The longer we’re here, the more familiar it feels.
The more it feels like home.
We walk up the lawn toward the massive home. When we approach the door, Joe bends over to look at it. “Shit.”
I don’t have to ask him why. It’s a smart lock. There are no keyholes—meaning his paperclips won’t work.
But I skim my fingers over the rubbery buttons and then close my eyes. No numbers come to mind—and, yet, I think I can do this. Taking a deep breath, I push the numbers my fingers want to as each one emits a tiny electronic beep.
Then I turn the knob—and it opens.
“Shit,” Joe whispers again. “I’ll be goddamned.”
I open the door and look around. It’s dark in here, but my memories begin to flood in. Nothing concrete, no “scenes”—but I know what this place looks like. Every piece of furniture, every room, every window, every door.
Upstairs are the bedrooms. This main floor is where we’ll find Representative Don Clawson’s at-home office.
And, hopefully, evidence of his dirty deeds.
It’s cooler in here than it was outdoors and my feet especially sense the chill of the marble we’re walking on. But, after we walk through the great room, we’re in a sitting room with fluffy carpet underneath.
Don’s office is to the right. As I walk that way, I run into a chair I didn’t see and that I didn’t expect to be there. Either my memory is faulty or things have changed some since I was last here. It could be either or both. But I reach the door and turn the knob.
After Joe has followed me in here, I turn on the light switch. Sure enough, it’s an office. There’s a desk, a phone, a computer. To the side, there’s a liquor hutch, complete with bottles of booze, glasses, and an ice bucket.
I move to the desk, because there are no standing filing cabinets in here. There’s only one and it’s part of the desk, and I’m going to look in there and through the drawers. Joe asks, “Want me to look in that closet?”
“Sure.”
It’s small but there might be something there. Joe pulls out some yard signs and rolled-up banners. “There are a bunch of boxes in here. Do you think there might be something in there?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want me to take a few out?”
“Yes.”
In the meantime, after a cursory glance, I’ve determined there’s nothing important in the desk and I’m booting up the computer. I might go back through it, but for now, I want to see what the computer holds. While I wait, I turn around. Joe is walking out of the closet (not as small as I’d initially thought) with a box. Just as he passes through the door, I see the bottom of the box giving way and stand up, lunging to stop it before it makes a loud noise. He must feel it, too, because he brings it down fast.
My heart is still beating hard as we lift the lid. It’s full of white ceramic coffee mugs that say, in blue and red, Clawson for Congress. These seem a little familiar to me.
Box after box after box has these stupid coffee mugs and I wonder if Don even used them for campaigning. Finally, though, at the very back, there are a couple of boxes that have papers instead of mugs. I notice through the window that the horizon is starting to get light and then I look around and notice an ornate clock beside the door. “Joe, look.” I point to it, and it says it’s a quarter till five. “I thought we got here before four.”
“Why’d you think that?”
“The van clock said three-something.”
“I think it’s on standard time. Nobody updated it to daylight savings.”
“Well, it’s getting light out. We might want to hurry.”
If I recall, Don is an early riser, especially during the week, but then I realize he might not even be here. He might be in Washington. As I sift through the papers in the box, though, I believe he’s probably here. After all, he visited me just a couple of days ago.
“I think these are just receipts and tax documents.”
“Same with these here,” Joe says, and even though he’s whispering, I can hear the frustration. I’m feeling it, too, and I wonder if maybe there’s some other place we can look in the house before sunrise.
First, though, we need to put things back where we found them. As I hand a box to Joe, he asks, “Did you try the computer?”
“Oh, no. I got distracted.”
“I’ll get these. Go see if you can get in.”
I nod and go to the desk. The monitor’s gone to sleep, so I wiggle the mouse to wake it up, and it pops up a photo of an American flag. In front of the picture are large white letters that say Don and a campaign photo of him above that. Below is a Sign in button which I click—but I have no idea what the password might be.
It’s then that I notice the corner of a piece of paper peeking out from under the base of the monitor. I tilt the monitor a bit and pull it out.
It’s a newspaper clipping.
It’s small, but Don’s picture is there. The headline reads US Rep’s wife attempts suicide.
The computer can wait. I’m about to learn a little history.
Scanning through the article, I find that what my husband told me is true. I tried to kill myself a couple of years ago by overdosing on pills. My husband actually told the truth about all of it.
The rest of the tiny article just talks about how my husband and children were holding up and, since congress was on hiatus, he was going to spend time with the kids to help them process. It also explained that I was going to be under observation by professionals to keep me from harming myself. Joe told me Don had said I was a danger to myself and others, but the article doesn’t mention that. Maybe it wouldn’t, even if it’s true.
This computer wants a password. Before I was committed, I might have had a chance figuring it out, but now my husband seems like a stranger.
He is a stranger.
Maybe it’s time to look through the tiny drawers on the desk again. It’s possible that I missed something. I lift the pencil tray, hoping to find a piece of paper, but there’s nothing. I push things around, hoping to spot a little notepad or anything that might be useful—but then my pinkie finger touches something I didn’t see the first time: a small black phone. As I pull it out, my mind gives me the word burner.
An extra—and anonymous—phone used for questionable activities.
I see movement out of the corner of my eye just as my ear registers the sound of the doorknob turning. Joe is coming out of the closet just as someone is opening the office door, and I wrap my hand around the phone. I have nowhere to hide it, but I’m going to hold onto it just the same as the door begins swinging open.
Not completely surprising, it’s Donald Clawson, my husband, politician and lawyer—and he’s holding a baseball bat.
As soon as he sees me, though, he drops his arms instead of brandishing the bat as a weapon. “Anna. What the hell are you doing here?” Behind me, he sees my partner in crime exiting the closet. “Joe? Would you care to explain this to me?”
I stand up. “This was my idea, Don. For some reason, this guy feels the need to follow me everywhere.”
“So why are you here, Anna? You’re not going to heal properly if you’re gallivanting all over the city and not taking your medication.”