An update on the road repairs from the hellacious rain of three weeks ago. Two United States soldiers wounded in Syria. Two senators and one congressman suddenly on the hot seat for fooling around with young pages and hotly denying the allegations while their colleagues were urging them to step down. In the next ninety days, a chain of Midwestern supermarkets would be shutting down after ninety-nine years of serving their communities.
Bella turned off the television and curled her legs up and under her as she stared off into space, her thoughts scattered. She realized she was crying when her vision started to blur. How had it come to this? How? Last week, she had gone way out of her way to contact one of the military wives of one of Andy’s best friends. In the course of the conversation, she’d asked how she dealt with not hearing from her husband on a regular basis.
Evelyn Morris looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head and asked what she was talking about because James e-mailed at least three times a week. She even said they had FaceTimed at least once every two weeks. Bella explained, and the woman had looked at her with such pity that Bella thought she was going to get sick. Then she blurted out that she’d just filed for divorce the previous week. Evelyn gave her another pitiful look and simply walked away, but she did call over her shoulder, “You’re not someone I want to admit I know.”
Bella hadn’t cried then. She was too numb to cry. But now the tears came.
Chapter 2
Bella stood rooted to the concrete walkway as she stared at the building in front of her. It was a beautiful day in the District, crisp and unseasonably cool for this time of year. Birds perched overhead on an electrical wire chirped to one another, probably commenting on the beautiful weather. She was aware of people jostling her, muttering obscenities and other unflattering terms as they surged around her. They wanted her to move, that much was clear. She wanted to move, too, but she felt glued to the walkway. She knew she should apologize to the steady stream of people behind her, but she couldn’t get her tongue to work any better than she could get her feet to move. She was on her lunch hour, as were the people around her, so it stood to reason they were all in a hurry, and still she couldn’t make her feet move. What is wrong with me?
The reality was, Bella knew what was wrong with her, so there was no use in pretending. She was standing in front of the building that housed Mitchell Jones’s office to finalize the divorce she had started almost a month ago. Mitchell had called her yesterday and told her to stop stalling or he was going to drop her as a client, and she would have to find another attorney to work with her in obtaining a divorce.
Mitchell had been more than nice to her. He said it was okay to change her mind about wanting a divorce. People did it all the time, he’d said. He’d gone on to say he had too many cases that needed his attention and he couldn’t keep babysitting her, and he said that if she canceled one more appointment, he would be forced to cease to represent her.
With those threats hanging over her, not to mention the money she’d already paid out to him, she was here, now, at this red brick building with ivy crawling up the walls and fresh paint on the window frames. She could even smell the paint and see dabs of it on the shiny ivy leaves. The door she had to walk through was a beautiful, dark, rich mahogany surrounded by a lot of shiny brass on the ornate door handle, the brass plate, and, of course, the lanterns on each side of the magnificent door. She squinted harder and realized it wasn’t brass at all but copper, polished to a high sheen, so glossy she could see her eyelashes.
“Move it, lady, or I’ll lift you up and move you myself. I have business inside, and time is money. What’s it gonna be?” a deep rough voice behind her demanded.
“Yeah, move already, will you?” a young woman who was barefoot and wearing ragged cutoff jeans called out. “I’m already ten minutes late. C’mon already!”
Bella finally moved, or maybe she was pushed, she didn’t really know, and at that moment didn’t care as she went with the flow. She was finally inside, with people walking all around her. All she needed to do was turn right and walk down the long hallway to suite 111. Suite 111 belonged to Mitchell Jones, and she was here to sign her divorce papers. Period. End of story. She wondered how many pages it took to say she was filing for a divorce from Major Andrew Nolan because he refused to e-mail or Skype her. And then she wondered if she would cry when she signed her name to the legal document. Even if she did cry, the world wouldn’t end if she cried one more time, she told herself. Once she signed her name, she could move on and forget Major Andy Nolan and his Ram 2500 truck. She would be Bella Ames again, the name she had been born with.
Finally standing at Mitchell Jones’s door, all Bella had to do was turn the knob and walk into the small waiting room. It was tastefully decorated with comfortable furniture, and healthy, glossy ficus trees stood in the corners to fill up the dim corners where there were no lamps. Luscious green plants on the little tables that were scattered among the chairs, along with a varied assortment of magazines for men and women, and, of course, the daily paper pretty much took care of the furnishings. Despite all the stuff, the room did not appear to be crowded. Someone, probably Cheryl, the receptionist, had a green thumb, she thought. All in all, a pleasant enough place to relieve any anxiety one might feel while waiting for the help the lawyer would hopefully provide. Today, though, there was no delay for Bella. No more stalling. The waiting room was empty, and Cheryl told her she should go right on back to Mr. Jones’s office since he was waiting for her. Seeing the bright unshed tears in Bella’s eyes, Cheryl offered up a weak smile. Divorces, as she knew from experience, were painful.
Fifteen minutes later, Bella was walking to her car, the checked tears finally rolling down her cheeks. She looked at her watch. She had enough time to grab a sandwich and a drink of some kind before reporting back to work. Her boss was a great boss and wouldn’t say boo if she was an hour late, but she tried never to abuse his generosity. With that thought in mind, Bella steered her car into the parking lot of the Burger Palace, also known as Will’s Shack, which made burgers to order for its customers. Will, the owner, was working the drive-through today. Short of help again, she surmised. She tucked away the thought in case she had to get a part-time job to pay off Mitchell Jones. Unlike Andy, who didn’t care how many bills he racked up, she hated owing money. When Will spotted her, he grinned and waved.
“The same, or are you feeling dangerous today?” he joked. The same meant a burger with crisp bacon, lots and lots of crisp bacon she paid extra for, a slice of tomato, and a slice of purple onion with a sour pickle on top and Virginia Gray’s potatoes on the side. Virginia was Will’s father’s sister. Dangerous meant a cup of coffee, heavy on the sugar and cream, along with a raisin-filled cookie for dessert.
“The same, Will.”
“You okay, Bella? You look sad.” The two were on a first-name basis because Bella had been Will’s very first customer when he had opened his little food haven a couple of years ago.
“Headache,” she muttered. The moment the words were out of her mouth, Bella realized it was true, she did have a headache. She realized something else, too—she wasn’t hungry. Why she had pulled into Will’s Shack was something she’d have to figure out later. She paid for her food, placed the bag on the passenger seat, and drove home to her new mini apartment. The minute she parked the car in her allotted space, she called her boss. She fibbed and said she had a migraine and was going home. Nice man that he was, her boss told her to take two Advil and a nap, and, if she didn’t feel any better tomorrow, to stay home, and not to worry, he’d pay her for her time off.
Inside the small apartment, Bella kicked off her shoes and tossed her purse and messenger bag on the recliner. She padded out to the minuscule kitchenette and opened the food bag. The smell of the onion and the hamburger made her gag. She quickly tossed it all into the sink and let the garbage disposal do its magic.
Coffee. That’s all she needed. Maybe a cookie to dunk in the coffee. Then ag
ain, maybe not. She turned on the little twelve-inch TV that sat on the counter next to the toaster. She turned it to the channel she used to watch years ago, when she was hooked on soap operas. She watched it for ten minutes and felt as if, even though she hadn’t watched the soap for over two years, she was caught up. And it had taken only ten minutes.
The sound of a knock on the door almost caused Bella to jump out of her skin. She did not know anyone who lived in the neighborhood. Why would someone be knocking on her door in the middle of the afternoon? Some scammer maybe. Someone who robbed apartments in broad daylight. A bill collector. Someone who wanted payment for Andy’s Ram 2500? She’d called the finance company and told them where the car was and that the key was under the back wheel cap. She’d told the woman she spoke to that her name was Delilah Brucemeister just so they wouldn’t know where she was currently located. Answer the door? Don’t answer the door?
Why, she asked herself, am I hiding or pretending to hide? I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was file for divorce, something thousands of people do every day. So who was knocking on her door? She hadn’t even put her name on the mail slot yet, so who would even know that she lived here?
The knock sounded again. Louder this time. More serious-sounding. Well, of course they would continue to knock because they could hear her TV. She knew in her gut that whoever it was knocking on her door was going to keep knocking until she opened it, which just went to prove it had to be a bill collector. The previous tenant must have owed someone money for something.
Bella started toward the tiny foyer, not believing that hypothesis for a minute. Well, the only way to discover if she was right or wrong was to open the damn door.
Which she did.
“Oh my God! No! No! Go away! Don’t ever come back here! Nonononono!” Bella shrieked at the top of her lungs as she reached for the doorframe to hold her upright. Her hands slipped. She felt herself falling, then strong arms, two sets of strong arms, were carrying her into her tiny as-yet-unpacked new apartment and setting her down in a chair.
Bella stared at the two military officers kneeling at her feet. Both had their hands on her arms to steady her. How young they were, she thought. Captains in rank, both of them. Spit and polish all the way. She could smell ivory soap and something vaguely menthol. She wished someone would say something. Maybe they were waiting for her to say something. Like what, she wondered crazily. Maybe something like, hey, I know why you’re here, my husband was killed in the line of duty. And then I say, well, guess what. I just signed divorce papers today, so why should I care what you have to say.
She was dreaming and hoped to wake up any minute. This is not happening. It’s just too surreal, Bella told herself, like something out of a really bad grade B movie.
Things like this happened to other people or in movies. Not to people like her. She wondered if they had arrived in a brown car. In the movies, the chaplains always arrived in a brown car. Two chaplains. Always two. She wondered why that was.
The taller of the two officers, the one on the left, said, “Ma’am, I’m Captain Jeffrey Josell, and this is Captain Scott Kimball. Is there anyone you want us to call? We can take you to a family member or a friend if you like. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“I’ve been alone since the day I got married,” Bella screeched at the top of her lungs. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Good Lord, did she just say that? Maybe she should tell them about the divorce papers she had just signed. Would they care? Who would they tell? No, no, she had it all wrong, this wasn’t a bad dream, this was a frigging nightmare. “You can leave now, Officers. I’ll be fine.” Bella knew she had said the words out loud, but she didn’t recognize her own voice.
“Ma’am, we have orders. We have to obey them. We have people who will come and stay with you. You can’t be alone right now. Do you understand?”
“I do understand. I want you to leave. Please, it’s important for me to be alone right now. I’m not going to do anything silly or stupid, but I am going to show you something to prove my point.” Bella wobbled her way over to the recliner, opened her purse, and pulled out the blue folder Mitchell Jones had given her. She wondered why divorce sleeves containing the actual divorce papers were always blue. The final divorce paper was always blue, too.
“See this?” Bella said, waving the blue folder in the air. “I filed for divorce today. That’s why I’m home in the middle of the day. I just came from the lawyer’s office. So you can see, I’m sure, why I need to be alone right now, can’t you?” she announced in a voice that sounded like a dozen firecrackers going off all at once.
The two young officers looked at each other. Captain Josell shook his head; Captain Kimball nodded. Captain Josell pulled out his cell phone, stepped away from Bella, and placed a call to a female officer back at headquarters to come join them. “This is a tough one,” he whispered into the phone.
Captain Kimball transferred the manila envelope he’d been entrusted with, the one he was supposed to hand to the grieving widow, from one hand to the other. No one said what he was supposed to do if she refused to accept it. Somehow, he just knew that if he did hand it to her, and she did take it, it would slip right through her fingers, and he didn’t want that to happen. Thus, he wasn’t sure what he should do with it. Hand it to her? Would she even accept it? Place it on one of the tables? He’d never been in this exact position before. He couldn’t even remember if there was a rule in the book for a situation like this. For sure, nothing like it had ever come up in his training classes. He looked over at his partner and raised his eyebrows. What now? Captain Josell just stared at him blankly. It was obvious that he didn’t know what to do, either.
Bella blinked away her tears and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt. She looked around, and said, “You look uncomfortable. If you aren’t going to leave, you might as well sit down. Are you supposed to talk to me? Are you going to tell me how my husband died? Or is a shrink on the way to do that for you?
“I don’t know what to do here. I’ve heard stories, seen movies, but I never thought I would turn out to be a leading character in one of those stories,” Bella said, her voice cracking with each word that came out of her mouth. “I guess I am now one of your statistics. Is there some special protocol we need to follow?” She knew that she was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Actually, Mrs. Nolan, there is a protocol of sorts. We usually follow the bereaved’s lead and do what they want, and go from there. Personally, ma’am, I think you should talk to the psychiatrist when she gets here. I think you’ll feel more at ease with a female,” Captain Kimball said.
Bella didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t know what to think. What did gender have to do with anything? Dead was dead. A man talking about it or a woman talking about it couldn’t bring Andy back to life. Maybe what she should do was call Mitchell Jones and ask him what to do. Lawyers usually had the answer to everything, or at least they would have you believe they did, and that’s how they justified billing you out the kazoo. Maybe Mitchell could undo the paperwork and recall the whole sorry mess, and she could go on with her life and pretend she didn’t file for divorce the very same day she was notified of her husband’s death.
She nixed that idea immediately because she realized that, papers or no papers, it was impossible to divorce someone who was already dead when the divorce papers were filed. Bella Ames Nolan was, for all eternity, the widow of Major Andrew Nolan, not the ex-wife of a man who had died serving his country.
How could this be happening? How? You file for divorce the same day you find out your husband is dead. All within the space of an hour. And all it took was a single hour. An hour, her mind screamed silently. Good God, how am I supposed to live with this? This is wrong. I need to sit down somewhere in a dark corner and howl my head off, Bella thought, as she knuckled her eyes to keep more tears from spilling down her cheeks. She needed to say something. Ask questions? Why? You couldn’t fix dead just
like you couldn’t fix stupid.
Bella knew she had to do something, like right now, or these men were going to be in her apartment like mother hens forever.
“Did you . . . has anyone notified Andy’s sister? I know almost nothing about her, just that Andy told me he had a sister.” Something niggled at her concerning the sister, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “I think they were estranged but that they had patched up their . . . whatever it was that caused a problem, and I didn’t want to . . . you know, invade his . . . personal life, I guess, is how I should put it. We were so into ourselves, there was no room for anyone or anything else those last few days. We only had two days to . . . to spend loving each other.
“I’m not even sure I know her name. Susan, Samantha, maybe Sara. I’m just not sure. Andy never talked about her to me. I think the estrangement had something to do with his sister’s spending his inheritance plus her own when their parents died, but that might be all wrong. I’m sorry, I just don’t know very much about her.”
Whatever it was, it was right there on the tip of her tongue, but it wasn’t coming. Damn it, what is it? “Then, like I said, they patched up their differences. She was all he had in the way of family as far as I know. I guess that doesn’t help much, does it?”
“You had part of it right. Major Nolan’s sister’s name is Sara Nolan Conover. She indicated to us that she and Mr. Conover are divorced. She now goes by the name Sara Nolan. From what we can tell, she moves around quite a bit. She is listed as the beneficiary on Major Nolan’s insurance and also as next of kin. Her name is . . . was on Major Nolan’s bank account. For some reason, he never removed her name from the account. His pay went into that account. The account was drained and closed by Ms. Nolan once everything was turned over to her as next of kin. Major Nolan was a little lax on updating his personal information. There was nothing in his personnel file about his . . . your marriage,” Captain Josell said.
Truth and Justice Page 2
