Unfaithful?

The fall I moved back to New Mexico, 2002, Susan's husband shot her multiple times and then he shot himself. These events aren't related, except they could have been. Their bodies were discovered by a friend.

I met Susan when I moved to New Mexico the first time. I thought I wanted to be a writer and went looking for others suffering the same affliction. I attended a meeting of aspiring writers - and Susan struck up a conversation. Not long after, she invited me to join a workshop that met in Corrales, a village along the Rio Grande where she lived. These were good people and good writers and I enjoyed being with them.

We fast became friends. We met for coffee, we went to a movie, we drove to Santa Fe. I proof-read her first novel, and we talked it through. Susan loved to talk. She called me most every weekday morning. She'd call from the small office she rented and where she wrote. I'd still be asleep when she called but I'd pretend otherwise and we'd talk. Mostly she talked.

Susan talked about her two daughters. They made her proud. She talked about her husband and her marriage. Some mornings she cried. There was intimacy. It became uncomfortable. I wanted to stop. I didn't want to stop. I stopped it like this: I sent her a card, or I left it in her car - I don't remember anymore, except that I did it in writing. A coward's way.

We never really talked again. I ran into her at a PEN Christmas party and we said hello. I saw her at another party and again hello. Later I moved to California. When I moved back to New Mexico, I moved to Corrales. The town where our writer's group had met, and where Susan still lived. A mutual friend mentioned to her that I was back and living in Corrales. She asked him to tell me to call. She'd like to say hello.

I never called and I never saw her around town. And then she was dead.