Page 82 of The Perfect Marriage

“Yes, she was married to him. Yes, he was murdered. Whether or not she quote fled the state as opposed to just leaving under standard circumstances is, again, speculation.” His frustration builds further.

“Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Did anyone ever end up being charged as it pertains to your brother being…” Sheriff Stevens runs a finger across his throat to signal Bob’s brother’s death.

“No. No one was charged in my brother’s…” Bob pantomimes the action back to Sheriff Stevens, spit coming through his clenched teeth as he answers.

“Man… Fuck. That’s gotta suck, huh? I mean your brother’s life just gets extinguished. Poof. And whoever did it to him is just walking around. I mean that’s really gotta chap your ass. Especially, someone as familiar with the justice system as you. But hey, then again on your side of the aisle, it’s your job to defend those very types. I mean, hell, for all you know, you’ve helped that same person out of a pickle right under your nose. I mean, it could be anybody, right? That’s statistically possible, isn’t it, counselor?” Sheriff Stevens ends his line of questioning with an up-pitch in his voice and his head cocked, waiting for an answer.

Bob is now a shade of red, typically reserved only for fire trucks or perhaps the inside of a volcano. He sits silently for a long time while his legs slowly start to bounce again. The room becomes thick and dense—like the night air right before it is about to snow. Finally, Bob lets out a long breath and a single tear begins to well up in his left eye, mere centimeters from the vein in his forehead that seems poised to blow.

“Sheriff… I am here for questioning under your supervision voluntarily. I am not under arrest and have not been charged with any crime. As such it is my constitutional right to both refrain from answering any questions as well as leave under my own power and not to be restrained or kept against my will. I am, of course, happy to comply and cooperate with law enforcement in any manner where I could be of assistance in the pursuit of lawful justice, and as such, am more than willing to answer any further questions, in writing, submitted to my office. As a civil servant, I thank you for your time, and I will be leaving now.” Bob then stands and leaves without looking at Sheriff Stevens.

“Excuse me, sir—but we aren’t done…” Sheriff Stevens blurts out, but the door is already closing, and the words fail to reach their target as if frozen in midair and then shattered to pieces on the ground. I quickly stand up and open the door to the hallway.

Bob walks past me. He sees me but continues without a word, knowing full well that I witnessed everything. He gives me a look of contempt so deep that I can actually feel pain from the cut he surely hoped it would make in me.

Sheriff Stevens comes out looking down at the floor. He stops for a moment and then turns to me, looking for some sort of affirmation for his line of questioning.

“What the fuck was that?” I say to him.

“He wasn’t helpful.”

“Yes, he was! By even being here, he was. Just cause he wasn’t some pushover or afraid of you doesn’t give you the right to do what you did.” I try to keep my voice quiet enough so Bob can’t hear, but loud enough so Sheriff Stevens can know my anger.

“I thought I could get something out of him. I was just trying to find an angle to provide some help,” Sheriff Stevens says with a hint of pleading in his voice.

“Well, you didn’t. Instead, you borderline tortured a man about his fucking dead brother. You found a wound, stuck a knife in, and amused yourself as you slowly started twisting. He isn’t on trial here for murder, he was trying to be agreeable as best he could. But do you think he will help now?”

“Sarah, I was just trying—”

“Save it. I hope you feel big. In fact, how about you take some of that bloated tough-guy cocksureness and go do your fucking job and find out what really happened.” I turn on my heels and walk down the hallway. Matthew is only a few steps behind me. Sheriff Stevens says something, but I’ve tuned him out so thoroughly I couldn’t even begin to guess what he said.

Out in the lobby Anne is sitting in a chair crying and Bob is pacing. They both look at me when the door opens, and I consider for a moment offering them a ride home, but I don’t trust either of them. Sheriff Stevens didn’t get to the bottom of anything with Bob, and thanks to his line of questioning, I have no idea whether or not he’s involved. And Anne’s still on my shit list.

“You have to sign out on the register if you are all officially leaving!” Marge yells through the silver tinted mouth slats lodged in her glass bulletproof separating wall.

“Fuck off, Marge,” I say over my shoulder.

I glance at Bob and Anne for a moment and then avert my eyes. I can’t look at either of them right now. Out in the cold night air, Matthew and I head toward my car in silence. A trend that continues the entire car ride home.

51

Sarah Morgan

After two double Tito’s, both of which I consumed in under thirty minutes while reviewing case documents, the sting in my cheek begins to lose its potency. That bitch of a mother-in-law really clocked me one and the gaudy jewels that adorn her knuckles didn’t help either.

She cut me more than surface level with that dig about my mother, especially because she wasn’t wrong. I didn’t know love from my mother, at least not since my father passed. He was the glue that kept us all together, the one who encouraged me in life and brought joy to my mother. He was the man of the house in the most traditional sense possible, straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. My father was the sole breadwinner and was the only thing keeping our little nucleus rotating smoothly. But that came to a screeching halt. We lost everything with one unfair act. A father, a husband, a provider, a protector, the only person who pushed me to be more and kept me engaged with life, and the only person keeping my mother from nose-diving off her plateau of happiness and into a sea of depression.

When he was gone, we had nothing: no money, no income, no spark of life. My mother couldn’t hold a job because she was so depressed that she slept all day and rarely ate or spoke. In my eyes, she merely saw the reflection of the woman she used to be. Where I once was a collective joy for her and my father, I was now only a symbol of pain and loss. I resented her for this. Not just that though. True, she abandoned me emotionally when I needed her the most, but she also showed weakness in ways that I no longer could feel sympathy for but rather anger and embarrassment. Whenever my mother did speak, it always devolved into a fight.

“Just get out of my house! I can’t stand to look at you.”

“Your house? Your house!? This isn’t your house, it’s Dad’s. You’ve never worked a day in your life. You were so pathetically reliant on one man that you now have nothing and know how to do nothing. You are weak and pathetic, and you can’t even keep it together for the two of us. You’re supposed to be the adult here, not me!”

“How fucking dare you! You have no fucking idea what it’s like…”

Scenes like this played out over and over but with less and less frequency as my mother became more and more nocturnal and made fewer and fewer appearances outside her cave of sorrow. I assumed something nefarious was afoot when the refrigerator started becoming less and less full, and past due notices began arriving in the mail.

Like most addicts, at first, she was very good at hiding her behavior. But eventually, the life insurance money ran out, and the welfare money must not have covered her mounting addiction needs. Then items went missing from the house. And random visitors accompanied her home in the evening, men whose faces I never saw but I knew them intimately from their tone of voice and primal noises of both frustration and ecstasy.

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