LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      “It was only a month ago that we found out that Major Nolan was married. I’m sorry, ma’am. When we found out about you, we went back and took another look at the sister but were unable to locate her. She had cleared the bank account, moved, and is no longer on our radar. I’m sorry,

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