Cause of Death

10

Home, early evening. Crickets and bullfrogs complain or call for mates, and the breeze is ambidextrous, breathing gently against the right side of my face, then my left.

I collect the mail, walk inside and shower and change into sweats. I climb the stairs and go to the end of the hall and into Pax’s office. I sit in her chair, hear the familiar squeak and look up at the superheroes she’s painted. They’re crudely done, like the paintings the schoolkids do on storefront windows on Halloween, a Dover Hills tradition. Archie-Superman, Green Lantern, Batman, Wonder Woman...

My eyes catch a small ficus tree that was alive only because of Pax. I believe it’s already dead.

I think: How quiet is a one-person house, a silence broken only by the accentuated whispers from HVAC and appliance motors, by the creaks and snaps of settling wood.

From my pocket I take the burner phone that Terry Garner discovered on Palmer Mountain. And, yes, there is a matching charger among the tangle of wires in her top drawer. I plug it in and a few minutes later it wakes. I type in the code that we share for our iPhones. Our anniversary date, backward.

Incorrect Password

I try several others that we’ve used in the past.

After five times:

The system is locked.

The phone is now a doorstop but I stow it in a drawer. Historians are loath to discard any artifact, however seemingly mute.

For ten minutes I browse through the papers on her desk, the drawers, not sure what I’m looking for, beyond a clue to the Man in Gray.

And a few minutes in, I may have found something. On the corner of her desk sits a to-do file folder with about three inches of bills and correspondence and documents inside. The first thing I find there is a receipt from a store. R. Johnson Framing and Art. Edwards Mills, a small town about an hour and a half from here.

Apparently Pax has taken in something to be framed. She was creative certainly — the audaciously defaced walls and all — but she rarely painted or sketched on a pad or drew anything in need of framing. Looks like the job was ready the day after she died. She never mentioned anything about this, but while we shared much we didn’t share everything.

At the bottom of the receipt is a handwritten valediction:

So, on the agenda for tomorrow: a drive to Edwards Mills.

I pocket the receipt and take the rest of the to-do pile downstairs.

In the refrigerator, I see Brooke’s turkey casserole. Still not hungry, maybe later. I pour a glass of white wine and start to work my way through the household paperwork, paying bills, slipping them into envelopes, applying stamps. The ones not due for a while, I push aside. I sip more wine and then look over the mail I’ve just retrieved.

I begin sorting it into three categories: bills, junk and sympathy cards — the latter easily identified without opening, given their size and shape and the lack of any impending holidays. I’ll get around to opening them at some point. Or not.

Then I slit open an envelope addressed to “Ms. Patience Addison.” The postmark is Greenville Station, a town west of Edwards Mills.

I remove and read the letter inside.

I plan out the second trip I’ll be taking tomorrow.