The Girl She Used to Be (3 page)

One thing I am sure Farquar never liked about my most recent locale was the proximity to his office. He’s based out of Baltimore,
a mere twenty-minute ride from Columbia. And within thirty minutes of my call to him, here I am, seated in a cold, sterile
conference room on the third floor of the Garmatz Federal Courthouse on West Lombard Street. I’ve seen the inside of so much
government office space that it’s come to feel more like home than any new address they’ve ever assigned to me. Phoenix, Little
Rock, Raleigh, Louisville, Albuquerque—I’ve visited them all. I’ve had to sit on the same hard chairs and drink the same lousy
coffee for two decades of my brief life. And here I am again, feeling like I’m under investigation, about to be given the
cold, hard news about my future, with all the limited options of a heartless killer—except an attorney.

Three sips into my mud and Farquar comes strolling in. He looks thin and ill and about three or four years late for his retirement.

“McCartney,” he says, tossing my file—now a solid two inches thick—down on the metal table. I let it resound for a few seconds
before I respond.

“It’s been awhile,” is my meager response. I cannot look him in the eye.

He sits down and sighs through his nose, hard, like he’s trying to make a point. All I notice is that he forced something
out of his right nostril that has become lodged on the edge of his mustache.

“It’s been less than two years,” he says. “Do you know some of my cases I have not seen since we put them into the program?”

“You mean the dead ones?”

“This isn’t a joke. We’ve tried to accommodate you every way we can. You wanted to live more urban, so we did that. You wanted
to have a job involving math, so we got you one. And now here you are on our doorstep again. You think spending another hundred
grand to relocate you—yet once more—is funny?”

I sit up. “Are we going to have this conversation again?” I lean toward him and give him a reminder of why I am here in the
first place. “You want to talk about
cost
, Farquar? You wanna put a monetary value on my parents—both dead—so that the feds could spend millions on a trial they’d
eventually lose anyway? You owe me,
big
—for the rest of my life.”

He stands up, in a nonconfrontational manner, but I stand to match him anyway. He’s about three inches taller than my five-foot-seven
stature, but I can pretty much look him straight in the eye—though I can’t help but stare at that thing on his mustache. I
want to hammer him some more but I feel compelled to say something.

“Listen, uh, you got a—”

“I’m officially off your case.” He looks down and puts his hands in his pockets.

As pathetic a protector as he was—even a pathetic government contact—he was
my
protector, my safety net. He was the only guy I knew in the system, in WITSEC. Ever.

“Wh—why?”

He makes eye contact again. “I’m leaving.” He pauses for effect, it seems. “I’m done. I’m out. I can’t handle it anymore.”

I sit back down and slouch and all I can think of is how incredibly tired I am of
starting anew
.

“It’s just time for me to go,” he continues. “I’m sixty, and I’ve been here for almost thirty years and… I don’t know,
things have changed. The priorities have changed.” He scratches his beard and the thing drifts from his upper lip into the
dusty oblivion below. I’m thankful. “It’s just time.”

“When’s your last day?”

“One week from today.”

I bristle. The only person who ever understood me was Farquar—understood me in a sense that I met him when I was six, the
day we entered the program, and has been the only recurring character in my weird drama. I consider saying something but I
merely phase out, stare into the distance.

Farquar sits on the table in front of me and puts his hand on my head and strokes my hair gently, like I imagine my father
might have at this moment. “You’ve got to make this the last time, okay? The last time. They won’t allow this to continue.”
He bolts up from the table and walks to the door and I feel like, yet again, I am losing the only static person in my life.
“Deputy Marshal Douglas will be taking over your case. He’ll be in shortly.”

I hold my breath and watch as he reaches the door.

He turns back and smiles and says, “Good-bye…
Michelle
.”

And as the door closes behind him, I writhe; I don’t want to be a Michelle.

I sip the last cold drops of coffee from my foam cup and begin to wonder what is taking Douglas so long. A few laughs at his
new project with Farquar? Maybe making a few more Internet stock trades before having to spend the afternoon with the problem
child in conference room number three? All I want is to go through the typical debriefing and document signing and be off
and running with my new persona. I want my new moniker and my new address and my new hourly wage and my new apartment where
I can set up my baby monitors and alphabetize my carryout menus. I want my new bed where I can dream of a person I can never
be: myself.

The door eventually opens but the only thing I see is a meaty hand on the knob. I hear a voice and the end of a conversation
with an unseen party, a laugh, and, finally, words in the form of a whisper, “No… unfortunately, I’m going to be in here
the rest of the day.”

And then U.S. Deputy Marshal Douglas welcomes himself into my life.

Time freezes for a moment as we size each other up. The first thing I notice—that anyone would notice—is his size. Easily
standing six-foot-four, he has the build of a football-player-turned-coach. The guy was probably in great shape about five
years ago; he doesn’t show obvious signs of flab but he’s definitely softening. The next thing I notice is his hair, which
is short, but full and thick and black, in an Irish way, not Mediterranean. His eyes, too, blue like cobalt, speak of a northern
influence and fade into not another color but a deeper hue of the same. Smooth skin, firm chin, pointed nose. I’ve forgotten
Farquar already. Then he smiles and all I see are white beams and dimples and I feel like I’m looking at Matthew McConaughey
and I wait for the matching goofy southern drawl to dribble out but instead he puts out his hand for a shake—oddly, his
left
hand—and instead of shaking it, I sink at the sight of a bright gold wedding band.

This is not my day.

“You’ll earn a promotion for taking this case, you know.” I half stand and reach out to shake. His hand is big and warm. But
so is that freaking wedding band.

He holds my hand for an unusually long time and I sit back down while still in his grip. Finally, he lets go and stands back.
He stares at me, gently, and all he says is, “Melody.”

The fact that he chose to say my real name as the first word between us has already won my favor.

His stare acts as a reminder that he’s sized me up too, that he’s noticed I’m frazzled: no lipstick, smeared eyeliner, hair
akimbo. I want to tell him
I really look better than this
but all I can deliver is, “Marshal Douglas.” I better get used to saying those words; they will probably come out of my mouth
again—in another eighteen months.

His smile fades, but he keeps those blues right on me and I’m starting to wonder if Farquar’s vivacious nose chunk made its
way to my face. I involuntarily brush my lip a few times.

“Before we start,” he says, “is there anything you need?”

“I don’t want to be a Michelle.”

“I meant, like… food or a trip to the rest room.”

“Oh.” I shake my head and rub my temples.

He opens my file and starts perusing it for what seems like the very first time and I start getting a little fumed. Somehow
I know this is Farquar’s fault but I take it out on Douglas instead.

“You’re a little young to be a marshal, aren’t you?”

He looks up and smiles and suddenly I’m staring at McConaughey again.

“I’m thirty-three.” He looks back down at the file, but continues, “I’ve been with the Marshals Service for about… eight
years. With WITSEC for three. Before that I was with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“What?” I smirk. “Who leaves the FBI to come to the Marshals Service?”

He ignores me, but shifts his body enough to signal that I’ve touched a sore spot.

He closes the file and shoves it away, almost right off the table. “You can call me Sean.” He stares at me again and smiles
a little, puts his elbows on the table, clasps his hands and rests his chin between his knuckles.

I start to blush—and I’m really not in the mood. This is outside my realm of control. I point to the folder. “Don’t, um… don’t you want to familiarize yourself with my case?”

“That file is full of other people’s opinions of you, of your history, of who you are. I’d rather hear it from you.”

“We’ll be here all week.” I laugh a little, nervously. He stares into me and I quickly feel ineffectual.

“If that’s what it takes.” He says this like he’s trying to win me over, in a professional but sublimely sensual way, that
maybe, at some point in his life, he learned the only way he could garner the trust of a woman was by charming her, seducing
her. He leans on the table, close to me, like he wants me to meet him halfway for a kiss, and I find myself reading his irises
like a favorite novel. He closes the deal with, “I will do whatever it takes.”

I swallow, hard enough that I’m sure he hears the gulp.

Regardless of how convenient it would be to have a marshal as a lover, I break myself away and remember where I am and why
I am here—or, rather, why I put myself here—and that there is nothing charming or sexy about the Federal Witness Protection
Program, their generic suburban addresses, and their boring names.

“Well,
Sean
… I guess I can start with how this is all my fault. How I managed to kill my parents.”

He slowly sits back in his chair, rests his hands on his stomach, and begins to twist his wedding band around his finger,
as though it’s his only weapon against me.

“I’m not a psychotherapist, so if you want to go down that path you can become Michelle Smith or some other faceless digit
and we’ll send you on your way to rural Wisconsin.” He inhales deeply. “Or… you can help me understand what makes you
tick. And we’ll get you a better life.”

“You guys have done such a great job so far in—”

“I’m not Farquar.”

We stare at each other for a moment and with the patience of a dog I am determined to stare him down. He looks like he’s trying
to read me—like he actually
is
a psychotherapist, or studied the discipline at some point—and as I feel my eyes yearning to look away, to blink, I slowly
raise my arms above my head and put my hair into a ponytail to see if he’ll let his eyes stray to my chest.

Alas, his eyes do make the journey away from mine, but not to my breasts. Instead he glances up at my hair and raises a curious,
slightly disapproving eyebrow.

Call me
samurai
.

I look down and slowly pull the band from my hair as I say, “No, you see… I did cause my parents’ death—I mean, indirectly.”
I purse my lips. “You familiar with the Bovaro family?”

“You’re kidding, right? I work for the Justice Department.”

“I know, Sean, but since you were probably fourteen when this happened, I figured it might not be
fresh
.” I begin tapping my empty coffee cup, staring at the black residue lining the bottom. “You know what led to the arrest of
Tony Bovaro?”

“Your parents?”

“No,” I say with a sigh, “eggs, actually.”

“Eggs.”

“Eggs Romana, to be exact.”

He frowns.

“It’s got, like, celery and parsley and Parmesan in it, and you finish it with a little red pe—”

“About Tony Bovaro,” he says, inhaling and holding a breath as though this afternoon will be even longer than he’d imagined.

“Right. At the time, we were living in the Caldwells, and genuine Italian food was in short supply in our particular corner
of New Jersey. My dad used to take my mother and me to Little Italy for our birthdays so we could really savor the experience,
you know? Not just the food, but the people, the culture, the gentle flow of the Italian language.” I stare at the cup and
focus; eye contact at this point is impossible.

“I was the only child so far, with one in my mom’s belly—a younger brother in the making—so I pretty much got whatever I wanted
out of unconditional parental love.” I grimace. “And for whatever reason, I woke early on this especially bleak Sunday morning
in late March and asked in my most sincere, sweet six-year-old voice if we could hop in the car and go to my favorite place
in Little Italy, this dump called Vincent’s, that made the most extraordinary eggs Romana.”

I stop and eventually look up at Sean. He is paying close attention.

“The older guy who seemed to run the place—I never knew if he was Vincent or not—he used to bring me my order. Just mine.
He would, uh… he’d put my breakfast on the table and speak to me in Italian and pinch my cheeks and hold my chin in his
hand and reel off the most beautiful words I had ever heard.
Dolce, bella, angelo, perfetto
. I’d smile and giggle and savor the tastiest eggs I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

Sean passes a smile my way. “That’s sweet.”

My vision blurs as I recall the memory. “No, the sweet part is coming. My mother explained to me that this man, the owner,
had something called Alzheimer’s disease and that he had no idea who I was each time I came in.” My eyes are slow to refocus.
“You see, he thought I was this perfect, pretty angel every time, and every time was the
first
time.” I pause. “Do you know how beautiful that made me feel?”

He doesn’t answer. Good for him.

“Anyway, this particular morning, I really wanted to go to Vincent’s. My folks reluctantly agreed, so we piled into the Oldsmobile
and headed to New York. When we got there, however, the place was closed.” I begin to sober, the images coming faster. “My
dad was determined to please his little girl so, after checking out the sign in the window, which clearly stated they should
be open at seven in the morning, he suggested we find another place. Well, I didn’t relent. I wanted eggs Romana and the nice
man who spoke Italian flatteries.”