The television in the other room blared with its volume almost up to the max. Doreen did it on purpose. Her hearing wasn’t that bad, no matter what she said about all her years on the bomb squad. She did it because she knew he would hear it no matter where he went in the house. It played political commentary all day.

They’d been married for forty three years. Thirty seven of them had been blissful. The last few years, unfortunately, had been rough. At first they disagreed over little things. Things like wearing a mask in public, like getting vaccinated, like not wanting kids locked up in cages. They were easy decisions for Frank but Doreen couldn’t handle it. She said she felt like she was being strangled and oppressed. Life together had only gotten worse from there.

Divorce had crossed his mind a couple times, but they’d made it this long together, and he hoped they would get through this rough patch. Every day was a little bit harder. Last month Doreen had moved into the guest bedroom. She stayed in there most of the time since that was also where her knitting and quilting supplies were stored. It gave her something to do, he supposed, while he was at work. It also gave her something to do while he was at home since she didn’t really come out much other than to eat.

“You going into work today?” Doreen’s voice, almost shouting to be heard over her television, startled him.

Frank had been in the process of putting on his shoes and he looked up to find her standing beside him with a package in her hands.

“You going to work?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Just about to head out and do my route.”

“Well take this,” she said, holding out the package for him to take. “I need it sent fast. I meant to send in earlier but forgot. You can have them ship it quick right?”

“I can overnight it,” he nodded again.

“That’ll skip all the security checks, right?”

He paused, about to tell her that, no, they still ran all the security checks, when he noticed how nervous she looked. For most people, they would sweat or shake when they got nervous, but not Doreen. She’d worked on the bomb squad for decades and Frank knew when she got nervous, she grew very still. Right now, the tremor in her right hand that had forced her into retirement was barely noticeable.

“I got a few packages that need to be sent quick, actually,” she said. “I’ll leave them on the table for you. I have some errands I need to run. Don’t wait up.”

She walked out of the room, presumably to put the packages on the table, and Frank just sat there, frozen in the middle of tying his shoelaces. The obvious question was why she would need her packages to skip the security checks, and there was any number of horrible reasons he could think of why she would want that. From where he sat he could see her car and he waited until she drove away. Then he finished tying his shoes and walked to the kitchen.

Half a dozen packages sat there. He checked the addresses and recognized the names. Politicians, comedians, and news anchors. His stomach clenched. These were not the people she listened to, but the people she most often ranted about.

Being a postman, he knew all the stories of people sending terrible things through the mail. These days it almost never happened, and when it did it was caught very quickly. Doreen had certainly become what he would consider polarized with her non-stop news but surely she wouldn’t do anything as awful as send bombs through the mail.

Would she?

He hefted one of the packages and it certainly wasn’t light. He set it back down and stepped back. He should call the police and at least have them take a look at it. They had x-ray machines and all sorts of tools to determine whether or not something was a bomb. Doreen used to talk at length about the new tools she was getting to use or wanted the department to acquire.

Frank had his cellphone out and was halfway to calling the police when he caught himself. What was he doing? Did he really think Doreen was capable of doing something like that? Well, she certainly knew how to make a bomb, but she wasn’t the type of person who would send a bomb in the mail. She’d been on the bomb squad. She was one of the good guys.

Right?

“It won’t hurt to check,” he told himself and dialed the number.

He didn’t call 9-1-1, but instead called the non-emergency number. It made him feel like he wasn’t overreacting.

“I have a suspicious package that I need checked,” he told the officer when they picked up.

“Have you called 9-1-1?” they asked.

“No.”

“Okay, next time do that first. Let me get some information from you really quick.”

He gave them his address and other information and then waited. It only took a couple minutes before the bomb squad arrived.

“Frank, that you?” One of the techs asked when he let them into the house. “I thought I recognized the address. Where’s Doreen?”

“Not now Carl,” Frank said.

Everything seemed more serious now that they were actually there and he didn’t feel like chatting with Doreen’s old co-workers. He showed them into the kitchen and gestured to the pile of packages.

“You mind if we get that television turned off?” Carl asked.

Frank was so used to having Doreen’s tv on and blaring that he had forgotten to shut it off. He walked over to her room and tried to go in but the door was locked. That was both odd and disturbing. Why would Doreen need to lock her door, especially when she was out running errands?

“Sorry fellas,” Frank told the bomb techs, “her door’s locked.

They’d been looking over the packages the same as he’d done previously and their relaxed expressions were gone now, replaced with looks of deep concern.

“Where’d these come from, Frank?” Carl asked.

“Doreen asked me to send them out this morning.”

The techs all exchanged serious looks.

“Where’s Doreen now?” Carl asked.

“She said she had some errands to run.”

Carl got on his radio and called in for officers to begin looking for her.

“What’s her car’s make and model?” Carl asked.

Frank told him, as well as the license plate number and Carl relayed that into his radio.

“Alright Frank, I’m going to have you go wait outside,” Carl said. “We’re going to take a little look inside these packages and see what we can find.”

They were already unpacking the x-ray machine as Frank walked out into the front yard. There were a couple of chairs on the front porch and he grabbed one as he walked by, towing it behind him. He put the chair on the sidewalk and sat down facing away from the house. He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long. Either there was nothing to worry about and the techs would be gone in a few minutes and he could get back to his regular activities, or he’d be told to get a lot farther away and life would become a lot more stressful.

He heard the footsteps behind him and knew at once what they meant. They were moving quickly, but not running. No one on the bomb squad ever ran. If you needed to run, you were already too late.

“Frank,” Carl’s voice told him everything he needed to know.

“How far away do I need to get?” Frank asked, standing and picking up his chair.

“We’re doing a three block radius.”

Frank whistled. “That’s pretty big,” he said. “How much did she cram into those boxes?”

“It’s not just those,” Carl said. “We think her room’s set to blow, too. Do you know where she might be?”

“No idea,” Frank admitted. “We haven’t exactly been on the best terms…for a while now.”

Carl looked as though he was about to say something but he stopped himself. “Three blocks,” he said instead.

Behind Carl, more of the bomb squad was coming out of the house and going door to door in the neighborhood, beginning the process of clearing everyone out.

Frank carried his chair with him while he walked, wondering how this could have happened. Shouldn’t he have seen the signs that led up to this? Hindsight was 20/20, they say, but even still he had a hard time believing Doreen would do this. Yet all the proof he needed was behind him in his house, on his kitchen table, and in the guest bedroom.

On the bright side, this gave him his answer for what to do about his marriage.