Free Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan Page A

felt so empty. My flip-flops echo down the hall toward the kitchen, where I pour a glass of Australian Shiraz. “Josh’s favorite,” pops into mind before I can prevent it. With Botox trailing after me into the dining room, I decide to torture myself.
    Picking up Mom’s wedding album from the dining room table, I curl up on the living room couch. “Where Josh and I sat” pops into mind.
    The handsomely textured black album, thick metal-edged pages bound together, is the size of a Manhattan phone book. It opens with a creak, fragrant of leather, showing Mom and Ethan, smiling as only newlyweds can, on the first page. Her gossamer dove-gray dress, elegantly couture; Ethan, blissed out, one arm around his new bride. I turn the page, knowing what’s next. Steeling myself to see it. Unable to resist.
    An August breeze had lifted my layers of ice-pink chiffon, not as Pepto-Bismol as I’d feared, into a graceful flutter, and the photographer had caught just the moment when Josh and I had locked eyes, laughing.
    I turn the heavy page with a sigh. Penny, her first time as flower girl, showing off the pearlized Mary Janes she’d refused to take off for days. My best friend Maysie,five months pregnant, watching her husband, Max, and the kids lead a rambunctious conga line at the reception.
    Me, catching the bouquet.
    The photograph taunts me. I look happy. Which suddenly now is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
    Maybe this is payback from the universe. Maybe I’ve already gotten my happiness in my career and it’s greedy to want more. A confident and blazingly attractive man, who respected my work and couldn’t keep his hands off me. An adorable daughter, part of life I thought I’d missed. Instant family.
    Maybe I wanted it too much. And so I misjudged Josh. Focused on fantasy instead of reality. Mom knew what she wanted. And Maysie.
    I slam the album—and all it represents—closed. How do you know it’s the real thing? Maybe if you have to ask, it isn’t.
    The last word I said to Josh was “whatever.”
    I feel one tear straggle down my cheek. And then, the doorbell rings.
     
     
    I slide back the chain and open my front door. Slowly. With each click of a link, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Detective Christopher Yens of the Massachusetts State Police had introduced himself through the still-chained door. He keeps holding up his gold statie badge and ID card as he eases his lanky frame into my entryway. He’s wearing a leather jacket, jeans, a tiny radio clipped to his shoulder, and what I read as an apologetic smile.
    “Sorry, Miz McNally, to bother you so late,” he says. He flips his badge wallet closed and tucks it into an inside pocket, then pulls out a tattered spiral notebook. He pats a pocket with his palm, then another, thenbrushes back a shock of almost-auburn hair. Another apologetic look. Adorable schoolboy who needs another hall pass and knows he’ll get it. “May I bother you for a pen?”
    “Sit here, I’ll get one,” I say. I turn down my CD of Puccini for Lovers and wave him to a dining room chair, pushing today’s pile of mail to the other end of the table.
    “May I bring you a glass of water?” I ask. I can get one for myself at the same time. It’s probably more my fraying emotions than the glass of Shiraz that’s making my brain fuzzy, but whatever. I’m uncomfortably aware I’m not at the top of my game. I sneak a peek at myself in the microwave glass, but it’s impossible to tell the extent of the damage. Maybe it’s better not to know how tear-stained I am.
    I search the fridge for two unopened bottles of Poland Spring. It’s possible I shouldn’t have let this Detective Yens inside, but there’s an iconic, unfakeable navy-and-gray car with Mass State Police decals on the top and sides parked on the street below. So I’m certain he’s a real statie. I’m considering whether I should call Toni DuShane, the station’s legal Amazon. Maybe I ought to get her