The Policeman’s Wife

[Valin]

City Journal:

A story seldom told

Jack Dunphy

July 12, 2016

 

As day turns into night, the young mother’s routine proceeds as usual. Her husband, who works the evening shift as a police officer, left home hours earlier, leaving it to her to prepare dinner and feed the children, then see to it that they are bathed and put to bed. These things are done, and it’s almost nine o’clock. She has a little time to relax and watch some television.

 

Near the television set are family photographs, some featuring her husband in his uniform: this one on his police academy graduation day; another of the two of them, younger and still childless; others of him and the kids as they grow. She occasionally may glance at the pictures as she watches television, but only rarely does she pause to consider what that uniform means and the danger it signifies. She has done so more often lately, but she has shared this only with her closest friends, not with her husband. She trusts—for she must trust—that he will go off to work in the afternoon and come home sometime after midnight, often to rise early the next day to appear in court. It sometimes seems to her that she is a single mother. Her friends sometimes ask if she worries. Not often, she tells them. Yes, it can be difficult at times, but this is who, and what, she married.

 

She knows her husband is working downtown tonight, where a Black Lives Matter protest is being held. These events can be emotionally fraught, he has told her, but he and his coworkers are well prepared and expect no trouble. He has sent her a few texts, letting her know that things have gone smoothly and are winding down. She turns on the news to see it for herself.

 

And then it happens.

 

(Snip)