"We aren't going to need to buy this, are we?"

The wife's question was hopeful, but I suspect she was already afraid of the answer. Why else would she show it to me?

We were in a bookstore, in the mall. Killing time as new tires were put on the SUV. It was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.

I looked at the book in her hand, and recognized it from the internet publicity immediately.

No! I answered, perhaps too quickly.

Why would I want to read about that?

Before she could put it back on the shelf, I snatched the hardback out of her hands. And opened it to any old random page.

And started to read.

And already learned things I did not know.

I turned to another page, farther back in the book. Again, the words captivated me, and told me things I did not know.

I closed it quietly, almost reverently, and slid it under my wife's arm. Along with the other books we would be buying that day.

She didn't say anything.

That book sat wrapped tightly in its plastic shopping bag, beside my side of the bed, until last weekend.

I just couldn't open it.

But something last weekend, maybe the heat, maybe the release from having my reports done... something made me unwrap that thick volume.

And start to read.

I finished it on the 4th.

Much of what I knew about these two incidents, which are actually just one, was garnered from newspaper accounts, letters to the editor, and whispered gossip.

So much of it was wrong.

And yet, the gist of the story? The essential truths, not the niddling facts?

Unfortunately, that I had right.

And now, I know the rest of the story. At least, I assume I do. The author got the murders of Ellen Watson and James Averell all wrong, so maybe he wasn't so careful with the facts on this one, either. 'Course, he's a newspaperman, and it was the newspapers that pushed the lies and coverup on the Watson and Averell murders in 1889, so maybe that's to be expected. Even this many years later.

But the two lives lost at this bridge? Well, they have whole names in my memories now. And, perhaps sadly, faces.

When next I stop on this bridge, and say hello...

I will know who I am talking to.

At least, better than I did before.