"You don't have to go through with it, Linda," her sister-in-law said sweetly without knowing her breath was wasted. "The family considers you a member. That'll never change." Gail's eyes weren't visible through the telephone wires, but Linda could see them looking up and to the left. She couldn't blame anyone for feeling as they did. The heart wants what the heart wants. Linda had been through enough transformations to know that like math.
"Thanks, Gail," Linda answered, still cringing from the bit about being "considered a member". They made it sound like their kinship was some sort of elitist country club to which she'd been, and would be, an honorable guest regardless of her low-caste bloodline. It was a favor she didn't want from anyone, least of all these stunned Anglo-Saxons scurrying for cover. She slid the pile of forms closer to her and began filling out boxes and blanks, careful not to use any lower-case letters in case Uncle Sam raised his eyebrows. "But I think it's what Paul would've wanted-- for me to be free, to move on and rebuild, without having to think of him every time I sign my name."
A silence fell over both rooms simultaneously despite the dozens of miles between them. Mention of the deceased had brought it back to brass tacks. He'd barely been in the ground for a month, but then again they'd only been married for two anniversaries. Time would always be relative, whether or not these strange people would consider themselves the same. A mass of confusion had muddled the circumstances surrounding his death. A suicide, and with no note; it seemed uncharacteristic of their beloved Paul to react so intensely, and to what? The lack of explanation was unlike him. Paul was more verbose than those around him could tolerate at times. He was the one whose drinks were watered down first at family parties for fear that they'd never end otherwise. Once his lips got rolling it was hard for them to stop. Aside from his verbiage, his passion raised questions. Theirs was a love he'd always been seeking. To give it up so brashly after finally finding solace in the storm made no sense. Passionate, rational, and long-winded: their son's demise failed to fit with any of these traits for which they'd known him. The abundance of alcohol in his system at the time of autopsy deemed an investigation unwarranted, however. Local police wrote it off as another maudlin drunk's permanent solution to a temporary problem. There was little that loved ones could do to refute this. Statistics, like bedsheets, don't lie.
"Well, as you wish. Let me know if you need anything. Being back there again must be so difficult for--" but Gail fell to sobbing before she could finish. A love nest turned crime scene was what the home had become. Linda had refused to enter it until now even though the last strand of yellow police ribbon had been plucked from the premises weeks ago. Suicide was a crime, but not one that could be tried. Paul would have his Maker as his soul's sole judge. And Linda would have the pieces to collect, though not necessarily by herself.
"I will. I promise. Give your family my love. I really must be going, though," and with sparse goodbyes and verbal curtsies the two women ended what would be their last conversation.
Linda had almost completed her Change of Name paperwork when the telephone rang again. The afternoon had waned to evening without her noticing the change. At first her hand hesitated for fear that it was another ex-in-law, but something in her gut swore otherwise.
"Hello?" she asked from behind a timid veil.
"Are you almost done over there?" came a curt, masculine voice, gruff and sore and soaked with whiskey.
"Yes. I'll be heading out shortly," she sighed, a slight alteration in her tone. "Shall I bring anything special?" Linda knew well what he'd be desiring immediately, particularly after the alcohol, but her pawn in brute's clothing understood that saying so would only cast it farther out of reach. The fairer sex knows how to sell it.
"No, darling. Just you," he said with a schoolboy's sincerity.
"Good. I'll see you soon."
After signing away her brief former self to the sanctioned powers that be, Linda walked around the house turning out the lights. She wouldn't miss that place or the future it could've held for her. The money was now hers, and time. What else could've mattered? She thought nothing of it as she pulled the lamp chain above Paul's desk and left the answers in the dark to be discarded by the real estate agent prior to the showing. There, in the wastepaper basket tucked under the antique roll-top, was a crumpled ball of receipts she'd failed to hide well enough from her groom, as well as the charred remains of a letter scrawled in nervous strokes that ended with "Goodbye".
"How could you?" was her favorite line, a rare succinct sentence from her former lover.
She had a lifetime to reply.
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