The Unhinged Widower Seeking Death Online

The alert arrived while I was closing the bakery, and I dropped a tray of cooling rolls hard enough to scatter them across the floor. HARBORLIGHT SAFETY NOTICE: Your emergency contact, Graham Mercer, may be at risk. Recent public posts include direct statements of intent. Please confirm his safety. For several seconds, I stared at the screen without breathing. Then I crouched among the rolls and read it again. I had deleted the Harborlight app the week I left Bellwether Cove. I had not known my profile still existed on the old family account, much less that Graham had kept my name as his emergency contact. The bakery owner called from the back room. I told her I'd dropped a tray. I did not tell her my husband, who thought I was dead, might be trying to die. I had left town one year earlier with a duffel bag, cash, and a borrowed name. I had taken the two-lane road inland and never looked back. My kayak had been found empty after a storm. People had assumed the water took me. Graham had gone on television twice, asking anyone who knew something to call the harbor police. I had watched one of those interviews from a motel room and turned off the screen before he finished. I hadn't been brave enough to tell the truth then. I wasn't brave enough now. Harborlight showed three posts, flagged by its automated safety system. Graham's profile was public. The first post had been made two nights earlier. I'm tired of waking up when the person I love is gone. Tell me how to stop. The next was shorter. I want to die. I don't know how to make myself say that out loud. I read the words until they blurred. Then I shoved the phone in my apron and called the number beneath the alert. A calm woman asked if I knew Graham's current location. I said I did. She asked if I could go to him. I said I would. "You're listed as his wife," she said. "I'm not." There was a pause. "Are you separated?" "I'm dead." I regretted it as soon as I said it. The woman asked me to explain, but I hung up before my voice could betray anything else. I drove through the night in a borrowed car. I stopped once for gas and once to throw up beside a rest-stop trash can. By dawn, the shoreline road was shining with rain. Bellwether Cove looked as familiar as a photograph someone had left too long in the sun. Graham's house stood above the north inlet, its blue shutters still peeling. His truck sat in the drive. The kitchen light was on. I parked around the corner and watched the house until he stepped outside. He wore a clean gray coat. His dark hair was neatly combed. He carried a travel mug and locked the door behind him. Then he walked to his truck, checked his phone, and left for work. No staggering. No wild eyes. No smashed windows. He looked like a man with a normal morning. I waited ten minutes before going in. The key I'd hidden under the loose stone was still there. Inside, the house smelled of coffee and lemon cleaner. A pair of running shoes stood beside the door, aligned heel to heel. The curtains were open. The mail had been sorted into neat stacks. On the counter sat a bowl of oatmeal, half eaten, with the spoon placed beside it. I had expected madness. I found routine. Then I noticed the white board on the refrigerator. Graham had written his week in tidy black letters: work, groceries, dentist, counselor. The counselor's appointment was crossed out. Under the schedule, a note in my handwriting still clung to the frame. Eat something, even if you're angry with me. My throat tightened. I had written it two years ago, after one of our fights. I had never imagined he would keep it. My phone vibrated. The Harborlight woman had called back. I declined the call. I walked to the office and opened Graham's laptop. His browser was logged in to the forum where he'd posted. I read every entry, each one more carefully written than the last. He had been posting for months. He described waking, making coffee, going to work, answering emails, buying groceries. He described all the ordinary things he could still do. Then, every few days, he wrote that he wanted to die. I heard the garage door rumble. I had just enough time to close the laptop before Graham came through the kitchen door.