Al glanced at me with sharp eyes. “I just want to hear it from you,” he said smoothly.
A wedge of fear pierced my heart and I shivered. “Do you…do you think I have something to do with his death?” My voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “Do you think I was involved in killing my fiancé?”
Al shook his head. “No,” he said calmly. “But we want all the information possible on Mr. Bennett.”
I shifted, feeling scared. There was no way I’d had anything to do with killing him – wasn’t that obvious?
“We met at a graduate school open house,” I said slowly. “He was there with another girl, and he gave me his card and I gave him my number. He kept calling me, but I never called him back until he told me that he’d dumped his girlfriend.” I blushed. Recalling and talking about the memory felt like walking barefoot over a pile of broken glass and fire ants.
“I see,” Al said. He scribbled an untidy column of handwriting. “And when did he ask you to marry him?”
“Well, I guess we talked about marriage from the beginning,” I said slowly. “But he asked me about a year ago, close to our three year anniversary.” I blushed. “I don’t actually know the date of our anniversary,” I confessed. “I mean, I didn’t know what to count it – the day we met, or the day we went out for the
first time? Or the day he asked me to be his girlfriend?” I shrugged. A hollow feeling was spreading through my chest and limbs. “I don’t really know,” I said again. “I know that sounds bad.”
“It doesn’t sound bad,” Al said, but he didn’t look up. “What was Michael like at home?”
I sighed. “He was kind of a perfectionist,” I said. “He was very traditional – he wanted things done his way, or not at all. He didn’t really seem much like a modern guy, to be honest. I mean, he was kind of like a guy from the fifties.”
“How do you mean?” Al tapped his notebook with the tip of his pen.
I shrugged. “Like, he wanted me to quit working as soon as we got married – he said it was embarrassing because he made so much money. But we didn’t really live like he made all that money – we were still in the same condo he bought before he met me.”
Al nodded. “So he was pragmatic?”
“I guess that’s a word for it,” I said slowly. “He just…um, he just wanted things done his way. Everything had to be clean all the time, and he wanted me to consult with him before doing something like making a meal plan for the week.”
Al nodded. “And what happened last night?”
I blushed. “What?”
“How was last night?” Al asked. “Did he come home at the usual time? How did he seem to you?”
I narrowed my eyes. “He was a little late,” I said. My blush deepened as our fight came rushing back into my mind. “And he was upset that I’d made pasta without asking him what he wanted for dinner.”
Al nodded. “Was this typical?”
“A little,” I said. “I don’t really know.”
“Did you two fight?”
I cringed. My heart skipped a beat and my stomach felt ice-cold, like something had pushed me into a bucket of freezing water.
“I guess,” I said slowly. “He was upset – he went out, so I cleaned the living room. I went to bed before he got home. And then he came home drunk, which isn’t really like him. He tried to have sex with me, but…” I trailed off, blushing and biting my lip.
“But?” Al looked at me with clinical detachment. “Did something happen?”
“I wasn’t really in the mood,” I said softly. “I didn’t want to sleep with him, we still hadn’t talked about our fight.”
“And did that make him angry?”
I nodded, feeling more miserable than ever. It felt grotesque and awful that I was sitting in a police station discussing my personal life with my fiancé. I knew that Michael would have hated me talking about our lives like this…he was always private, he never wanted anyone to know the details – bad or good – of our relationship. He said it wasn’t anyone’s business but our own.
“It did,” I said after a long pause. “He went and slept in the other room. And then, this morning, he had left for work by the time I woke up.”
“I see,” Al said. “How was the rest of your relationship?”
“What do you mean, exactly?”