a rule about never going to bed angry, but I never thought… This wasn’t supposed to happen!”
And then she melted, arms folded on the table, head resting on her arms as her shoulders heaved. I swung around the table to sit next to her, gently resting my hand on her back. Giving Viktor a bleak look, I sought for something comforting to say, but there wasn’t anything that I could think of to make it better. No matter what I said, unless we were ever able to contact Chaya’s spirit, Isolde would carry the weight of her guilt with her.
After a few moments, she raised her head, her face red from the tears. I handed her a tissue and she dabbed at her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break down like that.” She paused, then asked, “How did she die? The police just told me she was murdered.”
I thought of the torture that Chaya had gone through and shook my head. “Don’t think about it. Please. Right now, I think you should find a therapist who can help ease you through this. You’ve had a tremendous shock, and it would be good if you had someone to guide you through the next few months, at least. I’m sure Angel, the receptionist at our office, can help you find someone if you don’t know where to look.”
Isolde leaned back, closing her eyes as she rested her head against the back of the booth. “I know you’re right. I don’t know how I’ll manage to hold things together for a while.” She paused, then said, “We’re having the funeral service in a couple days. Chaya wanted to be cremated so we’ll be doing that. When I was at the morgue, all they would show me was her face. She looked so calm, so still.”
“The best thing you can do for your wife is to keep living,” Viktor said. “Hold tight to her memory. And talk to her—tell her everything you wish you had said instead of the argument. She’ll hear you. I know she will.”
“Thank you for talking to us today. We’d like to follow the path she took. You said she ran the same route everyday?” I said, pulling out my tablet and bringing up the Maps app. “Can you show us on here what that route was?”
Isolde nodded, studying the map. She traced out the route that Chaya jogged and I wrote down the streets and turns. After we finished, she gave me a long look.
“Thank you for caring. Thank you for trying to find out who did this to her. I think…” She paused, then said, “If you would have your receptionist call me with a list of therapists, I’d appreciate that. I don’t know where to begin.”
“Angel’s an empath. She’ll be able to find you someone who you can work with. I’ll text her to give you a call tomorrow, if that’s all right?”
“That’s fine. I’ll be home all day. I can’t handle going into work right now, and my boss gave me a month’s paid leave to get everything organized.” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe this has happened. I can’t believe our life just…shattered like this.”
“Unfortunately, chaos is a part of life and sometimes it hits like a sledgehammer.”
As we made our good-byes, I hated leaving her there alone at the table. She looked so lost. But there was nothing we could do to take away her pain, and all the distractions in the world wouldn’t help when the night fell and she was alone in her home, with the weight of memory pressing down on her shoulders.
Viktor and I drove Chaya’s route, but saw nothing unusual. I had no clue what we were looking for, but whatever it was, we didn’t find it. We drove back to the office, where I picked up Angel.
On the way home, I decided to stop for fast food. Neither Angel nor I would have time to cook that night. “What do you want, pizza? Chicken? Burgers? Fish?”
Angel was in the passenger seat, staring at her phone. “Hmm? Oh, anything’s fine. How about burgers? They’re easier to eat and less messy than some of the others.”
“Dusty Dan’s okay?”
“Fine.” She went back to staring at her phone.
Dusty Dan’s was a small burger joint near our home. I had bought a house on 36th Avenue, across from Discovery Park. Over the past nine months since we had moved in, we had been chipping away at the list of things