Thirteen
Fourteen Years Ago.
I’D BEEN BACK AT WORK for about three months, having taken a month’s leave following Joan’s murder. I had successfully shut myself away from everyone and everything. I lived alone, worked alone, and slept alone. I didn’t see this ever changing and didn’t want it to. This was years before my vocation. On the rare occasions when I thought of God, it was only to cry out again at his injustice to me, to Joan, and to our unborn child, who died in her mother’s womb.
I got to work early that morning, as usual. It was easier to be at the archives with the College’s memories than at home with my own. I put on my headphones and tuned into NPR, happy to lose myself in a bunch of political talk that I didn’t even agree with. I had figured out by then that being mil
