Chapter 15
The prosecutor met me in a small conference room on the second floor. It had a gray table, four chairs, a box of tissues I didn't need. The window looked out onto the parking lot. I could see the crosswalk I'd used the day I went in for my final dress fitting.
He was a man in his forties with a navy suit and a file that was thicker now than it had been three days before. The victim advocate, Karen, sat to my left. She didn't touch me. She just slid a glass of water closer.
"State's going forward," he said. He opened the file. "Attempted homicide. Not assault. Not reckless."
I nodded. My throat was still dry from the tube they'd had in.
He went through it page by page, not like a performance, like an inventory. Toxicology had come back and held. The drug in my blood matched the puncture on the side of my neck. The church dressing suite showed his prints on the door he'd locked and a smear on the vanity where he'd wiped the syringe. The phone with the dark blue case — my phone — had the messages in the tray photograph, time-stamped, and the location data that put him in that room with me before the altar.
"Chain's intact," he said. "Dress and veil are in evidence, sealed and logged. Steel tray photographs are in. No gaps."
"Does he get out?" I asked. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted it to.
"Not before trial," he said. "Judge found probable cause. He's detained. Conditions if he made bail would be no contact, GPS, surrender passport. But he's not making bail on this charge."
Karen looked at me. "You don't have to decide anything else today," she said. "Cooperation means we call you. You can say no to press. You can say no to family meetings. The state carries the case. Not you."
I stared at the file. For seventy-two hours everything had been someone else carrying me — on a steel table, on a gurney, into an elevator. "I want it to go forward," I said. "I want the record to say what he did."
The prosecutor closed the file. "It will."
After he left, I asked Karen if I could go downstairs. She knew where I meant. She walked with me to the elevator and pressed B.
The morgue corridor was the same as it had been. Gray walls, cool light, that red indicator over the doors. It was quieter at eleven in the morning than it had been when I'd woken up there. The air still smelled like disinfectant and cold metal.
The attendant was at the desk outside the exam room. Her hair was still pulled back in a bun. No goggles now, no gloves. She wore the same white coat, but it looked like clothes, not armor. She saw me and stood up fast.
She didn't say anything at first. Her eyes went to my neck. The mark was covered with a small bandage.
"I wanted to thank you," I said. My voice caught. I had rehearsed it upstairs and it still caught. "You heard me."
She stepped around the desk. "I checked your pulse because you're supposed to check," she said. "Protocol says check even when the chart says don't."
I remembered her hand on my neck, the pressure of latex, the way she had leaned in. "You said I still had a pulse," I said.
"You did," she said. "You breathed."
We stood there for a second and I could hear the vent humming.
"They told me if you hadn't said it out loud, if you hadn't told her not to call him, I would have gone back to him," I said.
She shook her head. "No. You told me what to do. That's what mattered. 'Don't call my husband.' You were clear."
I hadn't felt clear. I had felt like I was speaking through water.
"I'm glad you did," I said.
She reached out then, briefly, and squeezed my forearm. Her hand was warm and bare.
"I kept your dress on the table until they bagged it," she said. "I didn't let anyone move you until ER came. It's logged."
"Thank you," I said again. I needed to say it in that hallway, where I'd opened my eyes.
She walked me back to the elevator. At the doors she said, "You live somewhere else now?"
"Recovery housing for a week. Then an apartment across town. Not the house."
"Good," she said. The elevator dinged. She let go.
Upstairs, Karen had the box. It wasn't big. White cardboard evidence box, taped, tagged, with my name and a number. The veil was folded inside. I could see the lace through the plastic window. The floral applique on the sleeves was pressed flat.
"You can leave it here," Karen said. "Property will hold it until trial. You don't have to take it."
I put my hand on the lid. I thought about the dressing suite, the veil spread out on the chair, how I'd looked at myself in the mirror before he came in. I thought about the steel table and how the lace had looked against it, wrong and bright.
"I don't want it as an heirloom," I said. "Keep it as evidence. After, I don't want it back."
She made a note. "Box stays sealed. Not heirloom. Evidence."
She asked if I was ready. I said yes.
We went out the main entrance. The automatic doors opened and the air hit me — late summer heat, parking lot smell, traffic on the highway beyond the hospital. I was in sweatpants and a hospital-issue zip hoodie, not the dress. My hair was down. My earrings were still in. Someone had kept them in a little envelope and given them back to me that morning.
I stopped on the sidewalk just past the doors. My legs were steady.
Karen stayed a step behind. "You want me to call a car?"
"I'll walk to the corner," I said. "I want to walk out on my own."
She nodded. She understood.
May you like
I took a breath. The town was ordinary. A sheriff's car rolled past slow. A mom pushed a stroller toward the crosswalk. I felt the sun on my face and the bandage pulling a little on my neck when I turned.
I started walking. Each step was mine. Behind me the hospital stayed where it was, and inside it the box with the veil was locked in a room with a number, waiting to tell the truth in court. Ahead was the sidewalk, the parking lot, the next block where I would live apart and show up when they called my name and say, again, what he did before the altar. I kept walking.
