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How could I answer that in a way that made sense? “No,” I said, even though it wasn’t entirely true. What married person doesn’t have a reason to be disgruntled, at least on occasion? How can it be possible to entangle your entire life with another person and not in some small way find fault from time to time?
“So the afternoon you ran into James Dunaway at the diner…do you recall what it was that had frightened you?”
I thought back to that evening, back to the drive home. I considered what might have unsettled me. Everything. Nothing in particular. Although, it was pretty obvious t
hat the odds of it being an accident that James stumbled upon us in that diner were pretty slim. “I don’t know.”
“Did you consider James Dunaway to be a violent man?”
“I didn’t really know James. But I was sleeping with his wife, so you can surmise what you will from my behavior.”
“Did you consider that he might be armed?”
“No.”
“It never crossed your mind.”
“I figured if he wanted me dead, I wouldn’t have left the diner.”
“Were you afraid for your family?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. More importantly, I hardly know how it matters anyhow. Considering the circumstances.
The thought made me anxious, even now. I stood and sort of shuffled around, to the extent that I could. I balled and then flexed my cuffed hands. My ankles are shackled, so I can only sort of wobble, and not far from the table. I am desperate for air. I am desperate to breathe. This relentless barrage of questions is growing old. I long for the past, when no one seemed particularly concerned with my comings and goings. My private life was just that. Private.
It’s hard to appreciate simplicity until it is taken away. And life had been just that, simple. I was a doctor. I treated patients. I was a husband and a father. I went to work, and I came home. I took my daughter to swim therapy. I dug around a little in the garden whenever I found the time. Sometimes I played racquetball with my brother. It was a rather ordinary life.
But first with the police, and then the detectives, followed by my lawyer, and now by Dr. Jones, that has all changed. When I appeared in court, in front of the judge initially, back when I was denied bail, I had been delivered to the court in an unmarked car so as not to tip off the press. It was pointless, in the end. The media swarmed like flies around a pile of shit on a hot day.
In fact, they are still swarming. I have become a pariah— my story something to be broken down and consumed, sold in bite-sized bits.
It will not end, this I know—not until this case grows cold, goes stale, until there’s a bigger tragedy they can leech onto.
“After you arrived home, from the diner, what happened then?”
“Nina had ordered delivery service.”
“Takeout?”
“Yes. She had ordered from the menu at Sullivan’s.”
“Sullivan’s. That was important how?”
“It’s the place I took her every year on our anniversary.”
“And?”
“She said she just felt like eating it.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t mind.”
“You didn’t think it was a bit odd?”
“I was preoccupied. My mind had been on other things. I was aware it wasn’t our anniversary. But other than that, I didn’t give my wife’s dinner choice much thought.”
“Then what?”
