I smiled. Nice. If nothing else, it was nice to have a man thinking of me.
I had a nine o’clock appointment the next day with Detective Reynolds. We had migrated to monthly meetings; he would come for coffee. Nothing ever changed. He assured me the case wasn’t closed, and every once in a while, he’d call with a question about something he needed to follow up on from the file. But the investigation was all re-examination of old information. I looked forward to his visits, though, in part because they allowed me to hold a tether to my old life, but also because I genuinely enjoyed his company. He knew my situation and was endlessly sympathetic, unlike my former acquaintances from the neighborhood, church, or library.
People weren’t deliberately cruel. They just didn’t know what to say to me, so instead chose silence, avoidance of me entirely, or worse, pretending nothing had happened. Yes, I often thought Greg dying would have been easier.
My brain swam with too many thoughts. I took a shot of whiskey and went to bed. I woke up in the same position I fell asleep in.
Detective Reynolds sat at the breakfast table, drinking coffee. He always brought my favorite Boston Cream doughnuts. I didn’t need the calories, since my grieving diet seemed to be ending. I filled out my clothes a little more and blamed the nightly bottles of wine. In my defense, some nights, I only drank half of a bottle.
“So, no more hunting trips planned?” he asked, half-smiling. He hadn’t been surprised by my trek to San Diego, nor by the fact that I had failed to tell him about it until after I returned. He had, however, informed me that he had already checked out a Thai place across from Omni due to my last hunch, and they didn’t find any record of Greg going there, and no one remembers seeing him. But the last time we knew of Greg being in San Diego was last May, almost a full year ago. So unless Greg did something particularly memorable, which I doubted, it seemed unlikely anyone would remember him.
“No.” I spun the coffee mug in my hands. “I think I’m done for now. I need to be home. I need to stay focused on my kids. And…”
Detective Reynolds made no move to fill the silence. I loved that about him.
“And I’m not sure there’s anything to find,” I added. “Well, what’s this month’s theory?”
Every month, he seemed to ponder my question and answer it slightly differently. If nothing else, it gave me the illusion of progress.
“I’m starting to seriously consider the possibility he might be dead.” He had always leaned more toward that theory than I did.
“If he died, then how would we not know it? Where is his body?”
“Oh, the possibilities are endless there. A victim of murder could be buried or thrown in the river, and we might never know.”
It hit me how blasé the discussion was when we were talking about my possibly dead husband. I tried to force myself to feel something, but came up empty.
“The inheritance supports this,” he continued. “It’s a lot of money to leave behind.”
“Unless he has a significant amount more, and that was a red herring,” I suggested, playing devil’s advocate. It all seemed farfetched for me, too, especially for the Greg I thought I knew. He was so conventional.
“Well, we looked into that. We subpoenaed his bank records from 2001 and 2002, as well as his mother’s from when she was alive. The figure is about fifty thousand dollars short, but after her funeral—plus it looked like she donated some to charity—it came pretty close to the mark. There’s a few thousand bucks we can’t find. But that was eight years ago. Things get lost, you know?” He reached out and put his hand on mine. “We’re still going to look for him, Claire. I know how badly you need closure.”
I felt tears brim my eyelids. “Thanks, Matt. I hope you eventually figure it out.” I wiped the tears away before Hannah or Leah could come bounding in from the living room and see them.
He leaned back again. “I want to. There are definitely some cases that get to you more than others. I want peace for you and your family. Unfortunately, a death in absentia ruling takes at least seven years.”
“What does that mean?”
“If Greg is still missing six years from now, we can petition the courts to issue a death certificate without evidence of death.”
“Six more years seems a lifetime from now. What will that do? A death certificate, I mean.”
“For starters, you could file for life insurance.” He stared at me intently. Gauging my reaction?
“I… I hadn’t even thought about that. In fact,” I said, feeling instantly stupid, “I have no idea how much Greg’s life insurance policy is. Why don’t I know that? Isn’t that something a wife knows about her husband?”