Excerpt of No One Knows by J.T. Ellison

Aubrey

Nashville

Today

One thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days after
Joshua Hamilton went missing, the State of Tennessee
declared him legally dead.

Aubrey, his wife (or former wife, or ex-wife, or widow—
she had no idea how to refer to herself anymore),
received the certified letter on a Friday. It came to the
Montessori school where she taught, the very one she and
Josh had attended as children. Came to her door in the
middle of reading time, borne on the hands of Linda
Pierce, the school’s long-standing principal, who looked
as if someone had died.

Which, in a way, they had.

He had.

Or so the State of Tennessee had officially declared.

Aubrey had been against the declaration-of-death petition
from the beginning. She didn’t want Josh’s estate
settled. Didn’t want a date engraved on that stupid
family stone obelisk that loomed over the graves of his
ancestors at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Didn’t want to say
good-bye forever.

But Josh’s mother had insisted. She wanted closure. She
wanted to move on with her life. She wanted Aubrey to
move on with hers, too. She’d petitioned the court for
the early ruling, and clearly the courts agreed.

Everyone was ready to move on. Everyone but Aubrey.

She’d felt poorly this morning when she woke, almost a
portent of the day to come, but today was the last day of
school before spring break, so she had to show, and be
cheery, and help the kids with their party, and give them
their extra-credit reading assignments.

From the second they arrived, her students buzzed around
her. It didn’t take long for Aubrey to catch the
children’s enthusiasm and drop her previous malaise. It
was a beautiful day: the sun glowed in the sky, dropping
beams through the windows, creating slats of light on the
multihued carpet. The kids spun through the light,
whirling dervishes against a yellow backdrop. She didn’t
even try to contain them; watching them, she felt exactly
the same way. Breaks signaled many things to her, freedom
most of all. Freedom to go her own way for a bit, to
explore, to read, to gather herself.

But when her classroom door opened unexpectedly, and
Principal Pierce came into the room, the nausea returned
with a vengeance, and her head started to pound. Aubrey
watched her coming closer and closer. Her old friend’s
face was strained, the furrows carved into her upper lip
collapsed in on each other, her yellowed forefinger
tapping against the pristine white-and-blue envelope. She
needed to file her nails.

What was it about moments, the ones that start with a
capital M, that made you notice each and every detail?
Aubrey reminded herself of her situation. The children
were watching. Trying to ignore the stares of the more
precocious ones scattered about the classroom, gifted
youngsters whose sensitivity to the emotions of others
was finely honed, Aubrey took the letter from Linda,
handed off the class into the woman’s very capable,
nicotine-stained hands, and went to the ladies’ room in
the staff lounge to read the contents.

The letter was from her mother-in-law. Aubrey knew
exactly what it contained.

She tried to pretend her hands weren’t shaking.

She flipped the lid down on the toilet, locked the door,
then sat and ripped open the envelope. Inside was a piece
of paper folded into thirds, topped with a handwritten
note on a cheery yellow, daisy-covered Post-it. Aubrey
felt that added just the right touch. Her mother-in-law
always had been wildly incapable of any form of tact.

There was no denying it now; her hands trembled violently
as she unfolded the page. She looked to the handwritten
note first. The words were carefully formed, a
schoolgirl’s roundness to the old-fashioned cursive.

Aubrey,

For your records.

Daisy Hamilton

Scribbled in print beneath the painstakingly properly
written note were the words:

Joshua’s Mother

Well, no kidding, Daisy. Like I could forget.

The sticky note was attached to a printout of an email.
It was from Daisy’s lawyer, the one who’d helped put this
vehicle in motion last year, when Daisy decided to
petition the courts to have Josh declared legally dead.

Aubrey fingered the scar on her lip as she read.

Dear Daisy,

Per our earlier conversation, attached please find a copy
of the Order entered from the civil court today by Judge
Robinson. As I explained to you on the phone, this Order
directs the Department of Vital Statistics to issue a
death certificate for your son, Joshua David Hamilton, as
of April 19 of this year.

Now that this Order has been officially entered, we
should take another look at the estate plan. Josh’s life
insurance policy will be fulfilled as soon as the
declaration is received, and I’d like you to be fully
prepared if you plan to contest the contents. I will be
forwarding you a final bill for my services on this
matter in the next couple of days.

Best personal regards,

Rick Saeger

And now it was official.

In the eyes of the law, Joshua David Hamilton was no
longer of this earth. No longer Aubrey’s husband. No
longer Daisy’s son.

No longer.

Aubrey was suddenly unable to breathe. Even though she’d
been expecting it, seeing the words in black-and-white,
adorned by Daisy’s snippy little missive, killed her.
Tears slid down her face, and she crumpled the letter
against her thigh.