Finding Simon

When I used to picture my future, it always looked the same. I was older, wrinkled, and sitting on the porch with my husband. We would hold hands and listen to the sound of life circling around us. It was a cliché thought, but it always made me smile. I told him once and he made fun of me, saying that for someone who had once been so wild, I wanted something so tame and boring. I never thought I’d ever have been standing at a tombstone with his name on it, alone, without even the comfort of him in his own grave.

I’d come to the cemetery every week for months since the investigation ended. I brought flowers and stand and talk to this tombstone, trying not to think about where my husband may have actually ended up. It was a desperate search, and I had wanted it to continue, but the police had said there was no reason after they’d discovered his car and belongings nearby a bridge. There was a note in the car, one that I’ve only managed to read halfway through. It’s some excuse of a suicide note, and it doesn’t even sound like him. I pleaded with the investigators not to give up, that it couldn’t possibly be him, not my Simon. He would never do that to me, I thought. These are the mumblings I bring with me to the tombstone.

In any other context I’d probably look like a crazy woman, but I see a lot of people come here to talk to the resting places of their loved ones. Some weep, some are silent, some just sit and chat for a while. I haven’t cried. I haven’t had a death to cry for. All I have is a tombstone with my husband’s name on it and nowhere else to go. There’s nobody else but me left to wonder about what happened nearly two years ago. Sometimes I come here, and I almost expect to see him standing there waiting for me, but of course, that’s never the case. The stone is always the same, and no closure every comes for me.

Today, however, something has changed. I’m not here to mutter to an empty grave and a meaningless stone with your name carved on it, Simon. I’m here because my sisters son needed a tie, and he wanted one of his uncles. It was a sweet request, and I didn’t want to deprive him of a memento of you, so I finally had to bring myself to go into your closet. It looked the same as the day you’d disappeared. I almost didn’t look, I almost just grabbed the tie and closed the door, but one pair of pants were crumpled in the corner from when you’d taken them off the day before. It made me smile, standing there looking at a habit I once complained about. It was so you that it hurt. I stood there and stared at it for so long that eventually I picked them up, folding them as I used to.                  

That’s when I felt it in the pocket. It was so slight, but I’d always checked your pockets when I folded your pants. You’d had a habit of leaving behind coins, receipts, and just about anything else you could stuff in there. I guess in all their time investigating, especially when they had such obvious suspicions you were dead, the police never thought to pick up the crumpled pair of pants in the closet. Maybe they didn’t see them, maybe they’d already given up, but when I reached into that pocket I found what you left behind. A neatly folded piece of paper with a phone number.

My hands shook as I stood there holding that little paper, for all I knew that could’ve been the last real thing you wrote. There was an area code I didn’t recognize, and when I went to pick up the phone, I almost called the police to tell them of my discovery. Then I realized, maybe it wasn’t meant for them to find. Afterall, you’d left that note in your car that was so obviously insincere. I could see your face so clearly in my mind, I could hear your voice, and your laugh echoing across the kitchen. I hung up the phone and then started entering the number from the paper. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew I was hoping somehow it would be your voice that answered. It wasn’t.

The person that answered had a voice that sounded like their throat was full of gravel. I didn’t know what to say, Simon. I was so nervous and panicked that it was nothing, or everything. My voice cracked as I said hello, and when he asked who it was that was calling I told him the truth. I told him I was your wife, and I was wondering if he had any information on what happened to you. My voice was shaking through the phone, and I hated the way he chuckled, how it crackled through the line. You know me, I was never one to take that kind of crap. I asked him what the hell he could possibly be laughing about, pressing the phone so hard against my ear I could feel the blood pulsing against it as I got angrier.

Just as I almost snapped on him, this stranger laughing about the concern of my missing husband, he said the most unexpected thing. For the first time in two years, I wept. I felt these waves sweep through my body like nothing before and tears just started rolling down my cheeks. My breath was ragged as I clutched that damned phone, and he told me not to cry, that there was no sense in crying the way I was. But I couldn’t stop, not after he had said he was waiting for me to call. I don’t know why something so simple unleashed it all, but it did. I only composed myself when he said he couldn’t tell me more if I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my own crying.

Two years ago I don’t think I would’ve believed him, so I guess maybe it’s some sort of blessing that I didn’t find that note sooner. Though I supposed one year may have sufficed plenty. So now I’m standing here at this damn tombstone again, but this will be the last time I stand here. I won’t be coming back, and I guess I just needed to say goodbye to the only thing I had for so long. That, and I can’t stand seeing your name where it doesn’t belong. So today, alongside my purse, my luggage, and my passport, I’ve also got a sledgehammer. He told me everything that happened, that man on the phone.

He introduced himself after I’d gotten my breathing right, saying his name was Arthur, and he’d been holding on to that burner phone since the day you disappeared. He told me he was close to given up hope that I’d ever call it, but that you had told him I would be calling sooner or later. You told him about how I picked up your pants, and how I dug through the pockets, and how I was never one to just leave things alone. You were right, knowing me like the back of your own hand. Arthur told me that’d you’d been hiding from the Mafia. He said it was a part of your past I’d never known, because you didn’t want me to know. I would’ve been understanding if you’d just told me, but that doesn’t matter now.

You were in hiding all these years, and you hadn’t mean to fall for me, and certainly never meant to marry me but you told Arthur you just couldn’t help it. You were trying to protect me, so when they finally found you, you had to disappear. You didn’t just do it for yourself, you did it to try and prevent them from coming for me. So you staged your death, and you left this number behind so that one day I would know what happened if you didn’t come back. They might still be watching me, Arthur said. He also said they were still after you.

Now, I’m angry you didn’t tell me about your past, but I suppose that would make me a hypocrite because I didn’t tell you about mine either. After I destroy this tombstone, I’m off to your last known location and I’m going to find you, baby. I’m trained, armed, and you know I’ll be damned if I let you do this alone. Neither of us are the people we said we were, and I think that’s how we fell so deeply in love. Some part of us saw the other regardless. So I’m coming to fight. Those punks have no idea what’s coming for them.