them in my hand and examine them objectively, keeping the good ones and discarding the rest.
I press Play. Rory clears his throat and says, “This morning, like many of the families behind me, I kissed my wife, Claire, goodbye for the last time.” He pauses, taking a deep, shuddering breath before continuing, his voice cracking and wobbling over the words. “What was supposed to be a humanitarian trip to Puerto Rico has thrust me, and the families of ninety-five other passengers of Flight 477, into a living nightmare. Be assured we will not rest until we get answers, until we fully understand what went wrong.” He swallows hard and clenches his jaw. When he looks into the camera again, his eyes shine brighter, filling with tears that tip over the edges of his eyes and slide down his cheeks. “I don’t know what to say, other than I’m devastated. On behalf of the families, we thank you for your thoughts and prayers.”
Reporters shout questions at Rory, but he turns away from the cameras, ignoring them. I think about how effortlessly he lies. He didn’t kiss me goodbye. He didn’t say goodbye at all. And I realize, now that I’m dead, Rory can tell whatever story he wants about me, about our marriage. There is no one left to refute it.
The scene shrinks to an inset, and we see Kate Lane again, her familiar short gray hair and black-framed glasses filling the screen. I’d met her several years ago when she was interviewing Rory for the segment she was doing on Marjorie Cook’s legacy, and I remember being struck by how cool she’d been toward Rory. She’d smiled and laughed in all the right places, but I sensed a part of her watching him, as if from a distance. Examining all his shiny surfaces and flourishes, and deciding they weren’t real.
Her expression now is both somber and steadying. “Mr. Cook has been a frequent guest on this show, and I, along with everyone else at Politics Today, extend our deepest sympathies to the Cook family and all of the families affected by today’s tragedy. I’ve had the good fortune of meeting Mrs. Cook on several occasions, and I knew her to be a smart and generous woman, a tireless advocate for the Cook Family Foundation. She will be deeply missed.” In the inset picture over her shoulder, a man appears at the bank of microphones Rory just left and Kate says, “It looks like the director of the NTSB is going to answer some questions. Let’s listen in.”
The crowd of reporters begin shouting questions, but I silence the noise by turning the television off and, staring at the faint outline of my reflection in the dark screen, wonder what happens next.
* * *
I carry my bag back up the stairs and into the master bedroom, pushing aside a discarded pile of clothes on the bed—a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt—and sit. A dark wood dresser, drawers tightly shut, and a closet door that isn’t closed all the way, revealing a jumble of clothes inside. And that’s when it fully hits me: Eva will never laugh, or cry, or be surprised again. She won’t grow old, with sore hips or a back that aches. Never lose her keys or hear the sound of birds in the morning.
Yesterday she was here, a beating and broken heart, a mind with secrets and desires she kept to herself. But today, every memory she’d accumulated across a lifetime has vanished. They simply don’t exist anymore.
And what about me? Claire Cook is also gone, lifted up in the memories of those who knew me, no longer walking among the living. And yet, I still get to carry everything that belonged to me. My joys, my heartaches, memories of people I loved. And I feel a sense of privilege I don’t deserve. That I get to keep it all and Eva does not.
I press my fists into my eyes, trying to stop my leaping thoughts, ping-ponging from moment to moment—the maid unpacking my suitcase. The phone call to the hotel in Detroit. Petra’s voice on the phone at JFK. And Eva in the bathroom stall, handing me her bag, believing I was the solution to her problems, as I believed she was the solution to mine.
I need to sleep, but I don’t think I can bring myself to pull back the covers and climb into the bed. Not tonight at least. Instead, I take the blanket and