From: [email protected]
Subject: FW: Cyber Security for Critical Assets: An Intelligence Summit
Check me out! I’m Thursday’s keynote speaker. Let’s just hope they don’t all fall asleep, kind of like you do whenever I talk about work. xo
Will M. Griffith
Sr. Software Engineer
AppSec Consulting, Inc.
My skin tingles with relief, and I feel vindicated. The words are right here, in black and white. Will is in Orlando, safe and sound.
I click on the attachment, and a full-page conference flyer opens. Will’s head shot is about halfway down, next to a blurb advertising his expertise on all things access risk management. I hit Print and scribble the name of the conference hotel on a Post-it note, then return to my internet browser for the telephone number. I’m copying it down when my phone rings, and my mother’s face lights up the screen.
A stab of uneasiness pings me in the chest. A speech pathologist, Mom knows what working in a school environment is like. She knows my days are crazy, and she never disturbs me at work unless there’s a life-and-death situation. Like the time Dad hit a pothole with his front bike tire and flipped a three-sixty onto the asphalt, landing so hard he cracked his collarbone and split his helmet clean down the middle.
Which is why I answer her call now with “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, sweetheart. I just saw the news.”
“About the crash? I know. We’ve been dealing with it all day here at school. The kids are pretty freaked.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Well, not exactly... I meant Will, darling.”
Something in the way she says it, in the careful and roundabout way she’s asking but not asking about Will, soldiers every hair on my body to attention. “What about him?”
“Well, for starters, where is he?”
“In Orlando for a conference. Why?”
The force of Mom’s sigh into the speaker pierces my eardrum, and I know how much she’s been holding back. “Oh, thank God. I knew it couldn’t be your Will.”
“What are you talking about? Who couldn’t be my Will?”
Her reply gets buried under a student’s loud interruption. “Mr. Rawlings told me to tell you they just released a list of names.” She screams the words into my office, as if I’m not sitting right here, three feet away, and on the phone. I shush her and shoo her off with a hand.
“Mom, start over. Who’s not my Will?”
“The William Matthew Griffith they’re saying was on that plane.”
Not my husband bubbles up from the very core of me, from somewhere deep and primitive. My Will was on a different plane, on a whole different airline even. And even if he wasn’t, Liberty Airlines would have already called. They wouldn’t have released his name without notifying me—his wife, his very favorite person on the planet—first.
But before I can tell my mother any of these things, my phone beeps with another call, and the words on the screen stop my heart.
Liberty Airlines.
With a shaking hand, I hang up on my mother and pick up the call from Liberty Airlines.
“Hello?” My throat is tight, and my voice comes out raspy and faint.
“Hello, may I please speak with Iris Griffith?”
I know why this woman is calling. I know it from the way she says my name, from her carefully neutral tone and businesslike formality, and the breath sticks in my throat.
But she’s wrong. Will is in Orlando.
“Will is in Orlando,” I hear myself say.
“Pardon me... Is this the number for Iris Griffith?”
What would happen if I said no? Would it stop this woman from saying the words I know she called to say? Would she hang up and call the other William Matthew Griffith’s wife?
“I’m Iris Griffith.”
“Mrs. Griffith, my name is Carol Manning of Liberty Airlines. William Matthew Griffith listed you as his emergency contact.”
Will is in Orlando. Will is in Orlando. Will is in Orlando.
“Yes.” I clutch my stomach with an arm. “I’m his wife.” Am his wife. Am.
“Ma’am, I deeply regret to inform you that your husband was a passenger on this morning’s Flight 23, which crashed en route from Atlanta to Seattle. It is presumed that none of those on board survived.” She sounds like a robot, like she’s reading from a script. She sounds like Siri calling to tell me my husband is dead.
My muscles stop working, and I go down. My torso falls forward onto my own lap, my body bending in half like a snapped twig. The impact knocks the wind right out of me, and the breath leaves me in a great moan.
“I know this must come as a shock, and I assure you Liberty Airlines is here to support you however and whenever you need. We’ve established a dedicated hotline number and email address for you to contact us anytime, day or night. Regular updates will also be available on our website, www.libertyairlines.com.”
If she says anything more, I don’t hear it. The phone clatters to the floor and right there, in the middle of my cluttered office, my doorway filling with wide-eyed students, I slide off my chair and sob, pressing both hands to my mouth to stifle the sound.
* * *
Two large shoes step into my field of vision. “Oh, Iris. I just heard. I’m so, so sorry.”
I look up through my hair at Ted, at his concerned brow under those canine curls, and I weep with relief. Ted is a fixer. He’ll know what to do. He’ll call somebody who will tell him it was the wrong Will, the wrong plane, I’m the wrong wife.
I try to pull myself together, but I can’t, and it’s then I notice that my office is crawling with high-schoolers. I already heard them gathering in the hall outside my doorway, low tones and whispered words I wasn’t supposed to hear. Words like husband, plane, dead, and I know they’ve heard the news.
No. Just this morning, while I was filling our travel mugs with coffee, Will checked the weather in Orlando on his phone. “High of eighty-seven today,” he said with a shake of his head. “And it’s not even summer. This is why we will never live in Florida.”
Ava watches me with tears in her eyes. “Will is in Orlando,” I say to her, and her face flashes pity.
I’m embarrassed to have her see me like this, to have any of them see me like this, a crumpled, snotty mess on the floor. I cover my face with my hands and wish they’d go away. I wish all of them would just leave me alone. My open-door policy can suck it.
“Here, let me help you up.” Ted hauls me off the floor and deposits me on my chair.
“Where’s my phone? I want to try Will again.”
He leans down, picks up my phone from the floor, passes it to me. Nine missed calls. I taste bile when I see they’re all from my mother. None, not even one, from Will.
“Guys, give us a little privacy, will you?” Ted glances over his shoulder. “Shut the door on your way out.”
One by one, the kids file out, mumbling their condolences. Ava runs a light finger down my arm on her way past, and I flinch. I don’t want her sympathy. I don’t want anyone’s sympathy. Sympathy would mean what