"First Wife, Part 1" by Terena Elizabeth Bell

Chapter One

Sabrina hadn’t fired a gun since high school and as she waited by the side of the road, her greatest fear was she’d miss. Police in Virginia, Maryland, and DC were all on the lookout for the beltway sniper and while no one was looking for her, she was concerned about the increased policing the hunt for him would create. Someone could easily see the parked van and report it, squad car pulling up lights on, police officer banging on the side door yelling, “Out.” Then everything would be over. Wait too long and Sabrina would get caught. But then again, shooting Bradford’s wife in the head wasn’t the sort of thing to rush.

It wouldn’t be easy to kill a congressman’s wife. Just thinking that, Sabrina wanted to laugh at the ludicrousness of it all, at the fact that Bradford was a congressman, that he was married, married to someone who was not her. The day after Bradford had left for DC, Sabrina had gone into a deep depression, her body and mind sinking so low her periods even stopped. She became obsessed with the calendar, each new day not only pointing out something in her system had gone very wrong, but precisely how long it had been since it was over. She’d gotten acne, too, struggling as she taught herself how to use foundation for the first time, how to cover up single spots without caking her entire face. Thankfully, she did not get fat, high metabolism protecting her waistline, but the skin thing did worry her as she stood hours before the bathroom mirror, staring at each and every dot. Finally, Tessa from work said, “Go on the pill.”

After that, Sabrina had started to feel okay again. Not great, but not yet murderous either — just okay — as the blood began to flow and her face slowly cleared and life without Bradford started to become normal again. Most importantly, her thinking cleared. Whatever trance had come over Sabrina these past few weeks, pulling her body into some sick seance, was gone and her mind once again was laser sharp. It was during that clarity — inside its logic and its calm — that Sabrina realized she had to kill the wife. This mind — not the depressed one — was the Sabrina that sat on the beltway pointing her father’s .22 rifle out a van window, waiting for the wife to fall in between its crosshairs. 

By this point, Sabrina only had two options: kill or not to kill. She’d already thought through everything else. She’d tried acting like she didn’t care, she’d tried stopping Bradford from getting married, had even tried acceptance — at least at first. Why, the night Bradford got elected, Sabrina could have even gone to the victory party, had in fact decided not to go despite Frank asking her more than once. 

“It’s not a date,” he’d said, even though they both knew Frank had a thing for her in college, that the only reason he never officially asked her out was because he was Bradford’s fraternity brother and the Taus had this hyper-loyalty sort of thing, some strange law that people who went elsewhere said fraternities at their colleges didn’t have. Once sophomore year, Sabrina made the mistake of calling the fraternity a frat and Bradford had snapped, saying “You wouldn’t call your country a cunt.”

“I would if it weren’t a dirty word,” she told him, then said if he ever wanted to see her country again to shut his trap.

That was the semester before she and Frank studied abroad in London. Frank was a year older than them, had been one of the guys who’d roped Bradford into going Sigma Tau to begin with, a decision Sabrina encouraged because the Taus were the cool guys, a decision she would have railed against had she known everything then that went with it. Their college was so tiny that being Greek meant you could only date if you stuck to the rules and once you’d dated one guy in a frat, all the others kept their hands off, sticking to the system with this weird, ruthless loyalty lasting long past any breakup, holding women captive to some unbreakable code, and it didn’t matter that by the time the election came around, they’d all been out of college four years already. Frank couldn’t ask her to the victory party as a date and she couldn’t go there for any reason save to get Bradford back and at larger schools, stuff like this didn’t happen. You didn’t turn around and date your best friend’s ex immediately or anything like that, but you weren’t off-limits to thirty other men for life just because they all joined the same club at eighteen. The women, of course, got no say in being branded. This social structure was in play long before they got there and as a result, Sabrina belonged to Bradford and Bradford to Sabrina and who was Frank to change that.

The night of the election party, though, Sabrina had oscillated over whether or not to go. This was after Bradford had gotten married but before she got out her father’s gun, back when Sabrina had already given up on trying to drive him and the first wife apart. The party would have been perfect recon, too, more data to use in her quest to divide, but by this point she knew nothing normal would work and did not want to see them. She didn’t want to stand in the wings while the brand new wife stood on stage, did not want to witness her kissing Bradford. They hadn’t even been out of college that long — four years could shoot by in a blip — and here was Bradford already making something of his life — a life without her — and knowing this was lonely enough. Bradford’s name would go down in history — or Wikipedia at least — and Sabrina would never have an entry under hers, spending her days coding crap html for crap client websites, ambition set to simmer. She couldn’t even get a raise.

“It’s not in the budget,” her boss had said, “we’re not giving any cost of living increases this year,” then Sabrina found out the new guy had gotten his, her boss saying, “He has a family to support,” when she asked about it.

The world was full of new guys, people who lucked into more not because they’d earned it but because of a flaw in the universe’s code. Bradford’s wife hadn’t even gone to college with them, had never known Bradford back when he was all dream and no effort, but there she stood smiling in campaign photos, Teletubby body plastered across yard signs and “vote for me” mailers. Sabrina had gotten one in the mail, going through bills and junk and more bills as she sorted envelopes in her hand, walking back from the box. The gloss on the paper made the first wife look even fatter and after she threw the flyer away, Sabrina still knew it was there.

No, there could be no me and her, no shift from one to the other. Even if Sabrina could somehow convince Bradford to leave his wife — something she knew him well enough to know he would not do — she still would be in his trash. 

Kill or not to kill, shoot or not to shoot — those were the options and at that size, Sabrina thought, the first wife would be easy to take down. Hunting with her father, he had always told her the fattest deer made the widest targets.

If she had gone to the party with Frank, Bradford probably wouldn’t have even seen her, sequestered away to chat with donors, smiling at the press. He’d never really seen her, Sabrina now was starting to realize, and that was the damn issue with it all. Sabrina would have had to have stood in the wings with Frank, to have shaken Bradford’s hand and said “well done,” been forced to look at that didn’t earn it, didn’t work for it wife tromping around while Sabrina stood alone, fat ass smiling like she was the one who’d branded Bradford. There would have been no way for Sabrina not to have seen her, no turning of the head that could solve this problem. Bradford would stand behind a podium and say he wanted to thank someone, that so many people had worked on his campaign — all the people, the village, the populace — and all these people had made him into the man he was today, the man Kentucky believed in, the man the bluegrass had elected to fight for them in DC and then Sabrina would have had to have watched Bradford reach out his hand, maybe even to the exact same side where Sabrina was standing, and say, “Come on out here, honey. I want y’all to meet the love of my life,” then the name Bradford would say would not be hers.

No, Sabrina hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near that party and so Frank had gone and she stayed home, television on, watching as Bradford won, exit polls predicting a landslide, then he said it. Of course Bradford said it just as she’d predicted he would: arm out, new wife in pearls and pastels. She looks like a baby animal, Sabrina thought, television adding ten pounds, face tilted like some chubby woodland creature afraid to cross the road. “Come on out, my love,” Bradford had smiled, “Don’t be shy.” 

Then down the confetti fell and up rose the balloons and sitting at home alone, Sabrina started screaming, yelling at the television with every decibel that lived inside, rage boiling and brimming. “You cunt,” body rising off the couch in levitation, “Cunt,” limbs convulsing. “Do nothing, didn’t deserve it, came out of nowhere cunt!” And then she soared across the living room kicking: kicking the air, the wall, the entertainment center, kicking out her television screen.

But that was months ago.

Bradford and the wife were in DC now and had been for quite some time, time Sabrina spent slapping makeup on her face, wondering when her period would return. Then a possibility presented itself: a news report saying there was a sniper in Washington, DC on the beltway, someone killing random people: a 55 year old man, a 34 year old woman. Some were in Maryland, others Virginia: men at gas stations, one lady outside a grocery store. As a coder, Sabrina knew nothing was random. October 2nd, the sniper had killed two people. The next day, five more. There was always a pattern if you found it, if you took the data and looked hard enough and truly studied the problem, a program underneath just waiting to be coded, a choice she had to make. And so in the calm and in that logic, Sabrina moved quickly to determine the wife’s. She didn’t want to get shot herself, sitting on the side of the highway like some freak, the real beltway sniper ill-fatedly coming along and shooting Sabrina in the head. Gas, she realized, everybody bought gas. And so she waited, watching the wife for two days to see where she went, what her favored routes were, then plotted the place she was most likely to fuel up.

She could be wrong — not about the math, of course, but about what she had to do. Shifting the rifle one more time, staring through the scope at the pumps, the poles, the lights, Sabrina hoped that she was wrong. She’d lost her father a long time ago but before he died, he taught her to hunt for food, survival. The first time he took her hunting, Sabrina screamed, “Run,” and the deer did. “Don’t ever do that again,” he said before hoisting his gun and saying it was time to go home. Then that night, there was nothing to eat. He didn’t fuss, he didn’t blame, but the message was clear: We kill to live.

Sabrina wanted desperately to be wrong. Life was a series of decisions and not all of them were right. If she were wrong, Sabrina would lay down the rifle and this would be over. Maybe she’d go back to Kentucky and finally date Frank. But as she looked out the van window, shotgun aimed toward the second pump, Sabrina did not want to be wrong, did not want to do any of those things. What she really wanted, she thought, was to shoot and miss. Then there would be no wondering what if. She would have given it her all.

As the shiny red Camry pulled in, Sabrina realized missing might actually be worse. If she missed, she could hurt a random person — some single dad filling up on his way home from work, a kid sitting in his father’s back seat. No, there were only two ways to do this and she would have to do it right. So when the wife got out, head spinning around in fear like everyone else in DC that week, Sabrina remembered the deer and fired.

Chapter Two

Before Sabrina shot the wife, she had actually met her, had put her hand out to shake if only the wife had been man enough to take it. Bradford introduced them at Sigma Tau Basement Party, this thing a bunch of the guys put on every year in Louisville. Sabrina had known Bradford was getting married, had seen the engagement announcement in the alumni magazine. But it hadn’t seemed real until that night, a reunion of sorts that wasn’t an official homecoming, just men who’d graduated fifteen years ago or so and missed their youth today. The party had started small, the first couple events these alums from the eighties who rented out the basement of O’Malley’s, which did actually look like the old fraternity house or at least enough like it to pretend. They gathered and drank, drank and sang songs, and staved off middle age with everything they had, fighting even harder as younger and younger men found out about the party, more showing up every year after one of the guys invited a couple brothers who’d been a year or two below him, guys who were freshmen his senior year, that sort of thing, and then those men did the same and suddenly it turned into this great big gathering for anyone who’d ever been Sigma Tau, had ever hung out at Sigma Tau, and finally, despite what any of the original organizers wanted, anyone who happened to know anything about the party at all.

Sabrina had never gone before, though she’d always heard about it. Frank had asked her. But Sabrina’d spent the better part of grad school — that single year she went — trying to avoid news of Bradford. And hanging out with his fraternity brothers — whether they’d been in college at the same time as them or not — ran antithesis to this.

In that way, grad school had been good for her, Frank even calling it “a good moving-on period” while encouraging her to make non-college friends and even date. Problem was Sabrina didn’t know how to date casually. To her, casual dating meant the other party could go away — it wasn’t trying on shoes, testing pair after pair before buying like her friend Lizzie had said in college — rather the whole ordeal was one great big waste of time. Dating casually was like building one of those BASIC programs they teach children at coder camp: eight year olds and nine year olds paying the local community college $40 for one week’s worth of lessons. Those were simple three line programs: pointless little things where you typed your name in with the commands “print” and “loop” and “run,” then watched the word cascade like water across and down screen. That, Sabrina thought, was casual dating: lines that made you feel like you’d accomplished something but in the end were just pointless.

In the four years between graduation and the Sigma Tau Basement Party, she simply had not met a single person with the potential to love as much as she had Bradford — his seemingly guarded nature really just a shield, a need for connection running just as deep as hers, his hair. So throughout those post-college years, Sabrina thought, if I’m going to do this, if I’m going to change my internal operating system to let some new love feature in, I’d rather not settle for anything less than an upgrade.

But as one year after graduation turned to two then into three, Sabrina found herself spending more and more time in hiatus — unable to move on from Bradford, not quite able to move back. Louisville, Kentucky was a small town, much smaller than its 256,231 population would decree, and some days it felt like each and every one of those people somehow looped back to her college — had known her or known Bradford or someone who did — everywhere she went, someone sharing two or three data points about “what he’s doing now” that Sabrina could not ignore. And so when Frank — miraculously the only one of those people who never said a word about Bradford — asked her to go to this year’s basement party, Sabrina gave into the numbers, the volume of data Louisville would not hide, and went.

Of course it didn’t go well, though you wouldn’t have known that at the time from watching Sabrina. She had handled the situation with grace, Bradford calling less than 24 hours after the party ended, in fact, angry she had not seemed angry. At this point he wasn’t married yet, rather just about to be, having brought the fiancée to the party as some form of initiation, a way to take this person who had not gone to college with them and somehow make it feel as though she had, trying to pass her off as one of them. It was pathetic. Sabrina was already there — had been there — in the brothers’ hearts if not at their party and the Taus all loved her. They didn’t care that she wasn’t part of that originally invited set, one of the eighties guys or a younger guy or even guy. Sabrina was as Tau as the rest of them, even knowing one of the older brothers from graduate school, all of the men grabbing her shoulders for hugs in turn, “You know, Sabi, you’re one of us.”

So when Bradford wanted to know how Sabrina had found out, precisely who had invited her to the party, all she could do was laugh. “Frank invited me,” she said, then waived at him waiting for her by the bar.

It was a stupid question. Bradford had to have known she would be there, had to have heard rumors about her just as she had about him, had to have known she lived in town. She had known that he was coming, spending an hour in front of the mirror, trying on nine different outfits just to determine which played up her breasts without looking slutty, whether she should or should not wear the pearls her father had given her for luck. Surely he had known she’d be there. Bradford said he wanted the guys to meet the fiancée, yes, but it didn’t take 256,231 people to know he really was there to see Sabrina.

He’d wanted to rub the engagement in her nose as hard as he could, to let her know how much it hurt his feelings that he wasn’t married to her right now instead and when he called Sabrina after the party, Bradford was at his own point where he could have made a decision and simply walked away, but he didn’t. On the contrary, he was angry, mad at her on the phone, clearly not having moved on either. “You were always so passionate in college,” he screamed, and even though Sabrina thought closure was for pansies — something life never gave anyone, not really — turns out Bradford needed it, had needed his chance to yell at her after everything in college went wrong because he quite clearly had hoped for a scene last night, staring Sabrina and Frank down from the opposite end of the bar. 

It was like they’d broken up yesterday and not years ago, as if something more had happened last night than just seeing each other at some party — and it simply wasn’t sane. It wasn’t normal to still be this impassioned, emotion and anger and pheromone levels rising back in his throat so quickly. Bradford had wanted a confrontation, sending drinks not to her but to Frank all night, telling all the guys how much more levelheaded his fiancée was than Sabrina. A confrontation would have been easier than whatever he had to do now. If Sabrina had lost her shit, if Bradford had gotten her to lose her temper right there in front of everybody — screaming and clawing his or the fiancée’s hair out à la Jerry Springer — Bradford could have written her off and no one would have said he’d made the wrong decision.

But she hadn’t. Sabrina had remained perfectly calm all night: no hair pulling, no screaming, no tears.

“So disruptive,” Bradford said on the phone the next day. “It’s the one thing I always hated about you.”

When he said this, Sabrina did not think Bradford was delusional, blaming her for things she did not do. Instead, she wondered how she could have spent four years with a man who hated the one thing she’d always liked most about herself: She had opinions and argued them vehemently — whether doing so kept the peace or not. It was part of what made her Sabrina, what separated her from the girls who went to college to get an MRS. “Well, Bradford,” she said, finally giving him the reaction he oh so longed to have, “if you wanted a woman without a brain, I guess you got one.”

“Don’t say that,” he snapped. “You don’t know her.”

“And just whose fault is that,” because it most certainly had not been hers. 

Sabrina and Bradford had not seen each other for four years. Four long years since graduation then there they were, at the same party, and all Bradford could say was “What are you doing here,” voice caught in itself like fishing wire, then “I guess you heard I’m getting married,” and standing straight, controlled his face, bringing his cheeks and lips and chin in line, politician-in-training. “My fiancée’s over there,” pointing toward the crowd, “You should meet her,” then beckoning her over, didn’t say her name, just “Honey, this is Sabrina,” and Sabrina stuck out her hand. She hadn’t seen Bradford for four years and there he was, heart beating. “I know tonight’s going to be hard for you,” Frank had said in the car, “If it helps, you look fantastic,” eyes cascading over everything he could see, “I just want you to know I’ll be at that bar in the back if you need me,” and oh how she did, feeling so on display, hand hanging empty in the air.

It wasn’t that the fiancée refused to shake Sabrina’s hand so much as she just stood there like a knot on a log simply looking at it. Sabrina stepped back — not retreated, just inched — reeling from the insult of it all. Here she was extending herself — here she was trying — and this blob, this mass, a six out of ten on the looks scale, a whale of a bitch just stood there.

And that’s when she saw Frank, standing by the rear bar exactly like he’d said he’d be, and slowly Sabrina lowered her hand.

To some degree, Bradford must love her. He would have to, there was no other reason a good looking man would marry such an ugly woman. 

Sabrina pried the phone out from between her neck and shoulder and said, “I had a chance to get to know her last night. She obviously did not want to know me.”

“She does, Sabrina, I swear. She’s wanted to meet you forever,” and then Bradford paused. “She’s always asking questions about you. You were the rude one, hanging out in the corner with Frank all night.”

“She had her chance.” Even then, on the phone with him now, she still felt it, how empty her hand had been, dangling in the air. “What am I supposed to think?” processing the data that had prompted Bradford to call, the fact that he obviously still cared, not only that he wanted to vent his own anger but that he wanted to know whether meeting the fiancée had affected her at all: He must still love me, she thought, Bradford really must still love me after all this time to call. “If you’d really moved on,” she said, “you wouldn’t still care.”

“I don’t,” although clearly he did because he stayed on the line but then again so did she, neither hanging up, both silent.

What are you doing, Bradford, I mean what the fuck, Sabrina thought but didn’t say, trying to keep her emotions back, to stay in control while the crackles on the line told her nothing.

Then finally, finally Bradford said, “She’s not you. But I do love her,” voice caught in itself as it’d been last night, “just not like I loved you. I am going to marry her, though, and she’ll do a good job,” Sabrina glossing over that odd part about the job, thinking about how really Bradford had always planned to marry her, had told Sabrina as far back as sophomore year that he couldn’t live without her and one day wanted her to be his wife. It hadn’t been a question so much as a whisper, a hint, but he had said it, lying in his dorm room, listening to Elvis. Sabrina’d come over to study but instead they wound up having sex and just because he never brought it up again didn’t make it any less real.

“He could be my father,” telling Sabrina how he’d looked for his birth parents once and couldn’t find them. “You never know,” he said, record playing.

“I don’t think Elvis had a Kentucky tour. But, yes, you never know.”

They did both have the same hair and as Sabrina looked at Bradford in bed, she realized she would never, ever love anyone else this much. “You’re gonna marry me one day,” he said, looking not at her but at the ceiling, dark strands striking the pillow like slate on white canvas, light from the cracks between the blinds streaming lines across his face.

After waiting what to her felt like minutes but to Bradford hours, Sabrina whispered, “Someday” and folded her body over his. She’d meant it, too: Someday, yes, I will marry you. Just don’t make me now. They were, after all, nineteen.

Then two years later in front of the commencement hall after graduation, a mortarboarded Bradford reached out slowly, touching Sabrina on the forearm, saying, “Someday, Sabi, could someday be today?” and it took a while for her to realize he was proposing, that he was asking her to marry him right then and there as she thought someday what, then saw the light, that same light creating those same streaks, cutting through trees this time instead, and hesitated — not because she didn’t want to, but because she wanted to go to grad school. So she moved to Louisville to get a masters in computer science then quickly realizing she didn’t need a higher degree to get a coding job, just more Java skills, dropped out. That had really pissed Bradford off, yelling about it on the phone even now, mad about graduation, mad that she flirted with Frank at the party, that she’d slid her fingers slowly along his arm at a moment where Bradford could see, yelling now, “You break up with me to go to grad school and then you don’t even finish school?”

But the point wasn’t that Sabrina had some deep longing to study computer language theory, the point was graduation day was the first time since her father died that she thought maybe she might actually benefit from learning to be alone. In that moment, college degree in hand, she’d felt this overwhelming need to prove she could do it — live without Bradford, her father, or anybody else — that loss might leave a crack that cut deep inside you, but maybe that was okay; maybe it was okay to let people go; that she still could stand strong or maybe just stand but either way survive. She loved Bradford, yes, and wanted to be his wife, but she wanted to know first that she could do it, that she was capable of living life all alone. At twenty-one, this hadn’t been easy to say. Hell, at twenty-five it was hard and she didn’t know how to turn it around, how to turn back her life, the conversation, turn everything back to the moment where he stood outside the commencement hall and she stood outside the commencement hall and looking at him said, “I’m going to grad school, I’m not going with you, and I’m sorry, we’ll figure it out.”

But since Sabrina couldn’t figure out how to go back and do that conversation over — or at least some version of it where Bradford did not get mad — she simply said, “You loved me?”

“Of course I did,” he snorted. “What of it.”

She took a moment, calculating whether the words in her head would make him more or less upset, would push him closer or further away, then realized they were already torn. Here he was marrying another woman, hadn’t even had the dignity to personally tell her, announcing it instead to all their friends, flaunting the fiancée last night, making Sabrina so miserable it’d taken everything inside her not to cry the whole way home, Frank saying, “Well that wasn’t too bad,” in his way that meant things could have been worse, trying not to cry as she told Frank goodbye and went in her place and stood in front of the mirror looking at her face, tried not to cry alone in bed. She’d been a fool to think he would wait however long she needed to make a choice, to make being married the choice and not just some default, not just an escape from being alone. Then feeling the empty that dwelt inside, the coldness of the phone, Sabrina thought to hell with it, this is it, this is all I have left and if not now when and if not when never, so in the smallest voice she had, she pulled at that memory — the memory of Bradford’s proposal — and took it from her body where it lived deep inside, pushing it up her throat, and said, “What ever happened to someday?”

There was a small sound, then nothing. Were it not for all those crackles on the line, Sabrina would have thought Bradford had hung up.

“You didn’t mean it,” he answered calmly. “It’s been four years. You were never coming back to me.”

She wanted to say he was wrong, that her love for him was like white blood cells deep within her system, moving throughout her veins — that no matter how many years they spent apart, she could never pull away, completely go off the drug that was Bradford; that he had created antibodies, antibodies that now were part of her makeup, dormant deep within. “I never left,” she said, heart splayed.

“You’ll see, Sabi,” he told her, “you’ll see one day. You made a mistake when you didn’t marry me. I don’t know if Frank told you or not, but I’m going to run for Congress.”

“Congress,” she laughed. “Are we even old enough?”

“All you have to be is 25,” he said. “It’s in the Constitution.”

“Well that’s a scary thought,” and with that, with just one number, one single point of logic, Sabrina was back, heart cauterized and no longer bleeding.

“Don’t laugh,” he said, “Don’t you dare laugh at me. I’ll do it. And I might not even stop there. You know I’ve been working as Jeff Sessions’ deputy chief of staff.”

“Jeff Sessions,” she said, “Who’s that?” as if she didn’t already know precisely where he had been working, as if the fact that Bradford worked there wasn’t another part of why it’d been so damn hard to move on, everyone from college constantly bragging every time she saw them about how at least Bradford was making good, that so many of them after graduation had immediately began to flounder, striving to find purpose in a world without semesters, spouting idiotic platitudes like “there’s no syllabus for life” — all the while Bradford had a job, a good job, a real job, coding not sites but the country, right off the stinking bat.

“He’s the junior senator from Alabama," Bradford said and Sabrina laughed, saying, “Isn’t the Senate a different chamber?”

“You don’t get it.”

“No,” she said, “maybe I don’t. I don’t get a lot of things,” meaning the fiancée, but Bradford thought she meant the job, saying, “Elliot’s dad used to chair the RNC, so they’ve been gearing me up to run since graduation. I just need to get my ducks in a row, become more electable. You know.”

Elliot had been Bradford’s childhood friend, this short little smart ass Sabrina never liked who’d gone to college somewhere else. Why, she hadn’t even heard his name since the proposal, not since Bradford said, “Sabi, I need an answer. Elliot’s waiting,” as though that would make her hurry and accept, the not yet campaign manager sitting in the getaway car, presto-chango impromptu best man.

“And what does that mean,” she said, “Precisely how does one become ‘electable’ at our age?”

“You know,” and as he paused, Sabrina could hear him — no, see him, trying to remember what Bradford looked like when he didn’t like the truth. He made a face. There was this face he made where all his features moved out of proportion, preparing to twist words in his mouth: “Go to all the banquets. Fundraisers. Right to Life, get a wife, that sort of thing.”

“A wife” — and then she knew. The fiancée was a talking point, a lever, a role, one that Sabrina was too emotional — too erratic — to play. When Bradford said the fiancée would do a good job, this was what he’d meant — not that she’d be a good partner or clean house or stay home with the kids. He’d meant the fiancée was a regular Laura Bush. This was why there’d been no followup after the proposal, no attempts post-graduation to win her back — no calls, no email, no nothing for four fucking years. Why last night at the party, he didn’t even touch her shoulder — something he always did in the past, unable to keep his hands off her body, sliding his fingers along her skin with such frequency Frank used to call him Mr PDA, sliding them along her forearm, her wrist, the dorsal side of her hand. Bradford was not touchy-feely, he was just turned on, moving and caressing its own intimacy, sex.

But, Sabrina’d noticed, he hadn’t touched the fiancée last night either. He’d touched her even less than Sabrina, at least starting to reach out when he first saw Sabrina coming, a Pavlovian lift of hand toward her arm then her shoulder before yanking it back, libido and longing in the air. Standing right there, in the center of O’Malley’s, she could feel it. “The man is an asshole,” Lizzie’d said in college, “I mean the asshattery is palpable, Sabi,” because it was. Bradford never had really been the nicest of people and every time one of them came around, the other one lost their head, fighting its own form of foreplay, the most basic of interactions generating heat. They fought so much that once Sabrina even asked, “Why do you love me?” and Bradford had joked, “I’m addicted,” lifting a glass to hide his face.

And addicted he was, because four years later, he’d continued to track her, blood charged with antibodies of his own, keeping tabs on Sabrina through Frank because he needed her or loved her or maybe just wanted to know, spending time on some political wife hunt because Sabrina, he thought, wasn’t capable of the job. This wasn’t about his loving or not loving her — it never had been: Wife was a work description. Sex was great in the bedroom and love everywhere else, but on stage, politicians needed presence — and the women beside them, the ability to keep their mouths shut no matter what. The fiancée would stand behind Bradford when he spoke, mouth closed in a way that Sabrina never could. “I’d never win with you, Sabi. She’s what I need.”

Sabrina stood in the kitchen, phone in left hand, refrigerator door held open with her right. She blinked and she blinked as she stood in the door, as she stood in the chill, and that little light bulb in the corner pinched her mind, headache stretching out across every muscle of her face. “I’m not what you need.”

“You’re too passionate,” he said. “I never knew what you were going to do or say next,” and in her mind’s eye she could see him. There it was, that expression, Bradford sucking in his bottom lip, cocking his chin so slightly, working to hide the truth. She used to love it, this little tell, the intimacy her knowing it conveyed. Once, she had read the human face could make 25,000 different micro-movements and suddenly Sabrina felt sick, realizing she only knew half, only recognized half of them on Bradford’s face and that made her mad too, mad she didn’t have the rest of their lives to memorize the rest.

“I still love you,” she started to say, but Bradford spoke first: “You’ll never amount to anything.”

“What do you mean,” slamming the refrigerator door, “I’ll never be anything?”

“You gave everybody all these esoteric reasons for why you left grad school, but we both know you couldn’t hold onto your scholarship. And here you were the one who was supposed to be going places, all these places that mattered so much more than me.”

“At least I’m not the one getting married to some fucking airhead too stupid to know how to shake somebody’s hand.”

“Yeah?” Bradford laughed, “Well, things keep going well for me, that airhead could be first lady one day. And you’ll still be some dried-up wanna-be.”

“Fuck you,” Sabrina said, “just fuck you.”

“Nope,” Bradford answered, “Got a fiancée to do that now,” and hung up the phone.

Sabrina stood in the kitchen staring at the receiver. It was too late. It was too late, too cold, too something — too much of everything at once and as an early tear formed at the edge of her eye, she knew she was alone. The tear fell and when it hit the floor, she broke at the waist, folding her body inside itself from pain. It’s like a melon baller, she thought, it’s like he took a gigantic melon baller and scooped the middle right out of me, scooped out my core and now I have nothing. I have nothing, she thought, even less than before, and lay there empty ‘til morning.

Chapter Three

In college, there was always someone to save you — usually Lizzie. Lizzie had been Sabrina’s very best friend until she wasn’t. “No man is worth that much,” Lizzie would say, “fuck him.”

Yes, Lizzie would have known what to do, and as she thought back to college — the good and not just the bad — Sabrina thought if there were ever a time where female friendship worked the way it was supposed to, it was college and once you graduated, women really just stared down the barrel of life alone, no one across the hall to hear you crying, no one in the bathroom to hold back your hair when you were drunk. You didn’t even have to be friends with someone in college for women to help each other out this way. It worked like computer code: automatic. If X happens, run program Y.

Sabrina and Lizzie had started drifting apart the year Sabrina studied in London and by the time she got back, Lizzie had moved off campus. Then Lizzie changed majors so she could graduate early and when that happened, they weren’t in the same classes anymore and without her one desk over or across the hall, it was like college didn’t even technically include her. Lizzie had been her best friend — not just then, but ever — and since graduation, especially when Lizzie never came to Homecoming, Sabrina had thought a lot about calling around to see if anyone had her number but now there was no point. Sabrina already knew what Lizzie would have said: Lizzie would say, “Fuck it, fuck Bradford, I always told you he was an asshole, move on.” But if Sabrina had been able to fuck Bradford — figuratively that is — she would have done so way before she found herself waking up on the kitchen floor, phone receiver in hand, bits of broken cracker stuck to her cheek. She would have said fuck off years ago, after that time she found out he was seeing other women while she was in London. If Lizzie hadn’t moved off campus, Sabrina realized, she and Bradford probably never would have gotten back together once she was back.

Lizzie had always thought Frank was hot and got mad when she learned he and Sabrina never fucked.

“It wouldn’t feel right,” Sabrina told her. “I love Bradford.”

“You know he’s seeing other people, right?”

“International calls are expensive,” Sabrina said. “Can we talk about something else?”

After that, Sabrina phoned Lizzie less and less, telling herself it was because her scholarship didn’t include a transatlantic calling plan just so she and Lizzie could chat boys.

No, Lizzie had never told her what she wanted to hear. And that was really why Sabrina let them lose touch and why she missed her so much now. Someone like Lizzie would have been helpful, she realized — sitting in the van, shifting finger from guard to trigger — would have seen this was the moment — the moment where she was prying herself off a sticky floor — that this had been the first moment of many where an honest person could have pulled Sabrina back to the realm of the sane, kept her from firing the shot. “No man is worth this much,” Lizzie would have said, boy talk of yesteryear be damned, “You can do better. For Pete’s fucking sake, Sabrina, it’s been how many years? I won’t let you spiral.”

But Lizzie wasn’t across the hall anymore — no one was except that guy who smoked pot and stole her mail — and spiraling was so, so easy. Maybe Bradford was right. Maybe her passionate nature did make her irrational, stripped her system of logic so badly Sabrina couldn’t see her own flaw, the error in her own mind’s absolute code.

As she brushed bits of Saltine off her face and arms, finally lifting her body from the floor, she wondered why it was so wrong to want, to want to speak out and be heard. That’s all Bradford had accused her of really, calling Sabrina “supportive” when she agreed with him in college, “erratic” when she did not. She wanted her own mind, her own thoughts. Was that wrong? Here he was twenty-five and talking Congress for fuck’s sake, maybe even president one day, and she was the one who was crazy? It was hard to imagine Bradford with the nuclear button. She couldn’t even go to grad school without it destroying him.

None of this felt right and as she walked to the bathroom shedding clothes, she shook her head. Bradford was supposed to be with her. She loved him. She’d given him her college years, had not dated Frank, had looked the other way when men asked her out in grad school because somehow she knew he’d be back. All those years she spent trying to forget him had proven one thing: She couldn’t. Inevitably, she and Bradford were programmed to pull back together. And if you were going to spend the rest of your life with someone, what were a four years apart after college? Bradford was mad, that’s all, and he wouldn’t be so angry if he didn’t still love her. When you stop loving someone, you don’t care anymore, all your emotions go away, and as she looked at her body in the mirror, Sabrina put her hands on her hips and thought, I can do this.

Just like that, she’d start by spending more time with Frank so she could learn as much as possible about the fiancée — about the whole situation really — but first she had to get the wedding date. That would give her a timeline, Sabrina thought, and then she could build a strategy out, moving backwards from there.

A sudden calm washed over and as Sabrina turned on the shower, she knew winning Bradford back would be hard but had no idea just how much work it would require. Years later, the lawyer would ask when she’d first decided to shoot the wife, why she had thought the fiancée deserved to die. “Detail your early thought process,” he would say, as though thinking was what had gotten Sabrina into this mess. “I was getting in the shower,” she would lie, when the truth at the time was she was still numb and had no idea how she was going to get him back. In this moment — in the carved out hole no one could see — there was only pain and water.

Chapter Four

Sabrina didn’t even bother to dry off before she collapsed on the bed and miraculously slept for an hour. After that fight with Bradford, she’d managed to pull herself together enough to go to work but then as soon as she got there, Tessa said, “How was Sigma Tau Basement?” half asking, half looking at her computer while scrolling through client notes.

Sabrina didn’t answer, just threw her blazer across the back of her chair.

“Sabi?” Tessa stopped working and turned around, “Are you okay?” and Sabrina just nodded, guarding what she said.

Tessa had actually gone to college with Sabrina and Bradford, been one of those people Sabrina might sit with in the cafeteria when she saw her, but never made friends with — not really. Sabrina spent most of her time with Bradford or Lizzie and Tessa was cousins with Susan, this sorority bitch who dated one of the guys in Bradford’s pledge class. Their alma mater was full of connections like that: someone you barely knew, only occasionally socialized with, somehow getting all caught up in your business, passing nosiness off as caring. And so — be it through lunches every now and then or parties or the rumor mill led by Susan — Tessa knew, or thought she knew, everything about Bradford and Sabrina: the ins and outs, the breakups and breakdowns, stories both true and false, uncomfortable transparency of life.

That said, from time to time Tessa could come across as a genuinely nice person, always asking Sabrina what she wanted for lunch, bringing her small treats from Panera. When Sabrina spoke, Tessa leaned in with the facial and physical cues that typically conveyed true interest. Sabrina was mean to her — regularly, in fact — and every time, she saw the negative remarks hit Tessa’s face, a vein in her forehead rising after every bad comment or putdown, Tessa sitting in her chair with a smile, lips and cheeks pressed to hold it. “They were there,” Sabrina said, “I saw them,” and “You did?” Tessa asked, and for a moment Sabrina thought about telling her everything — the handshake, the call, the crackers — but didn’t, knowing Tessa could only go so far, that in the end she would just say what she thought Sabrina wanted to hear: The fiancée’s a twat, I’m sure he couldn’t love her half as much as he did you — and Sabrina was too tired for games, too tired for let’s make Sabi feel better crap, so she went on and said it for her: “Geez, Bradford’s such an idiot, right? I mean why marry her when he could have me.”

It wasn’t like Tessa didn’t try to be a friend — she was there as much as Sabrina would let her, first to call her after the shot, to let her know the first wife was gone, screaming, “Sabi, Sabi, are you alright?” into the phone, not even giving Sabrina the chance to say hello.

“Yeah,“ Sabrina answered, “Why wouldn’t I be?“

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what,” then Tessa went into details: “The beltway sniper, that guy in DC who’s been shooting all those people at gas stations, he killed her. It was day before yesterday,” blathering about how the police had temporarily kept Bradford’s name out of the press “because with him being in Congress and all, they had to make sure he wasn’t in danger too or make sure that wasn’t why she got shot or something. But you know that lady they were talking about on the news, the one they were saying was the newest victim but wouldn’t say who she was? Well, it was her, Bradford’s wife,” Sabrina responding, “Oh,” and staring at her hands, sliding them across the covers as she lay there in bed, feeling the fabric beneath.

No, Tessa, could never be trusted to say what was right, muttering “I could have told you that” here in the office today as she looked at Sabrina now, “I mean, you are fantastic,” talking about the party, that stupid basement party, saying “I’m sure you handled it well, I’m sure it had to be absolutely just all so awkward. I’m just so sorry you had to go through that. I mean, are you really okay?” and as Tessa kept talking, Sabrina thought she’ll run out of air, if I don’t say something, she’ll talk herself completely out of oxygen, nothing in her lungs left to say, and as Sabrina got ready for the conversation to be over, for Tessa to just stop talking, she turned to sit down by her computer. Then Tessa said it — said “just don’t break out the deet.”

“The deet?” All this time and people still brought it up, she’d been a freshman for Pete’s sake, and here they were adults and Tessa had to bring it up — now of all times, all these years later — people laughing and acting like the deet was still a thing, some inside joke Tessa thought she could say to be funny.

“Come on,” Tessa said, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Then how did you mean it?”

Right after Sabrina and Bradford had first got together, the bug spray ordeal was all anybody could talk about, how Sabrina had ran Bradford’s first girlfriend off by attacking her with it except the story wasn’t true — at least not the way folks told it — and sometimes Sabrina wished she hadn’t stayed in state for grad school, had moved to San Francisco or somewhere else, anywhere not Louisville, Kentucky surrounded by people she’d gone to college with who all still talked about the deet. 

It hadn’t even been Sabrina’s fault — not really. She and Bradford had met the second day of freshman year behind the Tau house, Sabrina waiting for Lizzie when she saw him. He was overweight — fat even — but his hair made up for it. It was gorgeous, so dark it was almost purple, and she couldn’t pull her eyes from it, not even when Lizzie walked up behind her and said, “Hey,” the hey not for him but for her, and when he heard it, he turned and walked in their direction.

Turns out, Lizzie had already met Bradford in choir, their very first practice that day, and when Sabrina asked why he’d decided to go to college there, Bradford said, “Call me crazy but my grandma’s psychic and she told me if I came here I’d meet the love of my life,” and Sabrina was still young enough not to realize this was a line. “Of course it was a line,” Lizzie said once they got back to the dorm, “he probably doesn’t even have a grandma.”

But Sabrina was sure he did. Everyone had a grandmother. You couldn’t be born without two, to be precise, and there was no reason for Bradford to lie. “All men lie,” said Lizzie, “or didn’t you figure that out that in high school?”

Sabrina had not dated in high school, had never had a boyfriend really, and looking at Lizzie said, “You’ll see. I’ll ask about his grandmother when he calls.”

Except Bradford didn’t call. In fact, when people asked how they met, Sabrina would always tease, “He didn’t even call,” then swat Bradford’s arm. “He asked if my number was in the mugbook and when I said yes, he walked away and never called. What kind of man asks for your number then doesn’t call?”

“I was shy,” Bradford would grin, “and you were gorgeous,” then “aw” the room would reply.

Of course, the real reason was that right after he met Sabrina, he met her roommate and asked her out instead. They dated for three weeks before the roommate dropped out and right after she left, Sabrina called Bradford.

“It was a mistake,” Bradford said. “I didn’t know you liked me.”

Sabrina stood by the window in her dorm room, winding the phone cord around her fingers. “When you asked for my number, I gave it to you.”

“No. You told me to look it up in the campus directory. That’s not the same thing.”

But to Sabrina it was. She’d only been in college two days at that point and was still in shock from the death of her father. Full cylinders spinning, a pre-grief Sabrina would have memorized her dorm room extension immediately, storing the digits in her mind as much needed data, a necessary set of numbers that every new student must learn. But in those days, her mind was cloudy — far much more than it had been after Bradford first moved to DC — having lost her father just that month, really not even a month, just two weeks before. And while her period did not stop and there was no acne, her body felt the loss all the same: changes in dietary patterns and bad dreams she’d rather not discuss; headaches; and simply feeling tired nonstop. So out of all the things Sabrina had to navigate in her then and present life, knowing her new phone number was not one of them. She knew the room number itself, the number of her campus post office box, telephone extensions for each and every one of her professors, but her own number, well, she had no one who’d call anyway so why put the data in her head. Not to mention that if Bradford liked her well enough, he could damn well go to the effort of picking the mugbook up himself and flipping to the page with her name. 

Sabrina sat by the phone three days, afraid she’d miss his call because she didn’t have an answering machine yet, until Lizzie decided enough was enough and stood in the doorframe saying, “Put on your shoes, we’re going out. That guy is never calling.” 

“You don’t know that.”

Lizzie stepped all the way in and shut the door. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but today before choir, I saw him and your roommate kissing in the practice room.”

Sabrina said nothing, just lowered her eyes and parted her mouth.

“Come on. Put on your shoes,” grabbing a lipstick off the dresser, “and put this on too. We’re going out.” So, slowly, her first college friend put Sabrina back together and the two stumbled toward the Sigma Tau house where Bradford mercifully was not. And every time he came to pick up the roommate for a date, Sabrina sat on the bed arms crossed, staring. Then when the roommate got home, she would stand in the middle of the room and not stop looking at her, not stop glaring.

“Cut it out,” the roommate told her one night. “Geez, get over it already.” But Sabrina never replied, just stood there. Finally the roommate packed up her shit, said college wasn’t easy, and slammed the door with Sabrina standing alone for just one more time. After the bang, she walked to the phone and dialed. “You asked out my roommate,” she said, then Bradford answered, “Yeah. And now I’m asking you.”

That was battle number one and as Sabrina geared for another now, the roommate should have come to mind but didn’t. Thinking back, the girl had been so inconsequential. Sabrina had never suggested or really even planned for her to leave. She’d simply just ignored her, acted like she wasn’t there.

But the roommate had her own problems too, issues and concerns that had nothing to do with Sabrina. From the info she’d gathered, there was a hometown boyfriend the girl had been seeing alongside Bradford and from the one-sided phone calls Sabrina heard at night, it didn’t sound like the roommate’s relationship with her parents was all that great. There were money issues, the girl’s father justly complaining every time she skipped a class that those tuition dollars were gone. She was messy, too: sprawling shit everywhere; one pile of clothes at the foot of her bed so high, Sabrina knew something had to be growing in it — there were ants crawling out. This is where the deet came in, where the lie the roommate’s friends later told found its genesis: They claimed Sabrina had run the roommate off to get Bradford when, really, she’d just wanted to get rid of the ants.

Sabrina didn’t snoop in other people’s things as a matter of course, but they were crawling all over. This was Sabrina’s room too and her belongings were in there; she had her own clothes to worry about. There were hundreds of them. She’d been hanging out in Lizzie’s room one night while Bradford and the roommate were out and when Sabrina came back and turned on the lights, they charged her. Sabrina screamed, “Lizzie,” and her friend darted across the hall, wooden ruler in hand like a weapon. They used it to poke the pile, knocking t-shirts off the top until finally they got halfway down. Then Sabrina saw it: a half-slice of molding pepperoni and sausage pizza. Lizzie said, “Call physical plant,” so it wasn’t even fair to say the deet idea had been hers. She’d just wanted to tell the RA, get some sort of pincher claws she could use to pry the roommate’s shit off the floor and toss the girl’s life in the trash, but Lizzie said, “No. Physical plant. Now. They’ll spray,” so Sabrina placed the call. An hour later, a man arrived with a gigantic tank of chemicals and Lizzie and Sabrina gleefully watched him hose down the roommate’s bed. “Make sure nobody comes in here for 24 hours,” he said.

Sabrina spent the night on Lizzie’s floor and didn’t know what time Bradford brought the roommate back. There was no evidence, she later read, that the chemicals in deet medically affect the human nervous system — not permanently at least — and when all was said and done, Lizzie and Sabrina both agreed the roommate had brought it on herself.

A week later, the girl was gone, just like the ants, and even Bradford noticed how much cleaner the room was the first time he came back over. “Whoa,” he said, taking two steps back, “you mean all that shit was hers?”

“Yep,” and Sabrina pulled him down on an insect-free bed.

By then, though, the rumors were already spreading, rumors so proliferate that almost everyone at one point believed them save Lizzie and Frank: Sabrina had poisoned her roommate, she had planted ants in the roommate’s things, had coated her clothing with deet, put chemicals in her shampoo or sprayed it on her pizza or or or. Different people told it different ways but every version ended the same: The roommate had a nervous breakdown, dropped out of college, and Sabrina began dating Bradford.

“I’d like to know who started that rumor,” she told Tessa, flicking her computer on. “You know studies have shown deet does absolutely nothing bad to humans.”

“I’m sorry I brought it up,” color rising in Tessa’s cheeks as she looked away from Sabrina and toward the floor. “I just hoped that by now you could laugh at it,” and Sabrina wondered how anyone could ever laugh at the idea of poisoning another person or, even worse, being branded a poisoner. “It’s just one of those crazy college stories. An urban legend almost, but real. You know, did you hear the one about the girl who wanted her roommate’s boyfriend so she sprayed her room with deet. I didn’t even know it was you ‘til sophomore year.”

“I did not poison her,” Sabrina snapped, “and I’m shocked you’d even think that,” and as Tessa started to say, “I don’t,” that actually she thought Sabrina was one of the most rational people in the world, Sabrina whacked her monitor hard from the side, whacked it so hard it blinked, turning her back toward Tessa to make her shut up, to keep her from seeing her face.

Sabrina didn’t want to be the kind of person who had made somebody else drop out, who had forced her to leave school and go home packing. No one starts college that way, thinking if their roommate has the audacity to date a man she likes, she’ll just hose her down and run her off. Calling physical plant, not letting the roommate know — both had been decisions, like pulling the trigger or opting to not, one line of code here and another one there, life programmed together from tiny executable commands.

Chapter Five

After that horrible phone call where Bradford lost his shit, Sabrina decided the best strategy to get him back was to make him think she didn’t want him. Problem was he already knew damn well she did, so she casually started mentioning other men to Frank as much as she could without being obvious. She created fake dates, even flirted a little with Frank himself, all in the name of spreadable gossip designed to keep her in the corner of Bradford’s proverbial eye. It was risky — this distance plus jealousy scheme — but to pull it off, Bradford would have to think canceling the wedding was his own idea. So a week after the basement party blowup, she wrote him a letter, asking Frank hand-deliver it to Bradford.

“You sure?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Sabrina, “I just don’t want it to end like this.”

Frank thumped-thumped the sealed envelope against the palm of his hand. “I don’t think Bradford wants to stay friends. And I don’t think it’s really in either of your best interest, to be honest.”

“Look, Frank,” she said, tilting her face so close to his he flinched, “I’m glad for him, I really am. I love him” and when Frank squinted like he was about to disagree, Sabrina said, “No, it’s okay. I don’t mean I’m in love with him now. I mean there’s part of me that will always be who I was at eighteen and this part will always love who he was then. It’s like you,” biting at her lower lip, trying to look like a girl on the brink of tears. “I mean, we’ll always be a part of each other too, because we spent all that time together in London, and I don’t ever want a world where you and I are no longer close. It’d be crazy, Frank. And not being friends with Bradford is crazy too. We don’t have to be all buddy-buddy,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean we should be enemies. Just — just do this for me. Please,” and with the please she looked up, not batting her lashes but evoking anything else remotely puppy dog inside her.

The letter itself was not a letter, rather code Sabrina wrote in college, a few lines in BASIC.

She and Bradford had gone to a liberal arts school, so Sabrina couldn’t just straight-out study computer programming all day, having to take all these classes about art and historical figures’ feelings. “The humanities make you a better thinker,” one of her professors had said, “get you in the mindframe to use your heart as well as your head,” and when that didn’t work — simply telling Sabrina to see her emotions as equivalent to her brain — he gave her an assignment. “In lieu of a paper, Sabrina, I’d like you to do this: Write a program about how a person or an event profoundly changed your life.”

“But, you don’t know how to code,” she told him, wondering how he’d read much less grade it, the professor responding, “If you get the assignment right, that won’t matter too much, now will it?”

Bradford was rarely emotional. He lost his temper, sure, was prone to angry outbursts where he vented his frustrations at Sabrina. But when he read her code, it made him cry, Sabrina having left it out on her dorm room table, saying, “Why of course I wrote that for you,” Bradford understanding not the commands that wouldn’t run anyway — unexecutable lines — but the thought in-between them. They’d had a few drinks, sure, Zimas somebody left in his room, but when he walked her back and she asked him inside, Sabrina turned from the bed to find him in tears. “It’s just so sad,” he said, “Don’t let us come to this,” hands firmly gripping the page, “When we’re old, Sabi, promise me,” underbelly showing, “Don’t let us get so far apart from each other that we wind up like this,” and as Sabrina nodded, thinking he was just in a funk, that maybe the Zima didn’t sit right, she put her arms around him, letting him hold her, and thought this is insane, insane that he thinks we would ever be apart, why I didn’t even write that code about him. Instead she’d written about her father, how her family’s LET SUM had once equaled 2, then RELATIVE_CHANGE -1, her father leaving the equation the moment he died, Sabrina now 0 in LOOP with no END.

It would hurt him to read this now, to see it printed and sealed in an envelope from Frank, and maybe he’d think the aloneness represented him. But this had been the change. She and he had once been two and then he walked away and here they were estranged — so much estranged in fact that Sabrina couldn’t even give him the code herself.

The night that he read it, they made love, Bradford pulling himself so far inside he felt like her spine, like the hollowed out place coded deep in her heart had been his and not hers, his own empty loop repeating with no end. Then after he came, Bradford sat on the edge of her bed and said he never wanted to know what life was like without her, told her he needed her near him the rest of his life. Sending this now would be cruel. On some level, even Sabrina had to admit it was unkind. But there simply wasn’t time to dillydally. The wedding was in three months. She had to remind Bradford they once had been whole in order to make him realize now he was not.

Or she might just piss him off. The morning after, Bradford had tried to act like nothing had happened, like he’d never cupped her face in his hands, crying while he moved within her. Yes, there was a chance this could all make him mad, bringing up something he’d tried to forget. But Sabrina didn’t think it would. She knew Bradford. She might not have memorized every one of those 25,000 movements yet — all the shifts and expressions of his face — but he had learned thousands of hers and she had spent four years with the man and knew the slope of his nose and how he always had to be right and that his only true weakness was her.

After prying herself off the floor, picking those grubby cracker crumbs from the side of her face one by one, Sabrina had taken a week to think, working in silence as Tessa said, “Fine, be mad,” assuming Sabrina was still sullen about the deet. But the deet had been luck, no effort at all, and as Sabrina sat in the office while Tessa huffed to lunch, snapping, “I’m not even going to ask if you want me to bring something back,” Sabrina realized this time, winning Bradford back would take a little work.

So she started gathering information about the fiancée, categorizing the data in her mind. Hair color: Brown. Height: Four inches shorter than Bradford. Nominal input at first, things she could label. Initially, it all seemed unrelated — the fiancée was fat, she’d grown up in Idaho — but somehow, someday it would all come together. No algorithm could result in a reliable outcome without first amassing quantity after quantity of data. It just had to be the right data to move the program forward.

No matter what specifics she uncovered, though, which details Frank told her as they started having more and more meals together at night, there was no scientific method that could make a man not marry someone — no perfect formula that would drive him from one and toward the other. If life worked like code, Sabrina thought, it would be easy. 

Then here came Tessa of all people, sulking back from lunch with a sack of cinnamon crunch bagels, and told Sabrina she’d gone to Panera — surprise, surprise — and saw Bradford breaking up his sourdough roll into tiny little bits for the fiancée to put in her soup, which sounded smothering to Sabrina, but Tessa said had really looked like he just was trying to take care of her, to do something nice. “It was endearing, really, if you saw it,” she said, “like a modern-day version of a knight putting his coat over a puddle,” then went on about how Tessa had said hello and Bradford had told her the wedding date. Tessa did not tell Sabrina Bradford had invited her to come, saved that little nugget for herself, but either way now Sabrina had the date, a real date, the actual date, Frank having originally told her a different day one year from now, sometime after the election. “Bradford wanted to wait until the campaign died down,” Frank said, but of course it didn’t hold, the information was incorrect, Tessa being the one to tell her the wedding had been rescheduled for something in two months — omitting the special look of glee on the fiancée’s face as she’d said it — a date Frank was later able to confirm over dinner, explaining that after Sigma Tau Basement Party, the fiancée had started nagging Bradford to move it up and Bradford had finally given way. The fiancée wasn’t pregnant, but there was some story about a grandmother with cancer, something about August 4th being the day said grandmother had gotten married, some sappy shit like that. It was BS. The fiancée had taken one look at Sabrina, one look at how Bradford looked at her, and had all the information she needed: Time to get a move on.

“Yeah,” Frank shrugged, “it’s this thing with her grandma. She wants to do the 4th.”

“Isn’t that a Sunday?” Sabrina asked.

“Yes. And it’s making the bachelor party pretty hard to plan, believe you me.”

Sabrina wasn’t thinking about the party, rather the ceremony itself, which a Sunday would make rough logistically. In Kentucky, Sunday meant church and even though Sabrina didn’t go, the fact that others did would make it difficult to get the wedding stuff in and out between services. No way would any woman get married on a Sunday on purpose, it must have been the first day they could get the church, but Bradford had fallen for it, Frank ultra-focused on this whole bachelor party thing and Bradford never dreaming to think how hard it would be to get flowers hung up and taken down, the photographer in and out — not to mention set up; flower girls and bridesmaids through and about; how all this doing would shorten the amount of time people had to get situated, out of their cars and into the pews; the whole damn thing just a rush.

“And then there’s the bride’s cousin,” Frank said, “he’s throwing a kink in everything,” venting about how some guy from California was messing the bachelor party up, saying at first he could come in a month before the wedding, so they could to do the party early, then saying he couldn’t and maybe they should have it the Wednesday week of, which really just made Frank laugh, then the guy promised to fly in the weekend before. But when that weekend came, the cousin had a flight delay, saying he’d just see them all at the rehearsal dinner the next Saturday, meaning Frank had to shuffle everything around again last minute. He’d already lost his deposit at the shooting range because even though they were happy to change the reservation date, the cousin had wanted to drink, which of course you can’t do around guns, leaving Frank looking at Sabrina with his hands spread wide, saying, “A titty bar, Sabi. We’re going to wind up at a titty bar, you watch. And I so wanted to do this with style.”

Sabrina smiled, saying nothing.

“Are you sure you want to know about all this?” he paused, “It doesn’t,” tilting his head and smiling soft, “hurt?”

“Call me a glutton for punishment,” Sabrina laughed, then thought how flimsy is man. How flimsy is man that after all she had been through, the question of shooting range versus titty bar was what Frank thought would wound her.

“I have to admit,” he said, “you do seem to be handling all this suspiciously well,” asking if maybe it meant she was finally over Bradford, Sabrina mentioning she had been seeing other people, and oh how that hurt — not telling Frank the lie, but watching the perceived truth of it hit his face: a tiny crease between his eyebrows, another between the eyes.

“So tell me,” she said, leaning in, “more about this bar.”

And there they were: original wedding data now completely useless, new information inputted to form the master plan, stage one being jealousy, rumors of other men sent to Bradford through Frank, then, two, sending Bradford the code and making him think they were sum zero stuck in a loop forever.

Then he called. She let the phone ring once, then twice, and when she answered, Bradford said, “We’re at Kitty Cat Steven’s,” not even bothering with hello.

“Don’t catch cat scratch fever,” she said, trying to keep it light. She of course had to keep it light, was working hard to keep it light as she lay in bed fighting sleep, staring at the caller id, rectangular blue light beaming, waiting for Bradford’s number to show up on her phone. She’d been keeping herself awake, trying to string together some last ditch ploy for the wedding the following day, afraid now that her plan wouldn’t work, running the numbers on how effective pulling a Dustin Hoffman might be. I won’t have to do it, she told herself, telephone ring flooding her body like drug, telling herself don’t rush, slow down, don’t pick it up right away.

“Seriously,” Bradford said, “what was Frank thinking?”

“Look,” Sabrina adjusted herself on the bed, sitting up in the dark. “He tried really hard. It’s all he could talk about the last two times we went out,” making sure she said “went out” instead of “hung out,” knowing Bradford would hear the difference, planting the word in his mind like a seed. “It’s more than you would have done for him and you know it.”

“Come on, Sabi. Kitty Cat Steven’s? We couldn’t have at least gone to Kentucky WildKats instead?”

He was drunk, either drunk or trying to keep it light too.

“Remember when y’all went there sophomore year?”

“Yeah. It took all night to find Jonathan. I still can’t believe that cop was his dad.”

“Who the fuck knew, right,” she smiled, lying back down on her side, then “Sabi,” he slurred, “that’s your problem.”

“What,” sitting straight back up again.

“You always have to be so crass.” It was “fuck,” the word “fuck,” and she knew it.

“You liked when I said fuck in college,” using the word like a verb not a noun, “even better when I did it,” trying to keep the argument from turning into fight.

“Well,” Bradford said, and from the tone of his voice, she knew she was safe, “things were different then.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“I’m right? You hear that, boys? The lady says I’m right,” and in the background, Sabrina heard the Sigma Taus yell, hoo-ha-ing each other and giving high fives. “Where are you?”

“I told you,” he screamed, “I’m at Kitty Cat Steven’s,” and “Yeah,” the men replied.

“No. No.” Sabrina rubbed her forehead, thinking if Bradford were as drunk as he sounded, this might not work, that even if she could press him into some type of decision, get him to call it all off, he might be so far gone he wouldn’t remember — or even worse, would wake up hungover and think drunk men shouldn’t make life decisions then go through with everything anyway. “I mean, I thought you were outside by yourself right now or something.”

“Here. Hang on” — stumbling sounds, random excuse mes, and then: “How’s this?”

“Better,” she smiled, “I can actually hear you now. How much have you had?”

“I’m pretty drunk,” which meant none at all or too fucking gone. Bradford didn’t have many gradients when he drank, intoxication a cresting wave. The first two or three, he let himself act silly, using the drink in his hand as some form of excuse. She’d seen him do it all the time at the Tau house, act like he was further along than he was just so he could do what he wanted. But once Bradford really started to drink, after he moved past that third or fourth beer, he became normal. Sober Bradford and Moderately Drunk Bradford were relatively close to the exact same man. One more beer, though, and the waters would shift. Like a wave, the upper displacement would rise to a height where Drunk Bradford crested, breaking and leaving you struck, struck by how silly the man could actually get, how dramatically his personality could change. Drunk-Off-His-Ass Bradford could do anything.

“I don’t know, baby. I only had a few at the rehearsal dinner,” then suddenly Sabrina knew which Bradford she had.

“Ah, yes,” she whispered, “the rehearsal.”

“You fucked me up, you know,” using the word that was off her list but okay on his, “I wanted to marry you but you wouldn’t answer me,” and even though they were on the phone, she could see it, could see that light casting lines across his face: cap, gown, and Bradford standing below the trees.

“Well,” she said, and Bradford interrupted, “Someday, Sabi. You said someday and then you went away,” and she wanted to say that actually he was the one who had turned, that she had wanted to say yes, had said nothing really at first, Bradford’s hand on her arm, waiting. She had wanted to say it — had opened her mouth, but her tongue refused — her lips and even her throat — she would not form the word, could not form the word, and when she opened her mouth — when she parted her lips — the absence of sound was just as unexpected to Bradford as it was to herself. And that’s when she knew, when she knew she wanted to try, to see what life would be like on her own.

He had been the one who turned, who turned around then and walked away.

Now on the phone, cars pulling up in the strip bar parking lot behind him, Sabrina held back her defense: Someday had really meant yes and there was a big difference between telling Bradford someday and telling him no, that wanting to go to grad school did not equal abandonment, and that there was also a difference between someday and never — and that she had tried to reach out, that even though he had walked away, Sabrina made call after call when he simply wasn’t home, trying to reach him every day for a year after graduation — all those times the phone had rang — and that if he’d just bought a machine or paid for caller id, he would have known; that phones work both ways, mister, and that at any point over the last four years, he could have called her, that the problem had always been that he was the one who never called, that he could have called her instead of simply just moving to town, a town where Bradford knew damn well she lived, with a fiancée no one had heard of. But “you know you don’t have to do this” was the only thing she said.

“Yeah,” he snorted, “I do.”

She rose off the bed, put the phone on mute, and screamed. All that sound that wouldn’t come, vowels and consonants together, yeses and nos cataphonic in the air, the code, the proposal, a 56K modem screeching. Then turning mute off, Sabrina calmly said, “No, baby, no, you don’t.”

“There’s no way out,” he whispered, “and in a way, I sort of love her.”

“Not as much as you do me.”

“Does it matter? Frank told me you’ve been seeing all these guys,” and in that moment, Sabrina knew. She knew jealousy was to men what orgasms were to women and you could touch and stroke but if the pressure were off, even if you rubbed the right place, all your effort would accomplish nothing. She had Bradford now, right at the brim, but mess up one tiny movement, shift a slow single finger, one point of tension even minimally off course, and success would slide further away. Sex was love, no matter how many magazines tell you it’s not, and getting Bradford back took a very careful touch. “Those men don’t matter to me,” she cooed. “They’re nothing. I only went out with them because I thought I’d lost you,” and if he’d been there in person, she even would have batted her eyes.

There was a pause and Sabrina knew Bradford was thinking, that whatever alcohol he’d had meant the message would take time to get through.

“Did they fuck you?” and there was that word again.

“No.”

“Are you sure? Were they in your place?”

“Once. There was this guy named Joe from work,” she lied, “but he only came in for a glass of water.”

“I’ll bet,” Bradford said.

“Bradford, honey, none of those men are you.” 

It was getting harder and harder to keep her head. The part of Sabrina that was rational — that knew there was a plan — stuck to it, fighting emotions back. But the part that felt, that wanted him so much she was willing to plan, well, that part wanted to rush, to run ahead, and Sabrina put the phone on mute again and breathed.

“Why’s that,” Bradford said and Sabrina thought, It’s working. Stay in there.

“Because,” she spoke slowly, “you’re you,” then took a moment to recoup. “You’re definitely more handsome,” her cerebral side carrying the conversation now, “and there’s something about you that’s just always made me feel safe, that’s always made me feel like no matter what you’re there,” and this last bit was true. She had thought he would always be there, had thought it for years, and that’s what got her in this mess to begin with.

“It’s too bad we couldn’t have fucked one last time,” and Cerebral Sabrina told her emotions to slow down, to hide themselves, stay buried, that Dramatic Sabrina, Erratic Sabrina could not react — could not say, “Well, come on over, baby, come on over here right now,” thinking that wrapping her legs around Bradford would hold him forever. No, Thinking Sabrina said, “I wish you could,” knowing the more that he wanted her, the more he would do, “but I can’t have sex with an almost married man,” adding innocence at the end like a garnish.

“What if I weren’t,” he said, and Sabrina wondered if his cock was hard yet.

“I thought you said there was no way out.”

“There might be.”

“What’s that,” and that’s when she knew, knew she was in. “You couldn’t — you couldn’t call the wedding off, could you?” knowing Drunk-Off-His-Ass Bradford could do anything.

“Sabrina,” he said calmly, “I’ll never love anybody the way that I love you. You’ll always be the love of my life,” then hung up.

She had touched too hard or not at the right time or something, but the end result was she’d blown it. Her smart side knew she had blown it and tomorrow, as she dissected this conversation again, she might even understand when or how. But tonight her emotions said, no, maybe she hadn’t, maybe it wasn’t over and there was hope left after all, so at one in the morning she drove to the church, drove past the church, turning the car around, parking 152 meters away, letting Passionate Sabrina take over, and when hours later they all arrived and he went in as one and two came out, Sabrina knew she had lost and did not like it.

It would have been wrong to have stormed in all Hoffman, rattling the glass and yelling his name. It only would have pushed him further away. She’d just driven out there to see it through, to see if the wedding would or would not happen, would he go in the church and then not leave, not take one look at the sanctuary and realize what he was or was not prepared to do.

But he did go in and he stayed in and he even went through with the whole damn thing because an hour later, they both came out and she was glowing and he was smiling and held her hand while everybody clapped, friends of Bradford and Sabrina’s, the people she’d trusted, people who knew this was not right but who stood on the stairs anyway and clapped before leaving for the reception while Sabrina stayed in her car and watched. She was far enough away that thankfully no one saw, but as the building emptied out and the sun came down, Sabrina cried in a loop in the dark.

Chapter Six

“She’s a trophy wife,” Tessa said. “That’s all.”

The next day, Sabrina thought about taking a sick day but didn’t. A girl in marketing was always doing that, taking what she called an emotional day because if she didn’t have a day off right now she was sure she’d get mentally ill. But that wasn’t what sick leave was for — that was called vacation — and people like her simply didn’t have Sabrina’s work ethic. Besides, Sabrina’d spent enough time down already, lying in bed or curled up on the floor or standing in front of the mirror staring at her face. Bradford might be married, but Sabrina still had to make a living and you didn’t get anything you didn’t work for and that included a check. He was the one who got married on a Sunday — had gotten married on Sunday knowing everyone would have to go into work tomorrow — and if Sabrina didn’t keep right on working for what she wanted, someone else would take it. So yes, a day off sounded great — absolutely amazing, in fact — but Sabrina was not one of those people who was afraid of a little hard work, knowing full well when you got something without it, you were cheating.

Bradford had cheated. He’d cheated when he married someone else, someone who hadn’t earned the right to be there. The wife was not a person. She was a trophy and that was all. “You only met her once, right?” she asked Tessa.

Tessa didn’t say anything, just smiled with her lips but not her eyes, then looked down.

“Tessa?”

“Look,” she said, staring at the space on the floor between herself and Sabrina, “don’t get mad.”

“What would I have to get mad about?”

“I went to the shower.”

The shower? Of course, there had been a shower. There had to have been one or three or maybe more — but how had Tessa been invited, that’s what Sabrina wanted to know. “I thought you said when you saw them at Panera that day, he didn’t even remember you at first,” thinking back to it now, how Tessa had come in with the bagels and gotten fairly to the point, leaving out all the wells and I means that typically bloated her speech. Sabrina should have known right then there was more to the story, more than Bradford stuffing sourdough chunks down the fiancée’s soup.

“He didn’t,” Tessa said and, even now, Sabrina noticed she wasn’t really talking.

“Tessa,” she said, arms and shoulders shifting forward, “why don’t you tell me exactly how you wound up at this shower,” saying it like a dirty word, like she needed one after learning Tessa went.

“They invited me,” Tessa said. “When I saw them at Panera, I had to tell him who I was — just like I told you — and, at first, I told him I was Susan’s cousin and I mean I didn’t expect him to remember me, I never really hung out at the house that much, but you and I were such close friends, I actually thought he might, and now I wish I hadn’t spoken at all, but when I told him I was kinned to Susan, Bradford smiled and was polite but she just ignored me like she really didn’t care — you know, the fiancée — or I guess I mean his wife because that’s what she is now, right,” and seeing the look on Sabrina’s face stopped — stopped for a moment in her insecurity and timidity to breathe — then said, “Well, whatever you wanna call her, she didn’t really seem to care until I mentioned I work with you and then she said, ‘We should invite her. You know, pumpkin. To the shower.’ I only went for you, Sabrina,” and Sabrina said, “Geez, it’s like I can’t trust you at all.”

“Sabi,” she said, “how can you even say that,” and Sabrina blinked, realizing Tessa was trying not to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she started to say, then didn’t, looking at Tessa as she sat in her chair, thinking here’s one more thing to feel bad about.

“I went for you,” Tessa whispered. “I know how much you love him. I thought I — I thought I might find something out, you know, something that you could use to get him back and then if you got him back, you might not feel so empty and alone all the time.”

And Sabrina who had never told Tessa the way that she felt, had never told anyone at all, didn’t quite know what to say. Finally, “Was he there?”

“Only for a minute.The male pop-in, you know how it goes. The groom’s not technically supposed to be there but he always swings by at the end so the old ladies can look at him and go, ‘Ooo.’”

“Who else went?”

Tessa shifted around in her chair. “Well, that’s the weird thing,” she said, “and actually that’s why I think I was invited now that I think about it. Outside of her grandma, it was really only your friends.”

“My friends,” fully aware that with Lizzie gone and Tessa a traitor, she did not have many left — not any who’d go to something like this, that is.

“Well, people who know you, I mean. Like Susan or Krystal. You know, Krystal — that girl who graduated right before us,” and Tessa was right. Krystal had gone to their college but not at the same time, had graduated the year before Sabrina started, but the fact that she and Tessa even knew her at all showed just how small Louisville was. Sabrina had met Krystal in grad school, Krystal crashing the department cocktail hour hoping to meet men, then finding computer geeks not quite her style, went home disappointed. She and Sabrina exchanged numbers, the whole social requisite of being part of the local alumni crowd, then almost never hung out. “How the fuck did she even know Krystal exists?” Krystal was obscure, a line in the address book, a tangential sometime pal.

“It was weird,” Tessa said, “just really weird and that’s part of why I didn’t tell you. I knew it’d make you mad. It was actually pretty creepy and not normal at all. When Krystal found out you weren’t coming, she just left.”

“Well,” Sabrina made this awkward halfway laugh, “it’s good to know somebody’s loyal.”

“I’m sorry, Sabi. I think we both genuinely thought you were invited.”

“Why would I be? You never ask the ex to wedding shit.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I know yesterday had to be hard on you. But at least the election’s soon and on the bright side you won’t have to look at them on tv anymore after that.”

Of course there was that, Sabrina had forgotten about that. She couldn’t bury herself in her job, could not move on, not when every damn day Bradford would be on the news. This was part of why she’d held onto this for so long to begin with, the rigors of casual dating not justification alone as Sabrina tried to move on, Krystal encouraging her to go to mixers not just for learning but to meet men too. But nothing ever clicked — no one was ever right —  spending more time with Frank than anyone else since college. “Do you think you’ll ever be over him,” Frank asked one night over bourbon, and “I don’t know,” she replied, “I hope.” And she meant it. But then Bradford got that job with Sessions and while deputy chief of staff wasn’t enough to put you in the news yourself, he spent a lot of time standing behind people who were. And the few alumni parties Sabrina went to with Frank, the times that under any other circumstances she would have thought might be a date or even something more, Frank reaching his arm across the car to trace his finger along her neck — just once and only once before Sabrina looked over and he moved it away — well, on those nights someone always brought up Bradford, the Taus would still be Taus, and no matter how far they were away from college, no one ever had anything new to say. Sabrina had been branded.

“I won’t vote for him,” Tessa said, like that would make it better, but then a bunch of people did, quite enough of them did, and so Bradford moved to DC and Sabrina’s periods stopped, but today all she felt was cheated.

Chapter Seven

Outside the church, Sabrina had been prepared to continue — not with this quest for Bradford, but with her life. Sitting in that car had been another of those moments, another moment where Lizzie could have pulled her back. Poor Tessa tried, but saying who she would and would not vote for didn’t matter. Sabrina needed Lizzie. “He’s not worth it, move on,” her friend would have said, “We don’t wanna get married anyway,” Indigo Girls blasting. “Just think how it messes up your taxes.”

But Sabrina had been a computer science major, not finance, and although Lizzie’s joke was not lost — or wouldn’t have been had Lizzie actually been there to make it — it didn’t matter. Sabrina had to do what Sabrina had to do.

And she’d somehow been okay. She really had been okay as Bradford and the first wife moved to DC and began to make their happy home, Frank saying “I don’t think I should be talking to you about this. Isn’t it kind of callous?,” Tessa continuing to make what she thought were helpful comments at work, Sabrina admitting defeat and going on the pill. But then the beltway shootings took DC by storm, the whole nation talking about some sniper taking out regular people here, regular people there, and Sabrina knew if she didn’t take it now, she’d lose the only shot she had left.

She did not want to be a bitch. No woman does when she’s young. No one begins their life thinking, when I grow up, I’m going to be cruel. I’m going to poison my college roommate and lose touch with my only friend and have to drug myself to fall asleep. But then it happens. Maybe it happens bit by bit, moment after moment where a person reaches out for — and does not find — love. Who knows exactly what makes us, Sabrina thought, shifting her finger to the trigger, feeling the smooth that lay beneath. Who knows why we become who we do at all.

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Terena Elizabeth Bell has published in The Atlantic, Playboy, The Yale Review, Natural Bridge, Juked, and others, including a Kentucky Writers’ Coalition anthology. Originally from Sinking Fork, Kentucky, she now lives in New York. FIRST WIFE is currently available for publication.

Follow Terena Elizabeth Bell on Twitter: @TerenaBell