Chapter 4
Sophie was in the bathroom and the door was shut and the shower wasn't running yet. My son was on the couch in the living room with his blue jacket folded next to him like he'd been told to leave it there. I stood in the hall between them and I could hear water pipes tick when someone touched the faucet.
I hadn't turned the hall light on. Overcast daylight came through the front window and hit the closed metal shutter memory I'd been carrying since the sidewalk. The paper cup she'd held was gone now. We'd left it on that sidewalk beside the shutter. I kept seeing her hands around it.
My name is Mark and I was thirty-six when they told me my wife died. That morning on the phone three years ago was a Tuesday. I remembered the time because daycare had just called to say my son had a fever and I was holding a thermometer when the county sheriff's number lit up my phone.
He said there'd been an accident on Route 17 by the river. Late rain, single car off the shoulder, down the embankment into water and then fire. He said the car was ours. He said the body was burned beyond visual ID and they'd used the plates and her purse and her wedding ring found in the footwell. He asked me to come to the county morgue.
I went. They didn't show me her face. Coroner had aPolicy for closed casket when remains compromised. He showed me a Polaroid of a hand with Sophie's ring, the thin gold band we'd bought on sale downtown, and a melted plastic driver's license and a charred dark coat with a fur collar. Same coat she'd been wearing on the sidewalk today, except clean then. He said dental wasn't needed because personal effects plus location plus vehicle made ID certain. He handed me a form. I signed where he pointed. My hand shook so hard I missed the line.
I didn't open the casket at the funeral. The director advised against it. My mother said it was better to remember her whole. I told my son his mom had died three years ago and I believed it because a man in uniform told me and because I saw that ring and that license and that coat and because I wanted the worst part to be over.
Water started in the bathroom. Sophie had locked the door and then unlocked it again after I said she could. Steam slipped under the edge within a minute. My son called out, "Dad, is Mommy taking a bath?" I said, "She's getting warm, buddy. Stay on the couch." He said okay and went quiet.
The bathroom door opened a few inches. Sophie stepped into the doorway. Her hair was damp around her face and she wore one of my gray henleys. It hung past her hips. Her coat was folded over her arm, dirty. She hadn't gotten in the shower yet.
"I never took that road," she said.
I stared at her.
"Route 17 by the river," she said. "I never drove it. I hated that curve. You know I hated it. I took 9 to get to my sister's. I always took 9."
My mouth was dry. I tried to swallow.
"The sheriff said you were on 17," I said. "He said your car went off by the mile marker twelve. That's what the report said. Your car was found there."
She shook her head slowly. "I didn't have the car that day," she said. "I let Jen borrow it. My sister Jen. Her car was in the shop. I was supposed to pick it up with her later that week. I wasn't in that car."
The steam kept coming from behind her. My son was listening. I could feel him listening from the living room.
"Your ring was there," I said. "Your license. Your coat."
"My coat was in the back seat," she said. "I left it there when she borrowed the car. My license was in the pocket. I always left it in the pocket." She looked down at the coat in her arms. "And the ring. I took it off that morning. My hands were swollen. I put it in the cup holder. I told you my hands were swollen. Do you remember?"
I did remember. Three years ago she'd complained about the ring pinching. I'd told her to leave it home.
I went to the desk in the living room and pulled out the death certificate from the file where I'd kept it with the life insurance papers. Cause: blunt force trauma with thermal injury. Manner: accident. Identification: based on personal effects and vehicle registration and location. No dental. No DNA. Signature at bottom: County Coroner.
Sophie came closer and looked at it over my shoulder. She didn't touch it. Her hand hovered, then dropped.
"They buried someone else under my name," she said quietly.
I nodded. My eyes were hot.
"They buried the wrong woman," she said, repeating what she'd said on the sidewalk, and this time I understood it wasn't a metaphor.
She looked toward my son on the couch.
May you like
"We need the records," she said. "We need to see who they put in that grave."
We stood in that hall with the paper between us and the shower still running behind her, and we both knew we couldn't call anyone until morning, and we both knew we had to.
