I shove the money into my metal box under the bed. Tricia has been known to pilfer cash if it’s lying around. The house is quiet and stuffy, more claustrophobic than normal. I slide on my flip-flops and walk into town. Outside the Dairy Queen, I see a bunch of people I went to school with clustered on the benches under the cottonwood trees, including Troy Boggins. They wave and I wave back but they don’t invite me to sit down with them and I don’t pretend I want to.
I go to the library instead. Now that Meg is gone and her house is no longer my second home, this is my sanctuary. Plus, it has air-conditioning.
Mrs. Banks is sitting behind the reference desk, and when she sees me, she waves me over. “Cody, where have you been? I was about to send these back.” She pulls out a rubber-banded stack of books, more of the Central Europeans. Karel Capek’s War with the Newts, Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude, a collection of Kafka short stories.
“Thanks,” I say. I am out of books, but as soon as I enter the cool of the library, I understand that’s not why I’m here.
I make my way to the computer terminals. I type Final Solution and suicide into the search box. It brings up mostly Hitler and neo-Nazi stuff, though there is one page that seems promising, but when I click on it, it won’t load. I try the other sites from the search, and they won’t either.
“Is there something wrong with the computers?” I ask Mrs. Banks.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“I can’t get pages to load.”
“Cody,” she asks, “are you looking at naughty sites?”
She’s teasing, but I flush red anyway. “I’m doing a research project.”
“On what?”
“Neo-Nazi groups.” Another lie. It just pops right out.
“Ahh, that’ll do it. I can lift the filters for you if you like,” she says.
“No,” I say quickly. Nobody can know about this. And that’s when I remember I have my own computer now. And the library has free Wi-Fi. “I mean, I have to leave now. But tomorrow?”
“Anytime, Cody,” she says. “I trust you.”
x x x
The next day, I bring Meg’s laptop to the library, and before I get started, Mrs. Banks shows me how to get around the filters. Then I get to work. The Final Solution website isn’t so much a website as an entry portal. You have to click on a button claiming that you’re over eighteen. When I do, I’m redirected to an index with different topic headings. I open a few messages. A lot of them are spam. A lot more are ranting. I scroll through a few pages and it seems like a waste of time. And then I see a subject heading: What about My Wife?
The post is from some guy who claims he wants to kill himself but wonders what it would be like for his wife, whom he loves. Will it ruin her life? he writes.
There’s a string of replies below. The majority opinion is that his wife will probably be relieved, that she’s probably miserable too, and by offing himself he’ll put them both out of their misery. Women are way better at bouncing back from this kind of thing, one person writes. She’ll probably remarry within a few years and be much better off.
Who are these people? Is this who Meg was talking to?
I read the responses again, so casual that you’d think they’re offering advice on how to fix a broken carburetor, and as I do, my neck grows hot and something churns in my stomach. I don’t know if these people had anything to do with Meg. I don’t know if this guy really intended to kill himself, or if he actually did. But I know one thing: You don’t just bounce back.