When I asked Cindy to give me a noun, a location, and an emotion, she obligingly provided forks, driveway, and regret.

I won't cop-out and write "I regret killing you with a fork on the driveway." However...

Gerring sat carefully down at the table. "Alright, ma'am, can you explain to us what happened today, from the top?"

She took a sip from her pink, snowflaked glass. "Aren't you just all business? I've told people a dozen times already today, if not a hundred."

Gerring nodded slowly, patiently. "I know, ma'am, but we need you to tell us just one more time, for documentation.”

She folded her arms and squinted into the distance with a tiny sigh. “I loved him once, officer. A long time ago. We went to school together.”

“Ma’am, if you could just—”

“He carried my books for me, too,” she laughed shortly. “We played cat and mouse games for years after that. And then,” her mouth tightened with ill-humor, “I married the man.

“That was my first mistake. Don’t get me wrong, Officer Gerring, I didn’t think so then. I thought we would grow old together, happy as a pair of fools can possibly be. I even knew that we’d have our fights sometimes – hence the fools part – but I always believed that we’d get through them.

“And then she came along. He met her selling kitchenware door to door, just this pretty little thing with a million-dollar smile,” she sniffed derisively. “She came to the door with an apron on and a bowl of cake batter still in her hands. What he didn’t know then was that cake was the only thing she could make: burned everything else to boot leather and ash. But that didn’t matter, apparently…she invited the man in for a piece of cake – my man, mind you – wearing the suit that I tailored to fit him, even.

“He came home late that day, but with the biggest smile I think I have ever seen on his face, talking about how one little homemaker was going to buy about one of everything. More like he gave her one of everything…they were building their little home together while he was still snoring in my bed. I don’t mind so much that he changed his mind; mostly just that he wasn’t man enough to tell me right off. I finally figured it out one day when he came home smelling like a bakery with chocolate on his collar. Woo! I sure lit into him! I don’t think I’ve cussed that much since the boys at school tried to…well. At least he didn’t try to tell me that he’d gotten a new job and forgot to tell me about it or some foolishness like that. But the only thing he could say to me was that he was sorry, so I left it at that and threw him out. Cussing all the way, of course. Do you cuss, officer?"

"Ah, no. Not when I can help it."

"Shame. Sometimes cussing is better than prayer, they say. Anyway, about a week later he took what he could fit in one suitcase, and I went back to the job I had before we were married. I forgot how much I liked it, working I mean, and I came to find out I was good at it. Soon I bought a new house in another part of town, less lonely, see, and mostly just forgot about him. Every now and then a man would pass by with something like the way his aftershave smelled on, and my blood would boil, no matter how kindly the man tried to smile at the crazy woman glowering at him.” She picked up her glass for another sip.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, could you please just tell us what happened...this afternoon?”

“Look now, sir, if you want me to tell it yet again, you’re going to let me tell it how I want to!” She was still holding the glass, but one long, threatening finger was pointed directly at his heart. She pretended not to notice him fidget as she took a swallow of water. “Now, where was I?”

“I, er, don’t know–”

“Oh, that’s right. Eventually even the smell of his aftershave stopped bothering me. Then…well, I was minding my own business this afternoon, tying the tomato plants out there, and this salesman walked up the driveway.

“He’d lost weight, I could see, and had a shabbier coat on then I would have let him go out in. He didn’t recognize me…tried to sell me a set of flatware, ‘wonderfully sturdy,’ ‘elegant and simple’. They were nice, but all I really saw was how run down he was, how he didn’t care a bit for what he was selling or who he was selling it to anymore, he just wanted to have it over with for the day and didn’t even care too much for going home, either. I’d taken a fork of his, to pretend to look at it so I could watch him for a minute. Then, I think for just a minute, he thought he recognized me, and had the nerve to look scared. What kind of man is scared of a woman he’s done wrong, when she’s so over and past it that she doesn’t even care? I knew then that he was just plain done, a dog kicked too many times.”

“And?”

She gave Gerring a deprecating look. “And I took the fork and I killed him with it. And you know what, I might regret marrying him, but I don’t regret killing him a bit. So you can take me away now, Mr. Smarty-Pants Police-Officer Gerring.” She held out her thin wrists with a pretentious air.

Gerring shook his head at his supervising doctor behind him, who was flipping through her charts. “See? I told you she was gone. Her husband died twenty-eight years ago."

The doctor visibly started. He looked Gerring, his eyebrows almost at the ceiling.

"Of stab wounds."