“I see. Maybe this is the monk who blessed them,” she said, pointing to the photograph.
“Maybe,” I said, turning it over. “Unfortunately it doesn’t say who it is.”
“It’s all rather baffling, isn’t it? Why would Will ask someone to mail me fifty-year-old newspaper clippings and some broken bits of amulet if he went missing for a long time? That’s what the pink letter means, doesn’t it? That Will asked this Prasit person—is Prasit a man or a woman, by the way?”
“Man, I think,” I said. “There’s a Thai wood-carver I deal with whose name is Prasit.”
“Well, why would Will ask this fellow Prasit to send me junk like this if he didn’t show up for awhile?”
“I don’t know, Natalie,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be unkind, but I just can’t think what I can do for you here.”
We both sat there for a minute, saying nothing. She was a little teary-eyed, and stared at a point somewhere over my head before speaking. “It’s sort of sweet, isn’t it, the way Prasit addresses me? Mrs. Natalie. It reminds me of my childhood. My French relatives called me Mademoiselle Natalie. Is that the polite term of address in Thailand?”
“Yes,” I replied. “The use of surnames is relatively new in Thailand. Everyone uses first names. I had a hard time getting used to Ms. Lara at first, and calling people by their first names all the time.”
“And Mr. William,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It seems rather familiar but also respectful at the same time. It’s rather sweet,” she repeated. “You know, I keep wondering if there was something I could have done. If I’d got on a plane and gone to see him the minute that horrible fax arrived, maybe everything would be different. But I was so devastated by it, paralyzed really, I didn’t seem to be able to do anything except show everybody the fax, as if perhaps they’d tell me I’d read it all wrong or something, or that it was really a ransom note for kidnapped William. I don’t think I was being very rational. All I did was cause myself deep personal humiliation. Everybody knew he’d left me in such a horrible way. You knew, I’m sure, even if we hadn’t met before this evening. Didn’t you?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “It is a rather tight little community, antiques I mean.”
“And not above some juicy gossip, I’ll bet,” she said.
“I think there were lots of people on your side,” I replied. “Even though we’d never met, I was one of them.”
“That’s just it,” she said. “Maybe it was a cry for help on Will’s part. After all, he’d hardly be the first man to have a midlife crisis, and maybe my telling everybody what he’d done just made it impossible for him to change his mind and come back after he’d had a bit of a break. I can understand he couldn’t take it any longer, that it was just too hard. God knows I’ve felt that way.”
“What was it he couldn’t take anymore?” I said. I wasn’t inclined to have any generous feelings toward the man, but I supposed letting her talk was the least I could do under the circumstances.
“You don’t know?” she said, reaching for her drink. “Caitlin, our little girl, is developmentally challenged—that’s politically correct speak for brain damaged,” she added, pausing to drain the glass. “She was just perfect when she was born, but a few days later she started to have convulsions. Nobody has ever given me a really satisfactory explanation for what went wrong. Not that it would change anything, but I’d just like to know. And it’s hard to think about having another child when you don’t know what happened the first time; although maybe if we had… but we didn’t.
“Caitlin’s six now, and about as bright as she’s going to get. She can’t even dress herself, and I pretty much put all my energy into looking after her. I see now that I neglected our marriage. But he adored her, you know, despite everything, and I thought he loved me, too. He called us his girls. I keep thinking that maybe if I’d gone to see him right away, he would have come back. We could have worked something out.” She paused for a minute and then gave me a rueful smile. “I wonder how many times I’ve said maybe in the last few minutes. Ten? Twenty? There are an awful lot of maybes in all of this, aren’t there?”
“Too many,” I said. “You make it sound as if it’s all your fault, that if you had just done something or other, it wouldn’t have happened. I think you should stop doing that to yourself. As you said, he would hardly be the first man to have a midlife crisis, and it would have nothing to do with you.”
“I just wish I could convince myself of that. You know what bugged me most about the fax? That it came from Thailand. We went to Thailand on our honeymoon ten years ago, and the fact that he chose the same place to end our marriage may have seemed like symmetry to him, but it looked just plain cruel to me.
“Afterward, I tried to keep the store here going, you know,” she said. “I took Caitlin with me every day. But you can’t do both, and I couldn’t afford any help. What with all Caitlin’s expenses, we only just managed it when there were two of us. I finally sold the business to the first person that came along. We’ve been living off what we got for it, but it will be gone soon. I’ve sold all the jewelry, except this pin: fifth anniversary present from Will. Silly of me to keep it, but I haven’t been able to part with it for some reason. The time has come I’ll have to, though, and then I just don’t know what I’ll do. Sell the house, I guess. I shouldn’t drink, should I.” It was a statement, not a question. “These martinis are making me maudlin. Or maybe I’m just plain tired. I haven’t had a holiday since Will left really, except for a week this past summer. Friends lent me their cabin in the woods and took Caitlin for a few days. There was no electricity, no water, nobody around, and it was absolutely heaven. But Caitlin was just miserable while I was away. So I guess that’s it for holidays.”
I opened my mouth to utter something appropriate but realized there was nothing I could possibly say that would fix anything. “But you did speak to him at some point, I presume,” I said finally.
She started chewing on her lip again. “I intended to,” she said.
“But…” I said.
“I know you’re going to think I’m awful. I decided that if he didn’t have the guts to tell me to my face he was leaving, then I wasn’t going to speak to him either. When I finally pulled myself together, in a manner of speaking, I did what most spurned women do, I guess. I cut up .his ties, wrecked his golf clubs, then cleared every last piece of his stuff out and sent it to a charity. Then I got a lawyer and filed for divorce. The lawyer has been dealing with it ever since. I always meant to talk to him eventually. I kept thinking he would phone. I was damned if I was going to do it first. I practiced what I would say when we spoke. I planned to call him, but only when I was absolutely sure I wouldn’t break down and embarrass myself when he said hello. The longer you put off speaking to someone, though, the harder it is to do it. After two years, you don’t just phone up and say, ”Hey, how are you doing?“ At least I couldn’t.”
“Then how do you know he’s been missing for months?”
“I suppose I don’t exactly. My lawyer told me he sent off a document to Will for signature at least three months ago, and didn’t get the papers back. So he tried again, this time by courier. The courier tried for several days to deliver it and eventually sent it back as undeliverable. Steven—that’s my lawyer—thought Will was just avoiding us; we were asking for a reasonably substantial settlement, and so he didn’t think anything much of it.