Gifford coughed as he entered the break room, causing Nadirah to jump.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. You okay?”
Nadirah pulled her can of soda from the vending machine and said, “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Doesn’t sound very convincing.”
“I’m just stressed out over Joni.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. She having a rough time of it again?”
“Well, she really wants to move.”
“Maybe a move would be good for both of you.”
“She doesn’t just want to move from our house; she wants to move to a warmer climate.”
“She’s smart.”
“But a big move like that isn’t that easy. I miss the warmer weather too, but as I tried to explain to her, we can’t just up and move and expect me to be able to get the same job somewhere else.”
“Maybe not,” agreed Gifford, “but there are other jobs you could get, and it might be worth it to give her better peace of mind as well as for you both to escape the miserable winters we have here. You don’t know how glad I am that summer is almost here!”
“Yeah, me too. But I think our best bet is going to be to relocate somewhere around here first, then head down south or something like that once I retire.”
Gifford bit into his apple and said, “You still have a way to go before retiring.”
Nadirah managed a faint smile and said, “Thanks for reminding me that I’m not so old yet after all.”
They ate and drank in silence for a minute, still the only ones in the room, when Gifford asked. “Anything else going on? Has she remembered anything?”
“No, and I still hope to hell she never does either, for her own good.”
Gifford studied his friend and coworker and once again, his mind rejected the possibility of the chief forensics investigator being the one who might have attacked Joni. But it wasn’t so easy. Joni was the only one who had been attacked by this so-called maniac come to take care of the “devil’s spawn,” as far as anyone knew, and no suspects had been caught or questioned as of yet. What were the odds of this attacker picking on Joni only?
Nah, he told himself. Nadirah may be short-tempered at times, but she would never harm Joni. She loved what she described as the crazy, fun, smart, unique and unpredictable little lady come to shake up her world. And make her feel young all over again while she was at it with her playful and uppity energy.
“So, where do you think your hunting grounds for a new place will be?”
“Don’t know yet,” said Nadirah. “I’ve just been so preoccupied with wanting the bastard caught and killed and with trying to keep Joni as calm as possible that I haven’t really thought of moving or where to. But if Joni wants out that bad, then out we go. I never want her to feel like she has to stay where she’s unhappy or afraid, and the place doesn’t exactly hold happy memories for me lately, so I’ve got to start looking.”
“I’m not sure I should say this,” Gifford said hesitantly.
“Say it anyway.”
“Well, I know you feel responsible for Joni as her husband and all that, but Joni has to do her part, too.”
“And what part has she not done?” Nadirah asked curiously.
“She hasn’t gone to counseling. I think that may help with her nerves and that remembering may actually help her to resolve things within her mind.”
“We talked about that, but Joni feels she has enough of a support system and enough people to talk to between myself and friends. She also doesn’t want any shrink to suggest doping her up. She feels that if she hid in a bottle of pills, she wouldn’t really be facing and dealing with things that way.”
“Does she mention it in her blog?”
“A little bit, yes.”
“I heard some of those accounts are plugged into some sort of tracking stats.”
“So?”
“So those things can see you if you visit. It logs your location, IP… that sort of thing.”
“I don’t spy on Joni, Giffy. She knows I’m aware of her blog and that I check it out regularly.”
“That’s nice.”
“She asked me why I’d bother since we see each other every day and know what’s going on with each other, but I really like the way she writes. Even when she’s not writing about something that interesting or exciting, it’s still nicely written.”
Gifford smiled. “I guess if you’re going to have a thing for learning other languages, it would make sense to be good in your own language as well.”
Nadirah stood up. “Time to get back to work. And to hope that things will get better soon enough,” she added a few seconds later.
And I hope my friend and coworker really isn’t the attempted murderer of her lovely wife, Gifford thought to himself as he watched Nadirah leave the room.
Nadirah had just stepped into the parking lot and was heading for her car when she heard someone calling her name. She stopped and looked around her, spotting Detective Clark a second later. “Oh, hello, Detective.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Haddad,” said the friendly yet intimidating-looking detective with the long dreadlocks. He smiled brightly and asked, “How are you today?”
“Okay. Something going on?”
“No, I’m afraid there hasn’t been much going on lately.”
“Oh. Then why have you come to see me at work?”
“You’re going home now, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes, and unless you’ve got some good news as far as a break in the case or something important to tell me, the later I am in getting home, the more worried Joni gets.”
“Oh, yeah, I understand. I won’t keep you long. How is Joni doing these days?”
“She’s pulling through. It’s been rough, but she’s getting by.”
“That’s good to hear. Give her my regards, will you?”
“Sure. Is that all?”
“That’s all for now. I just wanted to catch you and see how things were progressing.”
Nadirah nodded, trying to hide her suspicions, which were now bordering on paranoia, and said, “You have my number, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got it.”
They exchanged goodbyes and Nadirah walked off, making a conscious effort not to turn and look behind her. Even though she kept her eyes straight ahead of her, she felt the detective’s eyes searing into her back in a way that made her want to squirm.
Once in the car, it was all she could do to keep from tearing out of the parking lot at breakneck speed. Joni was about to get her wish with the moving, for she realized that she was now an official suspect. Maybe she had been all along.
Screw the money she made. Joni was more important to her. As much as she knew she belonged in prison for a good many years, taking care of Joni was more important to her, and she couldn’t do that locked away in some penitentiary somewhere.
She sped up once she entered the more rural areas on the outskirts of the city.
She hadn’t been kidding when she told Gifford she was worried about Joni. But it wasn’t just because of the stress she was under; it was also the fear of her remembering the attack.
She pressed down even harder on the accelerator.
Joni hadn’t mentioned anything in her blog to suggest that she suspected her in any way, but Joni had been tensing up around her lately in a way that made her wonder. She was still fairly certain that Joni didn’t know she had attacked her because she would’ve said so if she did. But just how much longer would it be before she did remember?
The road narrowed and grew curvier, forcing Nadirah to slow down.
She couldn’t imagine what she’d tell her mother, friends or her boss just yet, but she knew what had to be done. They had to get the hell out of there before the truth closed in on her.
It seemed to take forever to get home that afternoon, but once she finally parked the car, she jumped out and jogged quickly to the front door. Joni had been watching for her out the window and flung the door open as soon as she came up the walkway. “Hey there,” she said, frowning with confusion. “What’s the hurry?”
Nadirah kissed Joni on the lips. Then, taking the sides of her face in her hands, she said, “I need you to get packing as soon as possible.”
“What?” asked Joni, even more confused. “Why?”
“We’re moving.”
“Well, that’s nice to hear, but what happened?”
Nadirah was at a loss for words. She didn’t want to scare Joni by saying she’d seen the “attacker” lurking about or some other bullshit like Detective Clark receiving threats from them, which would be easily denied should he speak to Joni.
“Well, I’ve done some thinking,” Nadirah said.
“While you were at work?”
Nadirah smiled. “No, not exactly. Just in general.”
“About what?”
“About what you said about wanting to move and not feeling safe here.”
“I most certainly don’t feel safe here, so yeah, I want to move. Did you find a good deal on a place around here or someplace warm?”
“No. We’re going to Iowa.”
Joni gasped in surprise. “Iowa? Why Iowa? Do you realize how bone-chillingly cold it gets there? It might even be worse than here!”
“I’m sorry that most of the bigots in this world like it warm like we do, Joni, but it’s the farthest from this place we can get in this country that will recognize our marriage. Do you want to go to a state that sees us as just girlfriends? Just roommates?”
“No, definitely not. But Iowa - ugh! Fucking bigots. Can we at least have dinner before we pack? When are we going anyway?”
It was only then that Nadirah became aware of the wonderful smell of pork chops and wild rice. Her stomach growled.
“It’s been ready for ten minutes now,” Joni added.
Nadirah kissed Joni once again and smiled lovingly. “Of course we can eat now.”
Nadirah quickly washed up and joined Joni at the kitchen table as she served them their dinner.
“What’s your plan?” Joni asked, keeping her head down so as not to sit on her hair as she took a seat.
“Tomorrow I’m going to list this place for sale, talk to people at work, then stop by my mom’s place. As soon as the sale goes through, we’ll hit the road. Meanwhile, I want us to be packed and ready to go the instant it sells and the payment goes through. I don’t want us to have to spend a minute more than necessary here.”
Joni was still trying to grasp the situation.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so selfish, Joni, and thinking more of jobs and money than of our safety and peace of mind.”
“But the economy is bad now and most people don’t want to live out in the boonies. What if there’s a problem selling the place?”
“It’ll sell,” Nadirah said confidently. “It’s not worth much and most people would see it as the great deal that it is.”
“Then we live on the money from the sale of the house till you find work?”
“That’s it,” Nadirah said, nodding and smiling happily.
“But by the time you factor in taxes and everything, you may only be talking forty or fifty grand.”
Nadirah laughed, amused by her wife’s serious lack of understanding of money. She was as bad with numbers as she was good with words, foreign and not. “Joni, forty or fifty grand is a lot of money. If we were smart about it, we could live on that for over a year. But I think we can get closer to seventy or eighty grand in the end.”
Joni mulled things over in her mind a bit more, then said, “Well, I hate to see you have to give up such a good job and a home you and I both loved. But this peaceful little sanctuary amongst the evergreens has certainly become a haven of fear and insecurity, and no job or house is worth living like that, even if bad things do happen everywhere.”
“I agree.”
“I’m always afraid the sicko’s going to come back and kill me, so I can never testify against him if he’s caught.”
Nadirah gazed across the table at Joni, emotion in her eyes as guilt tore at her heart for the millionth time.
Nadirah took care of putting the house on the market while Joni took care of the packing.
She had let everyone know that she and Joni would be leaving as soon as the house sold. Their reaction had been as expected. They could understand wanting to escape that particular house, but they all felt they should remain in the area.
“You can run but you can’t hide,” Gifford had told her. “Bad things happen everywhere. Besides, wouldn’t it make sense to stick around so you’ll be readily available to testify if they ever catch the maniac?”
“I know bad things happen everywhere, Giff, and have you ever heard of airplanes? They fly people pretty much wherever they need to go. If they catch the guy, we’ll be here.”
“And you expect to be able to take time off from a new job to return? Just what are you going to do there anyway? You don’t know a single soul in Iowa.”
“We’ll work it out,” said Nadirah. “If not, we can always come back.”
Although Gifford had left her with the nagging feeling that suggested he knew that there was something she wasn’t telling him, she was still determined to do what needed to be done.
Her boss had been surprised and her mother had been angry.
“If you’d been smart enough not to get involved with her in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this situation!” her mother had screamed. “But here you are throwing away your life and a fine career to continue living in sin in some strange place with someone you have the nerve to refer to as my daughter-in-law.”
“I love living in sin, Mom,” Nadirah said on her way out the door that day. “Now you take good care of yourself. I’ll call every now and then. I might even let you talk to your daughter-in-law sometime.”
A few days after agreeing to list the house, Nadirah returned from work, surprised that Joni hadn’t greeted her at the door. When she failed to see Joni anywhere in sight or anything cooking for dinner, alarm started to stir within her.
Then she spotted Joni through the kitchen window. She was standing out back, gazing into the woods at nothing. Relieved to see that she was okay, but still worried about her, Nadirah stepped outside. “Hey, babe, you okay?” Nadirah asked with concern. Then she noticed the expression on Joni’s face. It was one she would never forget.
Joni turned to face her. “They say I have a pretty nasty temper when pissed,” Joni said, pulling the gun from beneath her baggy shirt. “Would you care to take my temper for a test drive, bitch?”
ns216.73.216.247da2
