It Isn't Cheating if He's Dead by Julie Frayn

reached for the bag
but he pulled it away.
    “Sorry, Jem. It’s still evidence.”
    the ring
    Jem spent a sleepless night playing,
rewinding, and replaying what Finn had told her that evening.
    Gerald had lied to the treatment facility.
Lied to the doctor. About everything. Where he lived, what his real name was,
what prior treatment he’d had. Even about his first psychotic break. But could
he lie? Was it lying when he had such a tenuous grasp on reality?
    The one constant was the others. They still
spoke to him. Still guided his decisions. They stole him from her.
    They weren’t voices in his head. That’s
what his doctor had told her after the first assessment. To him it was real.
Voices that spoke to him from the television, the walls, his computer, the
pencil in his hand. But most often they spoke from her grandmother’s ring that
she used to wear on her right ring finger.
    A month before he disappeared, they were
curled up on the sofa together. It was a rare moment of doing nothing,
accomplishing nothing. Just being. While they watched a forgettable old movie,
he brought her hand up and held it next to his face. Displays of his love had
become rarer and rarer. He’d started his meds again a few days before, so she
attributed the sudden affection to antipsychotics getting his brain back to
normal, bringing her Gerald home.
    He kissed her ring and hugged it to his
ear. When she realized he wasn’t kissing and cuddling, but whispering and listening,
she yanked her hand away and twisted in his arms to look at him.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Can I have your hand back? I have to
hear.” His eyes were wild and sweat beaded on his brow and his upper lip.
    “You stopped your medication again, didn’t
you?”
    He stared at her. His mouth moved but no
words formed.
    She’d hid the ring at the bottom of her
underwear drawer. One less outlet from which the others could contact him. Weeks
after he disappeared she went to put the ring on again, but it had disappeared along
with him.
    The doctor Finn spoke to in Montreal said
Gerald wore an antique ring. He often held it to his ear and whispered into the
pearl. The medical examiner found it lodged in his throat. The police surmised
that when he was robbed he tried to hide it, to protect it. But she knew it
wasn’t the ring he was protecting. It was the others.
    She had always loved that ring, the one
reminder of a grandmother who’d died when Jem was too young to remember her
with clarity. But could she ever put it on her finger again? Would the others
try to speak to her? No, that was ridiculous. The voices may not have been inside
his head, but his head is where they were born. Not hers.
    Gerald’s illness had robbed her of so much.
Time, happiness, peace of mind. She’d often questioned her own sanity.
    She peeked at the clock. Four-forty-seven.
Her room was bathed in darkness, the sun still forty minutes from cresting the
horizon. She tossed the covers off and made her way downstairs.
    She stared at the insurance form still Bucky-balled
to the refrigerator, drank a coffee, and sucked on a cigarette. Her new morning
ritual. And not a healthy or productive one either.
    Time to shake things up.
    She pulled the insurance certificate from
the fridge and opened her laptop. It wasn’t hard to find the forms she needed
to make the claim. One call to Finn to get the death certificate and another to
the office to make an appointment with a notary, and it was done. She would
cash in. That’s what he wanted. She would give him that.
    mine are dead
    She pulled into her usual spot in front of
the park. The residents came at her from all directions. She stepped out of the
van and slid the side door open.
    “Morning everybody. What a reception.”
    “Where ya been, Ruby? It’s gotta be after
ten.”
    “Sorry Angus. Had something I had to take
care of. But I brought treats today to make up for it.”
    She handed sandwiches and drinks to
everyone. And a brownie.
    “What?”