Her Body of Muscle: Winter vs the Nanobots

Chapter 22

"Archivist. I'm a library archivist." Winter repeated to herself with a smile.

An hour before, on a whim, she had stopped, parked, and ventured into the grand old library building. Winter had turned and given a wave to Dave. He had tried, pathetically, to hide his vehicle behind an obvious pillar some hundred meters away. She smirked at her own brashness. That guy, she thought, he has no idea what to do. But then there it was again, that same quiet voice of reason softly trying to speak up again. These are the men who killed Phillip, she heard her mind whispering. Winter gave a shiver. But it faded as she pictured Dave's dumb gorgeous face, open mouth gaping in confusion.

Winter did not even know why the massive old building had drawn her attention. But the mystery deepened as she had found herself delving further into the bowels of the old San Franciscan classic. A "job opening" board had alerted her to the library's need for an archivist in a random oft-overlooked hallway. She had applied, interviewed, and been offered the position in a matter of an hour. "You're a little overqualified." An elderly, kind, interviewer had suggested. But Winter's insistence of her need for flexible hours and part-time options had made it an easy decision for all involved.
The job itself precisely provided the focused distraction, privacy and flexibility Winter coveted. Never mind that the biggest motivation from Winter's point of view was securing a paycheck, any paycheck, to disguise the slow and steady revenue supplementation afforded by the 100-dollar bills stashed in shoe boxes. In a matter of a week, both the library and Winter had confirmed the brilliance of their choice. Nearly every available hour found Winter tidying up forgotten files and committing articles and artifacts to the library's records.

The solitude also afforded time for quiet thought and introspection. Initially, not so welcomed, and she used blaring headphones to drown out the discord and pain storming away in her head. But as the months dragged on, she increasingly set the headphones aside and forced herself into quiet thought. Winter increasingly allowed her mind to play back the last several years. In an era of distraction, Winter had found a hermit hole to process life away from the madness. Though she had not looked for it, she found herself cycling through her "lost years" as she began to refer to them, trapped in the vortex of Philip.

The layers of pain and hurt slowly flaked away under the abuse of time. Winter was finding it possible for her to forgive and move past the old baggage. Each morning stripped away some of the misty shadows of hurt, illumining the bright daylight of hope and opportunity. The one pain she had the most difficulty moving past, was her dismissal of Jackson. More than once losing her train of thought, Winter found herself shaking her head sadly, realizing her mind had inadvertently focused on his soft kind brown eyes, without even knowing it. Introspection hadn't dulled her affection. It had only grown.
Meanwhile, Winter's relentless physical longing to push her body to its' absolute paramount of potential, contrasted and vivified her monastic solitude. As her mind cleared, she found an increased ability to focus on bodybuilding. There was a reciprocity between the solitude of introspection and the primal fury with which she powered through weightlifting. Her life had fallen into a happy, albeit lonely, rhythm.

The police had called her in for questioning a week after Philip's death. They had made it clear that she was in no way a suspect, but they needed to cover bases and an x-wife was on the list. Layering up, complete with a baggy jacket, she conducted the entire interview perspiring fiercely, eyes betraying furtive glances, praying she did not look suspicious. Probably the interview was simply a formality, but she was relieved to be released with only a business card and a promise that she would call if she thought of anything.

A week later, there was a big splash on the second page of the Chronical. It detailed the "murder-suicide" of the billionaire tech wiz-kid. "Brilliance at a cost..." the article proclaimed. Winter would not have noticed the news had it not been for the long hours she was putting in at the library. Archiving every publication was part of her responsibilities. Despite all efforts, she could not help but read the article. That was no murder-suicide. She thought, leaned back on her stool, took a deep breath, and tried to be thankful that she and Jackson had survived the trauma of that night.