I was thinking that I had to call Will's daughters and tell them. They were twenty-five-year-old twins, and their older brother was dead, and I had not had the nerve to call either of them since I left Will. Now I had to tell them this. If I could find them.
"What are you doing?" Daniel said.
"Looking for my address book. Did the police say anything to you about the medical examiner?"
"Sophy, may I give you a bit of advice? There's nothing you need to do right this moment. You're scrambling around as if there's an urgency here, whereas-" I was across the room at my desk, looking through stacks of papers and files for the address book I often misplaced. "Darling, he's dead."
I froze for an instant, uncertain whether I was more shocked by the darling or the dead. I turned to say something to him; I didn't know what it would be, but then I didn't have to, because another voice shot into the room, like a stone through the window.
"This is Joe Flanagan, Flanagan's Funeral Home, on Swansea. I'd like to leave a message for-"
I picked up the phone before he said my name and flipped the ringer switch on at the same time.
"I know this is a difficult time for you, Mrs. O'Rourke. Myself and the members of our family and staff-"
"How did you get my name?"
"The police, ma'am."
"Are they soliciting business for you? Do you intend to talk me into a five-thousand-dollar funeral? Because my husband has absolutely no interest-and no one in our family has the slightest inclination to be exploited at a time of-"
"Pardon my interrupting, Mrs. O'Rourke. I believe there must be some confusion. Your husband's body is here right now. The police instructed us to pick it up from the house. It's going to the mainland tomorrow on the first ferry, to the coroner, at no charge to you or your family. I wanted to pass on my condolences. If there's anything we can do for you, please let us know."
I was speechless, as mortified by my outburst as I was Stunned by this barrage of news about Will, who was now an "it," not a "he." A piece of luggage, something attached to a bill of lading. I started to say, "Thank you, I'm sorry," but I began too late, just as he hung up the phone.
"What did he say?" Daniel asked.
"Why don't we get dressed? It seems a bit tawdry, lounging around as if we're in a Turkish bath."
"Did you find your address book?"
"Here's your shirt back."
"What did that chap say that's got you so undone?"
"His body is there. Spending the night. Off to the coroner's tomorrow. Do you suppose it's in a coffin or a refrigerator?" I found my bra in the middle of the living room floor, and as I reached down for it, remembering how it had landed there, I remembered how keenly I had wanted to tell Daniel that his children needed more from him. I still wanted to, but I knew I could find no clever way to work it into the conversation. It was a bra that hooked in the front, and as I peered down, snapping a tiny plastic rod into its plastic slot, I felt Daniel's eyes on me, the way your eyes are drawn to someone in pain, and at that instant, I understood it might not be my pain he was focused on, but its eerie resemblance to his own.
"A refrigerator, I imagine," he said, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that I might be wrong in every one of my conjectures about what passed between us, mistaken about everything but the reality of the sparks our bodies threw off when we rubbed them together. "Particularly in this heat," he added, and for an instant I did not know to what he was referring.
"Did I already ask whether the police said anything to you about the medical examiner?"
"They didn't mention him."
"Her. She was Will's doctor on the island."
"Is she the one you're ringing?" Daniel said.
"No, his best friend, Diane. From grade school. Lives in Cambridge."
When Diane answered and I told her I was calling about Will, there was barely a pause before she said, "He's dead, isn't he?"
"You don't sound surprised."
"I'm not. The last time I spoke to him he was distraught."
"But they said he died in his sleep."
"Of what?"
"Well, I-I don't know. A heart attack, I guess. Isn't that-What else is enough to-"
"Will there be an autopsy?"
"Tomorrow. What did he say when you last spoke to him?"
"What didn't he say? He was beside himself. Kept talking about how alone he was, how terribly alone. I was afraid he might kill himself. I suppose I thought he had. I've been leaving messages for him for weeks."
"Weeks? Why didn't you call me?"
"Call you? What for?"
"We're still married. The divorce hasn't-but even if it had-"
"Sophy, this is hardly the time to-"
"If you thought he was dead, why didn't you call the police?"
I could feel Daniel's eyes on me, and I turned to see him, fully dressed, clothes freshly wrinkled from lying in heaps on the floor, his gaze as startled as my own. I could feel the stew of melodrama thickening, but I was in no way prepared for what Diane said next: "Will saw you with a man. That's why I didn't call you."
"Saw me where? When?"
"He drove his motorcycle to New York a few weeks ago, hoping to talk to you. You were on the street with a man Will said looked like Tom Wolfe, or maybe he said Thomas Wolfe; I wasn't paying the closest attention. He left the city immediately and drove here on his motorcycle."
"Tom," I said grimly. "Definitely Tom." Daniel even had a dandyish off-white, raw silk suit I'd seen him wearing not long before. Had Will seen us with the children? Seen us leaving my building, as rumpled as we were right now? "What was the date?" I asked, because I remembered Will calling me in the middle of the night a few weeks ago to say he was coming to New York so that we could talk. I'd told him not to; I said it was too soon for us to be friends. He shouldn't make the trip. But he must have, after all. He may have come the very next day.
"Let's see," Diane said, and I heard some papers rustling. "Three weeks ago this past Tuesday. It was such a dramatic event, I wrote it on my calendar."
"Dramatic for whom?"
"In one day he drove from Swansea to New York and from New York to here, on a motorcycle. He collapsed in my foyer, spent the night here, and left for Swansea first thing the next morning. I spoke to him that night. That was the last time. I've been leaving messages for weeks."
I had too, about the money he owed me, but hadn't it been only a week or ten days? Had I been leaving messages for a dead man? Angry messages? What had I said? I looked at Daniel, who put on his watch and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, retreating from the mounting mess. Could I go with him tonight and pretend all the things I'd need to pretend during dinner with the children?
"Have you talked to Will's daughters?" Diane asked.
"You're the first person I called. I'll call them next." It seemed the most graceful way to get out of this, although I knew I could not call them yet, not with the grim news that I may have precipitated his death. That his death may have been a suicide. "I'll call you back if I learn anything more."
Daniel emerged from the bathroom as soon as I hung up. "She thinks he killed himself?"
I nodded. "I was afraid he might when we split up."
"You never told me that."
"There's a lot I haven't told you. Did I ever tell you that a few months after Will's son died, a year before we met, he bought a handgun to kill himself with?"
"Actually, you did. That's how he landed in the bug house, where he did the art-therapy drawings that ended up in the gallery on Swansea, the afternoon you met."