WHEN WERE MARRIED - BOOK ONE - THE LONG FALL

FOUR LITTLE WORDS Part 14

By 8 p.m. neither Bill Jr. nor Kelly had shown. I called the homes where they were staying and was told their mother had picked them up. She'd obviously taken them to her parents to spend the weekend. Great. I'd have the place to myself.

I sat in front of the dark TV from Hell and tried to think of what I wanted to do. I felt like a turtle that little boys had picked up and placed on its back. I could spin around, but I couldn't move, couldn't advance and couldn't retreat.

When I did start moving, I amazed myself. I found myself going up to our bedroom, pulling two suitcases out of a closet and then systematically putting in enough pants, shirts, shoes, coats, and miscellaneous clothing items to go a couple of weeks without having to wear the same items twice.

I filled the back of the Escalade and then went back in and got miscellaneous court files and computer discs. I did a second mass print of all Debbie's emails to make sure I didn't miss any and to have a copy in case anything happened to the first set, then wiped them off with a scrubber program that left no copies that anybody would ever be able to recreate.

I thought about scrubbing Bill Jr.'s and Kelly's, but she would have expected me to be monitoring their computer use. I didn't think she'd ever expect me to be monitoring her, and if it hadn't been for the events of the last few days, I never would have looked at hers.

I would have been much happier if I'd never looked at them, of course, but I don't think anything would really have changed in the long run, except she probably would have completely blindsided me when she left and it would have hurt me even more.

The very last thing I did before leaving and locking up was to go into the bathroom. With the aid of Vaseline and a lot of torque that took the skin off underneath the ring, I managed to get my wedding band off. I had gained so much weight in the last nearly 20 years that the knuckle had swollen and the flesh of my finger almost encased the metal. But with only a little bloodshed, I managed to twist it off.

I grabbed a piece of blank copy paper out of the copier attached to the main desktop and scrawled a few words on it. Then I put my ring, and some of my blood, on it and closed the lights of our bedroom.

I locked the house behind me. I'd turned off all the lights and only a dark hulk of a building remained. I had lived there for almost 10 years with my wife and children and I really didn't think I'd be coming back. As I drove the dark night streets to downtown I tried to figure out what I was feeling. But I was just numb.

I made my way downtown, past the courthouse and legal complex on the St. Johns River, past the Sheriff's Office called the CopShop by everybody except the Sheriff and drove two blocks further down, then turned to the river side of the road. The very expensive Riverfront Condos were located here and our office kept one rented at all times in case an SA, witness, or anybody else needed to stay over. As one of the three head SAs, I kept a key to the condo on my key ring and let myself in.

I looked at the doorknob which I had opened with my left hand. Shit, there was blood all over it. I must have torn my ring finger up a lot more than I thought when I was getting it off. I went into the bathroom and washed the finger off, found a bottle of rubbing alcohol under the sink, and cursed for a few minutes after I liberally doused my abraded flesh.

Then I walked back out to the car, unloaded and lastly threw my body onto the bed. I had enough energy to get most of my clothes off and fell asleep watching one of the cable news shows on a little/big screen television in the corner dressed only in cotton underwear and a t-shirt. I listened to them describe the machinations of Cardinals in Rome as they maneuvered to take the post of the revered Jon Paul II who had died earlier in the month.