Wish You Were Gone(44)

Maybe she did need to be committed. What kind of person was she? What kind of mother? That she let this happen under her own nose. Under her own nose. It was when her own unintentional pun registered in her addled brain that she got up and, recalling every random cop movie she’d ever seen, went to the bathroom, and flushed the baggie down the toilet. Then flushed again for good measure.

Now Emma systematically opened the bottles of alcohol and, one by one by one, dumped the contents down the kitchen sink. She took out a new garbage bag and shoved the bottles inside, then tied up the bag and brought it to the front porch, where they’d been keeping the garbage cans lined up since James’s accident, none of them wanting to venture into the garage. She shoved the bag into the bottom of one of the cans and moved another bag on top of it, reminded of the way Hunter had made a similar move with the phone bills. James was three weeks dead and they were still cleaning up after him. Still protecting each another from his deepest, darkest secrets.

It was 2 p.m. She still had time. Back inside, Emma jogged up the stairs. By the time she got to her room, her entire rib cage seemed to be pounding, rather than her heart. She strode over to James’s closet and yanked open the double doors. The scent overtook her. Dry-cleaning with an undertone of cologne overlaced with just the faintest hint of bourbon. That smell was always there, whether pungent on his breath or simply clinging like an afterthought to his clothes. For the rest of her life, whenever she caught a whiff of Maker’s Mark, she’d feel her husband there with her.

Emma stepped inside. She reached out and ran her hand down the slick lengths of the leather belts before moving on to the suits. They were arranged by season, and then by color within the season. They were rotated on a quarterly basis, so that right now the fall collection was at the front, the linen summer suits placed at the back. Nothing was ever stored away. James wanted his whole collection to be in one place so that he could admire it whenever he liked. He’d never told her this, but every now and again she’d catch him in there, looking around with a satisfied expression on his face. Each hanger was oak with a gold hook, and each one was situated exactly two inches from the next. His marriage, his home life, his head might have been total fucking mayhem, but his closet was as orderly as a ruler.

Emma put her hands, back to back, between two suits and, feeling a little thrill of rebellion, shoved them aside in opposite directions. The hangers made a satisfying screech as they parted and a random giggle bubbled forth from her throat. Damn, it was satisfying to mess up his shit. She pushed a few more suits aside, then felt something in one of the pockets. Her heart caught as she fished around in the silken pouch. It was a one-thousand-dollar chip from the Luxor in Vegas. She tossed it over her shoulder and, with renewed determination, got to work.

She searched every suit pocket and every pair of pants, coming up with a couple of business cards and a receipt from a restaurant in the city for more than five hundred dollars. For lunch. Moving on to the shirts was fruitless. Apparently he didn’t use those pockets for anything, but then she came to the sweaters. At first she simply lifted them, peeking between folded cashmere. There didn’t seem to be anything there, but on the third shelf she moved a deep purple V-neck and heard something hard hit the back wall of the closet. Too short to see what it was, she ripped all the sweaters down and uncovered a half-empty bottle of Absolut.

“Mother fucker,” Emma whispered to herself. Make that ten.

She walked to the bathroom and poured the vodka down the drain.

Now she was shaking with rage. She went back to the closet and yanked the rest of the sweaters from their shelves. Two more bottles rained down around her. Scotch. Bourbon. Emma dumped these as well, then moved on to the shoes.

There had to be something else in here. Something that would reveal him to her. Something that would make her connect the man she had married to the woman she’d heard on the other end of that phone call. She yanked out loafers and oxfords and boots and dozens of pairs of pristine free sneakers—gifts from reps at Nike and Adidas and Under Armour. At the very back of the closet she found an ancient pair of New Balance she was pretty sure he’d worn when the kids were little. They were red suede—very faded—with big white N’s emblazoned in leather. The sight of them made her pause, her breath caught in her chest. They’d been young and happy once.

Slowly, Emma reached for the shoes. One felt slightly heavier than the other. She tipped it and three more chips fell into her hand. But these were different. They were AA chips. Two months. She remembered that. She’d actually attended the ceremony, feeling proud and hopeful until three nights later when he’d come home and thrown up in the potted plant next to the front door.

The other two were one-month chips. Was this for real? He’d been one month sober two other times? Emma sat back on her ass on the plush carpet, the chips heavy in her hands, and thought back. Hunter’s freshman soccer season. James had come home early a lot during November and gone to watch Hunter practice. It wasn’t Hunter’s favorite sport, but he was still a star at it, though he’d given it up after that year to focus exclusively on baseball. James had taken them all out to dinner to celebrate the win against Valley. He hadn’t had a drink that night, but that wasn’t so unusual—he almost never drank in front of the family. Had he been sober that whole month? She vividly remembered him calling her on Thanksgiving—he often missed the holiday because he had to be at one of the NFL games—and being utterly incoherent. Was that the night he’d given up? Fallen off the wagon, as the saying went?