St. Jean, Quebec, July 2001. It was only a modest parcel. My course staff stared accusations at me anyway. I could sense their curiosity. I could sense their rage. I could sense my thigh muscles pulled slingshot tight to keep me upright in the fugue of basic training existence.

The term “Triune brain” or “Lizard brain” was proposed in the 1960s as a kind of survival mechanism, responding at speed when higher brain functions are inadequate to a situation.

My warrant demanded to know who’d sent it. The whites showed all around his eyes. We’d recently learned about bomb threats. I denied it was for me.  After all, I was nearly impossible to reach. I used a greasy pay phone to contact family and friends. The iPhone wouldn’t be released for another five years. Almost no one had the address for the Mega―the military training facility so deep in French-speaking Quebec it felt like enemy territory―and I’d neither asked for nor expected mail.

My nails chattered along the cardboard, fought to pierce the tape, but there was nothing inside the parcel worthy of my shakiness. It was candy. Strawberry red licorice. Caramel-filled chocolate bars. Acid-bright jellybeans. And one green toy army truck with working doors and windable tires that would shoot it across the room.

Howard Richmond had sent me my first care package. My friend. I felt warm and safe for the first time in weeks.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, July 2013. I learned that Melissa Richmond was missing a week before my wedding, learned that she was dead only days later. I don’t pray. But I mentioned the Richmonds in my wedding speech―how we must hold onto love with our fists lest it escape. That night before bed, I texted Howard my sorrow for him and his wife. He responded that love is precious.

Pembroke, Ontario, the 90s. We’d collided at the Kiwanis Club where we learned live action role-playing. We played rock-paper-scissors and pretended to be vampires. LARPers. The lowest of the nerd pecking order.

In the vampire game, Howard was the insane prince, ruthless yet fair. In real life he had everyone roaring with laughter at his delightfully accurate gorilla impression. In the vampire game, I was queen of the harpies, the prince’s diplomatic enforcer. In real life he handed me a piece of rebar that I bruised my hands on while trying to bend. He offered to get me ice.

He had an underbite and a shit-eating grin. And nothing was too sacred to be made fun of―not religion, not bodily functions, and certainly not himself.

Howard taught me to cook meatballs so delectable a once upon a time boyfriend’s roommate proposed to me for making them.

He named his useless ginger cats Genghis and Kubla and held movie nights at his place where half a dozen of us heckled David Bowie or Monty Python or Rowan Atkinson on screen.

Howard stitched the most delicate needlepoint, intricate celtic knots and dragons. He could wield a thirty-pound sword and spar like it was weightless.

In his bathroom, I found a toothbrush with enamel-destroying bent bristles beside a meticulously clean and perfectly rolled Colgate tube. He used to sleep with a handgun he called Baby under his pillow. I slept on the couch and felt safer than I ever had at home.

Ottawa, Ontario, the Aughts. Howard told me about his deployed movie nights. In Afghanistan, people would watch “Deathcam,” the video feeds from American predator drones, would watch the conversion of living man to pink mist while eating popcorn. I laughed but it pinched my heart, this loss of innocence.

My best friend, Alice, lived with Howard for years. I thought they were terrible for each other. Caught between defence and condemnation; I chose inaction. And I never asked what happened to Baby.

Melissa came after. She was gentle, with a smile like the sun bursting from a cloud. She met Howard at another LARP, not vampiric but medieval. He knelt at her feet. He pledged himself to her on his sword. They bought a house near Winchester.

The term for killing one’s wife is uxoricide. It doesn’t slide off the tongue like infanticide or fratricide. It sticks at the back of the throat, like a bit of mucous you can’t quite dislodge.

Winchester, Ontario, August 2013. While I celebrated newlywed bliss in the Loire valley, the police found the murder weapon. It was bound up in bloody clothes, a modest parcel tucked between the overhead beams in Howard’s basement.

I reread the messages we’d exchanged. I stared at the toy truck holding pride of place on my bookshelf. I sifted through my LARPing paraphernalia. I tried not to think of words like stab, like gush, like scream.

Ottawa, Ontario, October 2015. While waiting for the work shuttle to take me to a prenatal appointment I heard two officers talking about a prison inmate who’d been beaten so badly he couldn’t attend a court appearance. “Running his mouth,” one said. “Serves him right,” said the other. My knuckles whitened over my fists, then I walked away. Caught between defence and condemnation; I chose inaction.

Kingston, Ontario, 2019. My toddler son played with the green army truck so much that it broke. I wanted to visit Howard, my old friend, to tell him I still cared, to give him a respite from the isolation of jail. “You owe him nothing,” another friend said.

I pronounced the toy truck “Unfixable.” I threw it in the trash. But I still picture it on the bookcase. I’m still holding onto it.