When she came back and sat down across from him, he saw she was nervous. “What is it you’re expecting me to find?”
“I’m not expecting you to find anything,” she said. “But it looks like he belonged to some groups that I wasn’t aware of. And there are conversations with some people I wasn’t aware of.”
“Sent to his usual email?”
She shook her head. “No.” She pointed to a small black book that Simon hadn’t paid much attention to on the side of the laptop. “I found that in his night table when I was cleaning it out. It’s a bunch of log-ins,” she said. “I’m too scared to check them all out.”
“Why?” he asked, settling back and looking at her.
“I’m afraid he was having an affair.” At that, tears welled up and poured down her cheeks again.
“Well, I would be very surprised if he was. I know he loved you very much.”
“If that’s the case, why did he leave me?” she said flatly.
He nodded because that logic was irrefutable. He opened the book and noted some of the log-ins and then checked it against some of the websites. He nodded and started logging into the first one.
“Well, this one is a chat group,” he said, “for men,” as he read his way through. “It’s discussing marital problems, how to handle different issues.” He checked David’s username, checked on some posts. “His last post was at Christmastime, trying to figure out what to get you for Christmas.”
She gasped, and her tears ran freely this time. “Is that all?”
“For that one anyway,” he said. “I don’t know what else I’ll find. Give me a few minutes.”
She nodded and settled back, looking a little bit more relaxed. When the coffee was done, she got up and poured them both a cup. When she returned, he said, “The next one is on a men’s group, asking about fertility testing,” he said, looking at her. “I gather you were having trouble conceiving.”
She nodded slowly. “I told him that it didn’t matter to me.”
“But it mattered to him,” Simon said, with a nod. “It affected his masculinity.”
“And yet it didn’t have to. And, if that’s why he killed himself,” she said, “I’d want to kill him all over again for being so stupid.”
He gave her a small smile. “Well, let me keep looking. So far though, nothing indicates that he was having a relationship with anybody else or that he wanted to.”
“And that is truly good news,” she whispered.
When he logged into the next one, he frowned.
“What is that look for?”
Simon sighed heavily. “It’s a suicide group.”
She gasped in horror and started to cry, getting up and racing away. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about that, but it was certainly not in him to hold back the truth from her. Even though it was tough, the truth was necessary for people to face. In this case maybe it was a little bit too much. He checked to see if there were posts from his friend, and, sure enough, there was one saying that David was struggling, that things were looking pretty dark and gloomy, and that he wasn’t sure even why he was on the forum.
Others responded, saying, “Hey, it’s okay. You are in the same boat we are. Not exactly sure why we’re here but always coming back because, if nothing else, here we are understood.”
As Simon kept reading, he felt the darkness that had crept into the soul of his friend. Sadness that David couldn’t have children and his inability to face a life without them. Several times he posted thatMy wife said it didn’t matter and that she’s okay with it, but how do I explain that I’m not?Others responded that adoption was always an answer, and he said,No, in our case it’s probably not, he wrote,because I’ve got a prior conviction.
At that, Simon’s eyebrows raised because he hadn’t been aware of that. As soon as he found that, he looked over at Louisa, when she joined him again. “He talked about adoption not being an option.”
She sighed and said, “No, probably not.”
“He mentioned a conviction.”
She winced at that. “You know that stupid charge. He was caught drunk driving a few years back. It was after a bender, when he found out that he couldn’t have children,” she said. “But, of course, that went against us, when people are looking at ideal parents.”
Simon could imagine. And he said, “I’m sorry. That just compounded his problems, didn’t it?”
“Yes. You didn’t know?”