she used often, buying books and fresh flowers and that expensive cheese she loved to eat alongside equally expensive wine.

I put the wallet inside and dig out what I’m really looking for.

Her cell phone.

Although the battery died long ago, I use my phone’s charger to bring it back to life. Then I scroll through the texts, reading the most recent ones first.

walking in the woods and thinking of you

can’t sleep. of course

i miss you, Claude

I keep scrolling, skimming over a year of texts I sent even though I knew my wife wasn’t going to see them. Some—such aswatched jaws again. still holds up—are insipid. Others read like open wounds.

i miss you so much right now i can’t breathe

I scan the dates and times, looking for a pattern in the moments when I couldn’t resist firing off a text. Holidays, for instance. Or Claudia’s birthday. Or late nights when sleep was impossible. But no such pattern exists. I missed her all the time. I still do.

I stop reading the texts when I come to the first one I sent knowing she was dead. Two weeks after her funeral, 3:46 in the afternoon.

i don’t know how to do this

After the texts come the phone messages, made with less frequency but with the same randomness. The most recent is from a few nights ago. I listen to it from the chagrined start—“Hey. It’s me again”—to its desperately honest end. “I think Billy might be haunting me, Claude. I know, it’s ridiculous. But weird things are happening that I can’t—”

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