The fact that Benedict had a dummy account meant nothing. What was more interesting though, as I typed his name into the search engine, was that Benedict Edwards didn’t have a real Facebook account. There were two Benedict Edwardses listed in the Facebook directory. One was a musician from Oklahoma City, the other was a dancer from Tampa, Florida. Neither was my Benedict Edwards.
Again, so what? A lot of people don’t have Facebook accounts. I had one set up, but I’ve almost never used it. My profile picture was the yearbook photograph. I accepted friends maybe once a week. I probably had about fifty of them. I had originally signed up because people were sending me links to photographs and the like and the only way I could view them was to sign in to a Facebook account. Other than that, social media in general held very little appeal to me.
So maybe that was what Benedict had done. We were on many of the same e-mail lists. He had probably set up the dummy account so he could view Facebook links.
When I looked down the history page, that theory immediately imploded. The first listing was for a man on Facebook named Kevin Backus. I clicked the link. For a second, I thought that maybe it was another dummy account for Benedict, that Kevin Backus was merely an online pseudonym. But that wasn’t the case. Kevin Backus was just some nondescript guy. He wore sunglasses in his profile picture and posed with his thumb up. I frowned at that.
I racked my brain. Kevin Backus. Neither his name nor his face was familiar.
I hit the “about” page. It was blank. It didn’t list a home, a school, an occupation, any of that. The only thing that had been filled out was “in a relationship.” He was, according to this, in a relationship with a woman named Marie-Anne Cantin.
I rubbed my chin. Marie-Anne Cantin. That name didn’t ring a bell either. So, why had Benedict been on this Kevin Backus’s page? I didn’t know, but I suspected it was hugely important. I could start googling him. I looked again at the name Marie-Anne Cantin. It was typed in blue, meaning that she also had a profile. I only had to click on her name.
That was what I did.
When her page came up—when I saw Marie-Anne Cantin’s profile photograph—I recognized the face almost immediately.
Benedict carried her picture in his wallet.
Oh man. I swallowed, sat back, caught my breath. Now I got it. I could almost feel Benedict’s pain. I had lost the great love of my life. Benedict, it seemed, had done the same. Marie-Anne Cantin was indeed a stunning woman. I would describe her as high-cheekboned, regal, African American except, as I looked closer at her profile, that last part would be inaccurate.
She wasn’t African American. She was, well, African. Marie-Anne Cantin, according to her Facebook page, lived in Ghana.
This fact was, I guess, interesting, albeit in a not-my-business way. Somewhere along the way, Benedict had met this woman. He had fallen in love with her. He carried a torch for her. What that could possibly have to do with his visiting Kraftboro, Vermont . . .
Hold the phone.
Hadn’t I, too, fallen in love with a woman? I, too, still carried a torch for her. And I, too, had been up in Kraftboro, Vermont.
Was Kevin Backus Benedict’s very own Todd Sanderson?
I frowned. That felt like a stretch. And wrong. Still, wrong as it felt, I needed to investigate this. Marie-Anne Cantin was the only lead I had right now. I clicked her “about” link. It was impressive. She had studied economics at Oxford University and had received a law degree at Harvard. She was legal counsel for the United Nations. She both lived in and was from Accra, the capital of Ghana. She was, as I already knew, “in a relationship” with Kevin Backus.
Now what?
I clicked on her pictures, but they were set on private. No way to view them. An idea came to me. I hit the back arrow until I was on Kevin Backus’s page again. His photographs were not set on private. I could see them all. Okay, good. I started clicking through them. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I expected to find.
Kevin Backus had his photographs in various albums. I started with the one simply titled “Happy Times.” There were twenty, twenty-five pictures of either my boy Kevin with his main squeeze, Marie-Anne, or just Marie-Anne alone, obviously snapped by Kevin. They looked happy. Check that. She looked happy. He looked deliriously happy. I pictured Benedict sitting here, clicking through these photographs of the woman he loved with this Kevin guy. I could see the glass of scotch in his hand. I could see the room growing dark. I could see the blue light of the screen bouncing off Benedict’s oversize Ant-Man glasses. I could see a lone tear running down his cheek.
Too much?
Facebook loved to torture ex-loves by keeping them front and center. You couldn’t escape your exes anymore. Their lives were right here for you to see. Man, that sucked. So this was what Benedict did at night— tormented himself. I didn’t know any of this for certain, of course, but I was pretty sure that was how it played out. I remembered that drunken night in the bar, the way he carefully took out the well-creased photograph of Marie- Anne. I could still hear the agony in his slurred words:
“The only girl I’ll ever love.”
Benedict, you poor bastard.
Poor bastard perhaps, but I still didn’t have a clue what this meant or how it related to Benedict’s recent visit to Vermont. I clicked through some more albums. There was one titled “Family.” Kevin had two brothers and a sister. His mother appeared in a number of photographs. I didn’t see any sign of a father. There was an album called “Kintampo Falls” and another for “Mole National Park.” Most of the photographs there were shots of wildlife and natural wonders.
The last album was called “Oxford Graduation.” Curious. That was where Marie-Anne Cantin had studied economics. Could Kevin and Marie-Anne have attended together? Could they be college sweethearts? I doubted it. It seemed like a long time to be “in a relationship,” but, hey, who knew?
The photographs in this album were considerably older. Judging by the hairstyles, clothing, and Kevin’s face, I would say at least fifteen, maybe twenty years earlier. I would bet that these photographs predated digital cameras. Kevin had probably scanned them into his computer. I skimmed through the thumbs, not expecting to see anything of interest, when a photograph in the second row made me pull up.
My hand was shaking. I grabbed the mouse, managed to move the cursor so that it hovered over the image, and clicked. The photograph grew bigger. It was a group photograph. Eight people, all in black graduation gowns, stood with big smiles on their faces. I recognized Kevin Backus. He stood on the far right next to a woman I didn’t know. Their body language suggested that they were a couple. In fact, as I looked closer, it appeared that I was looking at four couples on their graduation day. I couldn’t be sure, of course. It could have been that they were just lined up boy-girl, but I didn’t think that was all.
My eye was immediately drawn to the woman on the left. It was Marie-Anne Cantin. She wore a killer smile, absolutely devastating. It was a smile that could twist a man’s heart. A man could fall in love just being on the receiving end of that smile. A man would want to see the smile every day and be the one who could make it appear. He would want it all to himself.
Man, I got it, Benedict. I really, truly got it.
Marie-Anne was gazing lovingly at a man I didn’t recognize.
At least, not at first.
He, too, was African or African American. His head was shaved. He had no facial hair. He did not wear glasses. That was why I didn’t recognize him at first. That was why, even when I looked hard, I couldn’t be sure. Except it was the only thing that made sense.
Benedict.
There were only two problems. One, Benedict hadn’t graduated from Oxford University. Two, the name underneath the picture didn’t read Benedict Edwards. It read Jamal W. Langston.
Huh?
Maybe it wasn’t Benedict. Maybe Jamal W. Langston just looked like Benedict.
I frowned. Yeah, right, sure, that made sense. And maybe Benedict just happened to be carrying a torch for
