father is a former marine and a brilliant engineer with an easy smile and a halfway decent jump shot, but his greatest talent is running interference between my brother and me and our mother.
I sink onto the chair and lean into him, and he slings a beefy arm around my shoulders. My family is not a demonstrative clan. Hugs happen only at hellos and goodbyes. Kisses are rare, and they usually stop just short of skin. So far today I’ve held my brother’s hand, collapsed in my mother’s arms and snuggled up to my father. This is what death does. It forces intimacy at the same time it snatches it away.
My gaze falls on the legal pad, covered in Dad’s block-letter scribbles. Pages and pages of bullet points, grouped into categories and ranked by level of importance. If Will were here, he and my father would bond over the beauty of this list, a masterpiece of left-brained brilliance. I push aside Dad’s reading glasses and scan the papers, a string of knots working their way across my shoulder blades. It seems unfair there are so many tasks to tackle, when all I really want to do is go back to bed and forget yesterday ever happened.
And then I notice a grouping of four or five bullets at the bottom.
“Compensation?” I say, and there’s venom in my tone.
“Airlines provide a sum of money to victims’ families, Iris. I know it seems harsh, but I’m just looking out for my baby girl. I will make sure you’re provided for.”
As if Liberty Air can fix their shoddy planes and bungling pilots by throwing around some cash. Oh, we killed your husband? Here, go buy yourself something nice.
“I’d rather starve to death than touch a penny of their blood money.”
“Fine, then don’t touch it. Put it in the bank and forget all about it. I’m still going after it for you.”
I grab the pen and add my own bullet to the list: research victims’ families’ charities. Someone might profit from Liberty Air’s money, but it sure as hell won’t be me.
The next page is more of the first, and after a quick scan I flip to the next and then the next, stopping short at what I read across the top: MEDIA. Underneath, my father has created a long and extensive log of calls received, complete with date, time, name of caller and outlet. I don’t recognize all the names, but more than a few jump out at me. People magazine. The Today show. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Diane Sawyer. USA TODAY.
“How did they find me? Our number’s unlisted.”
Dave settles in at the head of the table with an egg-and-bacon sandwich. “I don’t know, but the phone has been ringing off the hook. We unplugged it an hour ago. And last time I looked, there were three news vans parked out front.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. And you know that photo of you and Will from last New Year’s Eve? It’s all over the internet.”
They could have chosen a worse picture, I suppose. Me and Will in our holiday finest, our faces lit up with goofy grins as he dips me over an arm. I loved it so much I made it my Facebook profile picture, which, now that I think about it, is probably where they got it.
Mom slides a plate with a mini mountain of food in front of me. “Here, liefje. Try to eat at least a few bites.”
I pick up my fork, cut off a mini slice of sausage and push it around my plate until Mom heads back into the kitchen.
Dad flips to the next page of his list. “Liberty Airlines has established a Family Assistance Center at the international terminal at Hartsfield. A lady by the name of—” he slips on his glasses and consults the paper “—Ann Margaret Myers is your point of contact.”
Dave snorts around a giant bite of food. “What kind of idiot plans a gathering for plane crash next of kin at the airport?”
“Liberty Air ones, apparently,” Dad says. “They want us down there so they can, and I quote, provide comfort and counseling, discuss plans and answer any questions.”
“Plans?” I say. “What kind of plans?”
“Well, for starters, they’re talking about a memorial service as soon as this weekend.”
Dad’s gentle tone does nothing to stop a familiar anger from sparking like a flash fire. A Liberty Air memorial service feels like an insult, like the neighbor who buys you flowers after they run over your dog. I won’t accept their public display of penitence, and I can’t forgive their mistake.
“So now I’m supposed to accept help from the people responsible for killing my husband? That’s absurd.” I shove my plate to the center of the table, and the pyramid of scrambled eggs landslides over the rim.
“I know it seems that way, punkin’, but it won’t be just Liberty Air. The Red Cross will be there, too, as well as folks whose sole job is to collect information about the crash. I want to hear what they know that we haven’t gotten from the TV or newspaper.”
“Maybe you can ask them who alerted the media before my daughter,” Mom says, slamming the salt and pepper shakers onto the center of the table. “Because that is an unforgivable blunder, and I’d like to tell that person what I think of them.”
“Whoever made that mistake will be out of a job, I’ll see to it.” Dad uses his drill-instructor voice—forceful, booming and unambiguous. He turns, and his expression morphs from fierce to fiercely concerned. “Sweetheart, like it or not, we’re going to have to interface with Liberty Air at some point. I can be a buffer if you want me to, or I can stand back and let you handle it yourself. Up to you. Either way, at the very least, we should go down there and see what this Miss Myers has to say, don’t you think?”
No, I don’t think. I’ve seen that footage—sobbing family members pushing their way through a sea of cameras, keen to capture their despair for all the world to see. And now Dad is suggesting we become a part of them?
Then again, I have so many questions, not the least of which is what did you do to my husband? If this Ann Margaret Myers has an answer for that one, she can plaster my teary, snotty face on the high-definition LED screens at SunTrust Field for all I care.
I push away from the table and head upstairs to get dressed.
* * *
On the last night of Will’s life, he cooked. Not something out of a box or the freezer section, but a whole-food, homemade meal. For someone who didn’t know how to cut a tomato when I met him, whipping up dinner must have been no easy feat, and it probably took him all day. Maybe something inside him knew what was coming, some otherworldly awareness that his cosmic clock was about to hit zero, but that night—our seventh anniversary—he surprised me with real food, and for the first time ever made by his own hands.
I found him bent over one of my cookbooks in the kitchen, the most amazing smell hanging in the air. “What’s going on?”
He whirled around, a twig of thyme dangling from a curl and a mixture of pride and guilt on his expression. “Um, I’m cooking.”
I could see that. Anyone could see that. He’d used every pot and pan we owned, and covered the entire countertop, every single inch, with food and ingredients and cooking utensils. Will was covered in flour and grease.
I
