My insurance paid off the car, a massive relief. I figured the Air Force investigators had given up trying to pin the arson on me. I’d missed my deployment date in January and had assumed someone else took my slot in Greece. But when I talked to the staff sergeant who was to be my new supervisor at Araxos, he said they’d never filled the slot. He said he’d try to push for new orders. And just before I got that new threat, true to his word, I received new orders to Greece. I thought the Air Force would let me go, if only to wash their hands of the problem.

But with this most recent note, being stuck at Shaw or getting kicked out of the Air Force was no longer my biggest fear, or the most likely outcome. The note clarified my priorities. I thought of Winchell. And I was terrified.

I called the Air Force investigators. They asked me if I’d touched the note. They took me over to their office, then led me down a hallway, into a room, told me to sit there in an office chair.

The room wasn’t very intimidating. No mirror on the wall. No metal chairs. Just a government-issue gray desk and three blue office chairs. Investigator Campbell was built like a linebacker, all shoulders and forehead. He was wearing a navy suit in mid-June. I wondered how many times the FBI had turned down his application before he took this job, Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He’d be playing bad cop. To his side was Investigator Maldonado. She was pregnant and getting into the role of good cop. Campbell waited while Maldonado tried to adjust her chair—the paddle that lowered the seat wasn’t working, so her legs didn’t reach the floor.

   They switched places.

I stared at the gold cross that had slipped out of Maldonado’s blouse during the chair ordeal. She played nice, but I knew she’d push for execution if she could. She tucked the necklace back in, cleared her throat, opened a folder. I half expected her first words to be, “Should we pray?” But they just sat there looking at me like it was a game to see who’d speak first. I looked at my hands. I asked for a lawyer from base legal. Even airmen have a right to a lawyer. I said I’d already spoken to one. Maldonado said I wasn’t a suspect. I shouldn’t need a lawyer. Not a very convincing good cop.

“When did you find the note? Who left the note? Is this the first time this has happened?”

“I want a lawyer. The base lawyer told me not to answer questions.”

“You’re not a suspect. This isn’t about your car. This is about the threats. We’re trying to help you.”

And the tears filled my eyes and I wiped them with the back of my hand. I wasn’t crying. My eyes were leaking. There is, in fact, a difference. The leaking happens when I’m frustrated.

Maldonado asked me, “Why are you so upset if you didn’t do anything?”

I told them I wanted a lawyer.

   They gave up after a while. Wrote some notes down in the folder. Maldonado said she had to eat something. Campbell took me to another room where another agent, a lab rat with dandruff and a yellow collar, spread ink on my hands and arms and took impressions. He pulled hair from random spots on my head for a DNA test.

I knew then they weren’t looking for who sent me death threats. They didn’t believe me. Though their initial investigation had stalled, they were still convinced I’d torched my own car.

They wanted my DNA because a rag had been stuffed in the gas tank. The rag never ignited. Whoever did torch my car filled it with gas and lit it that way after trying to light a rag in the pouring rain. The cops had found a hair on the rag. Campbell had mentioned it earlier, hoping for a reaction.

They let me go then. But I was pretty sure I was fucked. And I was really damn sure I wasn’t ever going to Greece.

One thing I learned late in life is there are people who are shocked when bad things happen to them. More than that. They expect good things to happen. There are others who tell you to think positive thoughts and focus on something pretty and the universe will hand it to you, like you have any significance, like the universe is a benevolent soul who cares about sweet little you with your pretty thoughts. Those are the same people who after something bad happens will tell you they totally had a dream about that. But no one ever calls to tell you not to go to work today because Steve from IT can’t get laid so he’s bringing a shotgun to work. No one tells you not to get on that plane. Only after your dog runs in front of a car will that friend, the friend who talks a lot about her journey, tell you she had a really bad feeling. She wishes she’d said something.

   I’m not one of those people. Sometimes I think I’d like to be. I’d like to have lived a life that allows me to believe if I want something bad enough, if I visualize positivity or whatever it is these people tell you, I’ll be rewarded with an easy life. Sometimes. Most of the time, I figure it’s better to know the universe doesn’t pay out favors for magical thinking. I’ve learned, if not to expect the worst, to not be surprised by the worst. I’ll cry in frustration when my Internet’s out, but when my car bursts into flames, well, that seems about right. When I’m blamed for it, yeah, that tracks. You can call it cynicism. I call it growing up in cult.

* * *

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The Children of God was one of the many cults that sprang up in the late ’60s and early ’70s. This one was founded by David Berg, a failed Pentecostal preacher and wildly successful alcoholic. In some other timeline they might’ve locked him up in a place he’d have to wear a bathrobe. In mine, he was free to try a number of career paths—soldier, legal secretary, taxi driver, preacher—until he found his calling. Referred to as Dad, Grandpa, or Moses David, he finally landed on a lifestyle that let him wear bathrobes all day.