Now we’re talking. I’m already nodding, assuming she’s referring to her boss or, better yet, the head of security for Hartsfield.
“Religious or secular? We have Red Cross grief counselors on hand, as well as clerics of every major religion. Which would you prefer?”
Irritation surges up my chest, lurching me forward in my chair. “I don’t need to talk to a psychologist. I am a psychologist. What I need is for someone to tell me where my husband is.”
Ann Margaret falls silent. She chews her bottom lip and glances around at her colleagues, stationed at nearby tables and consoling their inconsolables, as if to say Now what? They didn’t teach us this one at Care Specialist training. I’ve stumped her.
“So, what now?” my father asks, ever the planner. “What do we do next?”
Ann Margaret looks relieved to be prompted back on script. “Well, there will be a memorial service this weekend here in town. Liberty Airlines is still working out the logistics, but as soon as I know the time and place, I’ll pass it on. I am available to pick you up at your house and escort you to the service if you’d like. It’s of course up to you, but there will be media there, and I’ll know the way to get around them. And if you’re interested, I can help plan a visit to the accident site.”
My throat closes around the last two words. Accident site. I can barely stand seeing the images on television. The idea of walking among the wreckage, of standing on the earth where 179 souls crashed into it, feels like a vicious punch in the gut.
“There’s no hurry,” Ann Margaret says, filling up the silence. “When and if you’re ready.” When I still don’t respond, she consults her papers for the next item on the agenda. “Oh, yes. Liberty Airlines is working with a third-party vendor to manage the process of returning personal effects to the rightful family members. You’ll find the form on page twenty-three of your packet. The more detail you can provide here, the better. Pictures, inscription texts, distinguishing characteristics. Things like that.”
Will isn’t big on jewelry, but he wears a wedding band and a watch. Both were gifts I had engraved with our initials, and both are things I’d want back.
“Again, you’re assuming he was on that plane.”
My denial, I know, is textbook. I don’t believe, therefore it cannot be true. Will is not buried under Missouri soil. He’s in Orlando, dazzling conference attendees with his keynote on predictive analytics and bitching in the hotel bar about the heat. Or maybe he’s already home, rumpled and tired from wherever he’s been all this time, wondering what’s for dinner. I picture myself walking through the door to find him there, and a bubble of joy rises in my chest.
“Mrs. Griffith, I realize how difficult this must be, but—”
“Do you? Do you really? Because was it your husband on the plane? Was it your mother or father or daughter or son who was blown to bits all over a cornfield? No? Well, then, you don’t know, and you can’t realize how difficult this is for me. For anyone in this room.”
Ann Margaret leans into the desk, and her brow crumples. “No, I didn’t lose a family member on Flight 23, but I can still feel deep sadness and compassion for you as well as everyone else here today. I share in your anxiety and distress, and I’m on your side. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”
“Give me my husband back!” I shriek.
All around us, tables fall still, and heads turn in my direction. Solidarity, their teary faces say. They want their loved ones back, too. If we were sitting close enough, we’d bump fists. It’s a shitty, fucked-up society, but at least I’m not the only one in it.
Dave presses a palm to my right shoulder blade, a show of brotherly support. He knows I’m on the verge of a meltdown, and I know his newest, most urgent goal is to get me out of here. “Is there anything else?”
“Yes. It would help greatly if you would provide the name and address of your husband’s doctor and dentist. Be assured that all information collected is confidential and will be managed only by forensic personnel under the guidance of the medical examiner. And I’m very sorry to have to ask, but, um, we’ll also need a DNA sample.”
My father reaches for my hand. “Anything else?” he says through clenched teeth.
Ann Margaret pulls an envelope from her packet and pushes it across the desk. “This is an initial installment from Liberty Airlines to cover any crash-related expenses. I know this is a very difficult time, and these funds are intended to, well, take a little of the pressure off you and your family.”
I pick up the envelope, peek at the printed paper inside. Apparently, death has a price, and if I’m to believe Liberty Air, it’s $54,378.
“There is more forthcoming,” Ann Margaret says.
The anger that’s been simmering under the surface since I walked through the door fires into red-hot rage. The flames lick at my organs and shoot lava through my veins, burning me up from the inside out. My hands ball into tight fists, and I sit up ramrod straight in my chair. “Let me ask you something, Margaret Ann.”
“It’s Ann...” She catches herself, summons up a sympathetic smile. “Of course. Anything.”
“Who do you work for?”
A pause. She furrows her brow as if to say Whatever are you talking about? “Mrs. Griffith, I already told you. I work for you.”
“No. I mean whose name is at the top of your paychecks?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it, hauls a breath through her nose and tries again. “Liberty Airlines.”
I rip the check in two, reach for my bag and stand. “That’s what I thought.”
* * *
Ann Margaret is true to her word on one account at least. When we push through the door of the Family Assistance Center, a handful of uniformed Liberty Air agents hustle us through the terminal and out a side door. If any journalists spot us on the way to the car, we don’t see them. The agents act as a human shield.
They pile us into Dad’s Cherokee and slam the doors, backing away as soon as Dad starts the engine. He slides the gear in Reverse but doesn’t remove his foot from the brake. Like me, Dad’s still in shock, trying to process everything we learned in the past hour. I lose track of how long we sit there, the motor humming underneath us, staring silently out the window at the concrete barrier of the parking deck, and it’s not until I feel Dad’s warm palm on my knee and Dave’s on my shoulder that I realize that this whole time, I’ve been crying.
All night long, I dream I’m Will. I’m high in the clouds above a flyover state, safely buckled in an aisle seat, when suddenly the bottom drops out of the sky. The plane lurches and rolls, and the motors’ screams are as deafening as my own, as terrified as the other passengers’ underneath and above and on all sides of me. We heave into a full-on nosedive, careening to the earth with irreversible velocity. I wake up right as we explode into a fireball, Will’s terror gritty in my mouth. Did he know what was happening? Did he scream and cry and pray? In his last moments, did he think of me?
The questions won’t leave me alone. They march through my mind like an army on attack, blitzing through my brain and lurching me upright in bed. Why would my husband tell me he’s going one place but get on a plane to another? Why would he create a fake conference with a fake flyer as fake evidence? How many other times has he not been where he said he would be? My heart gives a kick at that last one, the obvious answer like trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. Will wouldn’t cheat. He wouldn’t.
Then,