How to Find a Body

Step 1: make a point of going to places where a body might be. Take long walks down wooded paths and agree to clean out your grandfather’s abandoned shed. Go swimming at night in your neighbor’s lake.

Step 2: make sure to keep your breakfast down. Vomit does not help at a crime scene.

Step 3: when you see him, scream. If you don’t scream, they’ll ask why. And then cry. Sob like your life depends on it.

Step 4: Don’t move any of his belongings out of the house. Leave his toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet and his shoes by the door. Like you’re expecting him to come back still.

Step 5: Don’t ask investigators too many questions. Don’t ask if they know what he was hit with or how his body ended up here, floating face down in your neighbor’s lake.

Step 6: thank all your friends for the frozen lasagnas and pies that are now piled in the garbage bin, along with a certain bloodied lamp base and a pair of rubber boots.

Step 7: when you see his mistress at the funeral, pretend you don’t know who she is.

Step 8: collect the insurance money only after the body is buried. Keep a tissue in your hand when meeting with the bank. Wait a month or two before renovating his home office into a yoga studio.

Step 9: keep his picture on the mantel, for the neighbors and detectives that come by every few months, still searching for some kind of answer.