I Fell From His Helicopter Over The Ocean While My Parachute Was Already Strapped On...

The curtain made a soft scrape when Marris pulled it closed. The bay smelled like iodine and damp plastic and the faint salt still coming off my skin. My gurney was too narrow and the blanket was thin and I could feel the recorder through the bag against my left hand.

Marris sat. She didn't perch on the edge. She pulled the chair close enough that our knees almost touched and set her clipboard flat on her lap.

"I'm going to record this too, okay?" she said. "For accuracy. You can stop anytime."

I nodded. My throat was raw from wind and I had to swallow before I spoke.

Delgado stood just outside the curtain, half in view. She'd brought me a cup of water with a straw. I took a small sip and set it down.

Marris clicked her pen. "Start where you want. What happened in the helicopter?"

I looked at the ceiling tile with the water stain and then back at her. "Richard chartered it this morning. He said he wanted to do photos over the coastline before — before the second trimester made travel harder. He said it would be good to get away."

"Whose idea was the flight path?"

"His. He picked the time. He picked the company. I didn't know the pilot."

She wrote that down without rushing me. "And what happened over the water?"

I rested my hand on my belly. The monitor beeped steady. "He said, 'I'm sorry, Amelia.' That's exactly what he said. Then he pushed me backward out the door."

Marris didn't flinch. Her pen kept moving. "Were you wearing a harness before you boarded?"

"No. I put it on under my coat before we left the apartment. I changed in the bathroom."

"Why?"

I tightened my fingers around the plastic bag. "Because I knew."

She waited.

I told her the second part exactly the way I'd heard it in the air. "After I fell I said, 'Richard, our baby!' Then I said, 'You should have trusted me with everything. You really thought I didn't know? What happens to your shares if something happens to you?'"

Marris wrote the words and then read them back quietly to confirm. I said yes, that was right.

Down the hall a door opened and I heard Richard's voice, louder than he meant it to be. "I told you, she slipped. The door — the wind caught it. I tried to grab her."

Marris glanced toward the sound but didn't get up. She lowered her voice. "Did he know you had a parachute?"

"He didn't. He thought I didn't know about the shares."

That made her look up. "What shares?"

"The company shares. If something happened to me, his vesting accelerated. I'd found the amendment two weeks ago in his desk drawer at home. It was with our life insurance papers. It had my name and a clause about spousal transfer on death."

She wrote shares + amendment + drawer. "Where is that paperwork now?"

"In our apartment. In the office, second drawer, folder marked estate."

She nodded and tore off a card from the bottom of her clipboard and slid it toward me. "We will get a warrant if we need to. Don't go back alone."

Before she finished, the curtain snapped back. Richard stood there with a uniformed officer behind him, his white shirt untucked now, his face red.

"Amelia, they won't let me —" he started.

Marris stood. "Sir, you need to stay in your interview room. We're not done."

Richard looked past her at me. His eyes dropped to the bag again. "Sweetheart, tell them you stood too close to the edge. Tell them you lost your footing. That's what happened."

I didn't answer. I looked at Marris.

Marris stepped between us. "Sir, step out now or I'll have you escorted."

He stared at me for a second longer, waiting for me to soften. I didn't. The flat line of his jaw twitched once and he stepped back. The officer guided him away.

Marris turned back, exhaled slowly. "Thank you," she said quietly. "That's enough for tonight. We have enough to hold the helicopter company records and pull the charter log."