Death Before Facebook

bathroom, and when she came back found him going through her kitchen cabinets. “Uh-oh, we finished the wine. Hey, Caitlin’s not here! I just realized I can go out. You want to go somewhere and have a drink?”
    She saw him hesitate. He wanted to go home. She wanted him with her a while longer. “My treat,” she said, and took his hand. “Oh, Pearce, you don’t know how much I need it. There’s a place on Magazine Street. Why don’t we walk?”
    He gave her a nice-daddy smile. She could use a nice daddy right now.
    “Come on,” she said, practically pulling him out the door.
    She stopped on the way to pick up her purse, but she hadn’t put her tights back on, just slipped on her shoes, and her dress was thin. When they were outside, she realized she’d made a big mistake. But if she went back in, she might lose him.
    She was pretty sure she had an old sweater in the trunk of her car. Too bad about her legs, but it would be something.
    “Aren’t you going to be cold?” he said, and it surprised her. She wanted him with her so much right now, she somehow had the idea he’d be opposed to anything she wanted. She hadn’t imagined he’d be this thoughtful.
    “I’ve got a sweater in the trunk.” She skipped forward to open it, and what she saw made her draw in her breath. “Oh, my God!”
    “What is it?”
    “Geoff’s backpack. I remember now—we went to a restaurant the night before he died, and he didn’t want to leave it in the car. He must have forgotten it.” She fingered it, thinking of Geoff; gentle, strange Geoff, to whom she had never said, and never thought of saying, “Thou art god.”
    “What’s in it?”
    “I don’t know. It’s Geoff’s. Was Geoff’s,” she forced herself to say.
    Pearce grabbed for it. “Let’s open it.”
    “No. It’s not mine.”
    “Lenore, are you crazy? Maybe there’s a clue to the murder in there.”
    Something in her resisted. “Not yet. Somehow I can’t do it yet.”
    “Look. Let’s don’t go out. Let’s go over to the Winn-Dixie on Tchoupitoulas and get some beer or something. And we won’t open the backpack till we get back—we can be thinking about what’s in it.”
    Why? Why don’t we just forget it for now?
    But she didn’t say it because she didn’t want to lose his attention again. Maybe he’d forget about what she’d said when they made love, maybe convince himself it hadn’t happened. “Okay,” she said. “Beer for you and wine for me.”
    “No, wine’s okay. Your car?”
    “Sure.” She felt a little woozy from the first bottle of wine, but it seemed stupid to say so, considering that morning’s escapade.
    When they returned, wine and backpack in hand, Pearce made a big show of opening the wine, pouring it, “letting the suspense build.”
    What could be in there anyhow? Probably a couple of videos he forgot to return.
    Finally, the moment arrived. “Here.” He handed over the backpack. “You do the honors.”
    She opened it and saw that she’d guessed right.
The Little Mermaid
was lying right on top. Tears sprang to her eyes and spilled out. Suddenly all the grief she felt for Geoff came welling up, tearing at her heart, making her chest hurt, her throat close.
    The thought of him in his little boy’s room in his parents’ house, lying alone on his bed and watching
The Little Mermaid
, was somehow the saddest, sweetest thing she knew about him.
    Pearce put an arm around her, but she shrugged it off. This was a grief that had to be felt alone.
    “What is it?” he said.
    “The movie.
The Little Mermaid
.”
    He picked it up and stared at it. “The movie?”
    Done with solitude, she threw her arms around his neck. “Ohhh, Pearce.” He drew back, possibly in bewilderment, and then gingerly held her till she wound down.
    When she was able, she said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    “It’s okay.” He stroked her head as if she were a little girl. “It’s okay, but what happened?”
    “I don’t know exactly. I just felt sad all of a sudden.”
    “Shall we see what else is in there?”
    She nodded and handed him the backpack.
    He pulled out a book of some sort. It was covered with what looked like Chinese silk, woven into a gorgeous blue design and bound in burgundy leather. A ribbon bookmark from its bottom.
    “It looks like a journal,” said Pearce. He opened it, and Lenore saw that Geoff’s spidery handwriting covered the two pages thus revealed. Covered them completely, not even a