She sees me and stifles a sob, then offers a half-smile. Even after her world’s been turned upside down, she’s still trying to be nice to me.
“What happened?” she says. “How could this happen?”
“It’s all so horrible,” I say. “And so sudden.”
“Where was he going, that bastard?” she says. “Was he going to one of his women? Without even bothering to lie to me? Just taking off for the night to visit some piece of ass in another state? Without so much as a phone call?”
“We don’t know where he was going,” I say, which is the truth. He didn’t tell me which city he had picked at random.
“I know he was cheating on me,” says Phoebe. “I mean, he never actually started being faithful, so it was just a continuation of the cheating he was doing before we were married. But he was usually discreet about it. He would give me a lie. Why didn’t he bother to give me a lie this time? Do you think it was some kind of suicide? I know he wasn’t happy. But he couldn’t be happy, could he? That wasn’t in his character. He was happy enough, though, wasn’t he? Why was he running away?”
“It wasn’t suicide,” I say. “I know that for a fact. He loved you. He loved his boys. Whatever he was doing was business related. I can tell you that much. I won’t lie and tell you that he never cheated on you. But this wasn’t about that. I know that for a fact.”
“How can you say that?” says Phoebe. “You don’t know his mind any better than me. How can you stand there and pretend like you knew him?”
I move closer to her. It doesn’t feel right, but I guess it will never feel right. My family has been basically cut in half in one week. I do something I never would have done a week ago and put my arms around Phoebe, hugging her as tightly as I can.
“We are going to get through this,” I say, not really believing it myself. “We are going to keep each other strong for our children. Whatever is left of Bernard is in those kids. They need their mommy right now.”
Impossibly, she nods at me, somehow soaking up my bullshit. In situations like this, it really doesn’t matter what you say, as long as you say it with sufficient zeal and gravitas.
“I want you to know, first of all, that this changes nothing,” I say. “You will be taken care of just as if Bernard were still alive.”
She looks a little shocked at this.
“Of course I will be,” she says. “What do you mean?”
“I just mean, in case you were worried,” I say. She thrusts her jaw out at me. She wasn’t worried before, but now she is.
“Nylo will always take care of you,” I say. “No matter what.”
“They are supposed to send the body back tonight,” says Phoebe. “He broke his neck in the crash. That’s what they say. At least he didn’t suffer.”
“Bernard never suffered,” I say. “Not one day in his life.”
“That’s true,” says Phoebe, smiling ruefully. “He didn’t know how.”
“Listen,” I say. “I need to know something.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t quite even know what to ask. But have you seen anybody new around lately? Anybody suspicious, watching you or making you feel uncomfortable? One mother to another: sometimes we have a sixth sense about these sorts of things. Was there anybody who sent hackles up your neck? Anybody who didn’t belong?”
To her credit, Phoebe doesn’t dismiss me immediately out of hand. She thinks about it for a moment before shaking her head.
“Everything has been pretty quiet around here,” she says. “Nothing exciting at all. Just the same daily dramas. I give the kids everything I possibly can, and Bernard fucks any old slut that comes into view, and I pretend not to see and we don’t talk about it.”
I nod, not wanting to let her pull me over to her side quite yet. My loyalties remain with my brother. I always told him that getting married was a bad idea, especially to someone so self-sacrificing who would seemingly let him get away with anything, but who was secretly bearing all of his insults and neglect like a metastasizing cancer. Eventually, one day, she would overwhelm him with pure righteous fury. Better to marry someone as awful as him, I said.
I almost feel bad for Phoebe that Bernard has denied her a cleansing final moment of rage, but I assume that in six months or so she will smash his convertible with his golf clubs or deck one of his many mistresses in a Wegmans or something and then she will write a cathartic “friends only” locked social media post about it that will have a similar effect and will let her begin the process of demonization that will fuel her spite tank for the rest of her life.
Not that Bernard wasn’t an awful bastard. But he was my brother. And I am an awful bastard, too.
“It can’t possibly have been easy being married to my brother,” I say, standing up. “But you have been a good and loyal wife to him. I have always admired you for that. You were a really good team together, despite your differences. I hope now that he is gone we will be able to become closer, you and I, now that we are no longer divided by something so lame as a man.”
She bursts into tears, nodding. It would be so easy to capture all of her self-abnegating, submissive energy and make it my own. But what purpose would I bend her toward? For now, it’s good enough to keep her docile, to keep her from hating my brother for dying for just a little while longer as a gift to his memory.
“Henley’s funeral is tomorrow,” she says.
“Yeah, or
