Death and Other Interruptions

Chapter Eight

I took stock of my life. In order, because I like sequential lists: My fiancé died. He is the top suspect in his own death. My friends can't talk to me normally anymore. I'm unemployed. The FBI want to interrogate me. And my life is available for public consumption. At least your mother is talking to you, I reminded myself. Good, I was able to find a silver lining. Along the huge cloud of shit that is my life.

The truth was, I felt nothing but relief at having been fired. That's what it was, even if they weren't calling it that. It was just another responsibility off my back. I hadn't really liked my job all that much, but it paid well and it was something to do between waking up and going to sleep. Al had loved his job and adored his coworkers, and I had always had some distant idea of getting a job that I would feel similarly about one day. Maybe being fired would be my catalyst. Or at least it would be in a year. Getting paid for being fired was a pretty wonderful income.

Considering that my office's sudden need to downsize probably had something to do with the fact that newspapers had finally gotten ahold of my name and were publishing it next to Al's stories, I couldn't see all that many potential employers overlooking my possible link to terrorism. Between me and the next girl, I couldn't really blame them for wanting to choose the one who hadn't almost married a suspected mass murderer, whose names wouldn't show up in Google alongside the words "domestic terrorist." Even my Ivy League education couldn't outweigh that little blip on the resume. There's $160,000 my mother will never see again. Speaking of guilt.

The life insurance problem was less of a blessing in disguise. In fact, I could find nothing positive about it at all. Not too surprising, I guess, considering that, like my mom had all but said, my life sucked right now. But I like a good puzzle, and finding the silver lining in everything happening to me these days was as good a challenge as any.

In the meantime, I could also take care of this FBI business. I don't know what I could tell them that I hadn't already told the cops, but if they operated anything like the Feds do on television, there's probably too much bureaucracy for the two departments to communicate with each other. Then again, being interviewed by the cops was nothing like on TV. Maybe after all this is over I can write a book on the difference between being a fiancée to a suspected murderer on television and in real life. The press would eat that up. And it sounded immensely better than working in an office again. That place sucks your soul up and spits it back out every single day. I think it's the fluorescent lighting.

"Give me that number, please," I said to Mom. I was going to cross something off that list today. I set up an appointment to meet that very day. And this time, I was going alone. I didn't need Aunty Amy telling me what to say and do. Lawyers are for guilty people. I could handle this on my own.

Famous last words. I got out of my meeting with the FBI limp and exhausted, with a migraine powerful enough to kill an elephant. Those few hours might have been the most traumatizing thing to ever happen to me, and considering my fiancé died a few months before our wedding, considering that my father died when I was still a child, considering I'd once watched Richard Simmons sweatin' to the oldies, that was saying a lot.

Where the police had been gentle if somewhat condescending, the FBI agent treated me as if I were the one responsible for killing everyone in the school building that day. He questioned me about every detail of our lives together, about details that seemed trivial but I was afraid to get wrong. He had the belligerent look of someone who's gotten ahead in life through the sheer motivating need to prove his childhood bullies wrong. It had the misleading effect of making me pity him at first—until he turned his belligerence on me.

"What coffee did he drink?" The gaunt detective badgered me, pausing between glaring at me to reach up and stroke his overly groomed mustache then reach down to tuck his shirt further in. "Did he ever go to sleep after you did?"

I shot the answers out as rapidly as he tossed out the questions, and he barely stopped to listen as he moved on to his next questions.

"Did you have access to his emails? His Facebook?"

"Yes! Yes!" I answered breathlessly, wildly, on the verge of tears.

"What did you do in your free time?" He pitched to me, and I ransacked my memory for words, blurting out answers that didn't pass through my brain before coming out my mouth.

"We read," I said, "We watched TV, we saw movies, one time we went horseback riding," I pulled out, thinking about what I was saying only after it was already said, reviewing what I said to make sure I was telling the truth, certain this man could tell if I wasn't, even if I wasn't sure anymore.

"Why was he fighting with his boss? What did he tell you about his work? Why did he become a teacher?"

Why was everyone stuck on the fighting? Did they think he would blow up a building because his boss was being mean to him? Did they think he would blow up a building, period?

He questioned me until English seemed foreign to me, until I doubted my own words, until I would have questioned myself on my own name and birthdate. He pounded the accusations out until the tears spilled over into a steady stream. And still he kept on, ignoring my tears like he made women cry all the time, which he probably did.

He said terrible things about Al, told me the goriest details about the explosion and the dead children and the injured children's wounds, details that even the media wouldn't report for their monstrosity. I felt as if I was cornered, pressed up against the wall with my arms pinned above me, even as we sat in a deceptively comfortable office with coffee cups between us in a charade of normalcy. By the time I was done, I couldn't tell up from down. I was afraid to drive home by myself but I couldn't stay a minute longer in that parking lot. I needed to get away from that building and the man inside. I don't remember the drive home, but I assume I made it safely because I got home in one piece, and I realized with passing surprise that my body had automatically chosen Mom's house to drive to.

Dragging my weary body behind me, I pushed my way through the door and dropped onto the couch. Tonight would have to be another couch night.