And if you’re used to the stars, however clear they may be in a country sky, how can you even see them if the moon is full? What chance do they have in the face of the sun? If you looked at the sun for the first time, really looked, after all that stargazing, you’d be blinded. And then sunlight begins to feel essential in a way it never did before; starlight pales by comparison.
That’s what I think happened with Tom. Now, with all this distance between the receipt of those horrible texts and the last memorial I’ll attend for him, I feel like I might get why he did it. Maybe a little, maybe enough. Or then again, maybe not.
Because you can turn away from the sun. You can shield your eyes.
You can be more fucking careful with your texts.
I’ve tried to forgive him, and to hate him, too, but the Tom I met on campus at a stupid mixer my dorm was throwing who pushed his glasses up his nose and then up on top of his head, that Tom who never let me treat him like I was his mother and who was perfectly capable of doing his own laundry, who stayed up all night with the kids when they had croup, who held first Cassie then Henry in his arms as if they were the best present I could ever give him . . . I still love that guy. Most of the time, I still think I made the right choice. Many days I’d probably make that choice again. But in this new life, post–texts and death and anger and grief, if ever faced with the possibility again?
This time I might go for the moon.
This time I might bask in the sun.
• • •
The committee waits for me to compose myself. Jenny hands me a Kleenex and someone else offers me water, but I’m fine, I say, fine.
“Go ahead, Franny.”
“So we know this is her mug,” Franny says, fighting back her own tears. “We know my mother worked there and that she logged in to the building that morning.”
While the building’s paper entry records were lost, there was a computerized system for those who worked in the building—they had to swipe their pass in order to get through security or exit the building. Unfortunately, the program that tracked departures had a glitch in it that was discovered only after the explosion. So we knew who’d gone into the building—Tom had entered at 8:22 that day, a bit early for him—but not who’d left before ten o’clock.
“And she sent an e-mail from her work computer at nine fifty,” Franny continued. “To Cecily, actually.”
I still had that e-mail. It said simply: Good luck. Call me after. I’d seen it only days later, when I finally had the energy to look through the hundreds of e-mails that had gathered in my in-box. I’d felt so tired, so crushed, after I read it—one of her last thoughts had been about me. Not that she knew what was coming, but my wish for my friend was that she was at peace in those final minutes, not worried, and certainly not worried about my stupid problems.
She was Tom’s head programmer, but we’d known her for years before she joined the business. The Rings lived in Evanston like us, and she and I were in a book club together for a while. But it was after the birth of her second daughter, Julia, four years ago (her third, I guess, a fact that still took me by surprise even though I was sitting down the table from the evidence, the person, Franny), when she was hit with a bout of postpartum depression, that we became close friends.
Depression’s a funny thing. We don’t know what to do about it—as a society—unless we’ve been there ourselves. The person before us is not someone we know, and their unhappiness is often not something we can understand. So we downplay it, and we make the afflicted somehow to blame. No one would ever tell someone with cancer that if they tried a bit harder, if they got out of bed and took a shower, everything would be better, but people told her all those things. That and more, worse.
Her husband, Joshua, hadn’t known how to handle it, but I’d been there in college—clinically depressed for much of my sophomore year—so I knew what it felt like. I knew what had worked for me, what had pulled me through and brought me out the other side. I made myself as available to her as I could, and we became close.
When she was on her feet and feeling ready to go back to work, I suggested she apply for a job at Tom’s company. Tom agreed—they’d always gotten along—and several months after she started working for him, he told me how happy he was that he’d taken her on.
“Yes,” I say to the committee in the here and now, “she wrote to me that day.”
I can feel their curious stares. They’ve read the e-mail. What was she wishing me luck for? Why did she want me to call her after? After what? I’ve been asked more than once. It isn’t anybody’s business, and I’d made up some answer, some inside joke between us about how we wished each other luck on ordinary days. Just for fun. Ha.
“You’ve all seen the e-mail,” I add. “Nothing relevant there.”
Jenny looks as if she wants to ask more but turns to Franny instead. The others follow suit. The fact that anyone read her e-mails feels like the worst invasion of privacy. Which it is, but privacy gives way to compensation.
“Did someone check the IP address?” one of the men asks. “She could’ve sent it from her phone.”
“We checked,” Franny says. “All this information is in your packets.”
There’s a slim white folder sitting on the table in front of each of us. It has the shadowy label of the Initiative on it. I
