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  67. 3:46 a.m.

There is a Tupperware container with a pink post-it note on it: For Henry, Don’t Touch.

Bonnie, with the help of Isabel I presume, had whipped up a big pot of chili.

I toss the Tupperware in the microwave, eat a banana, and gulp down a couple glasses of water while I wait, then take the chili to a small office where I assume Bonnie keeps her computer.

It is 3:09 a.m.

In the middle of a small desk is a laptop.

I check my email but there is nothing from Ingrid. Then I check the news. It is absolute madness.

The only other thing I can compare the media blitz to is 9/11.

President Sullivan Abducted!

Nationwide Manhunt for Terrorists!

Will President Sullivan be Executed?

Does ISIS Have the President?

Arabs Detained All Across the Country.

The details concerning the President’s abduction are vague — there is no mention of Red, Marshall, or Billy, nor my father’s house, the wedding, or the attack — and I think back to my fingerprints.

I highly suspect I was the only one at Bonnie’s who didn’t undergo intense interviewing and scrutiny by the FBI the previous day. During their witness interviews, the FBI most likely used power phrases like national security, best interest of the nation, need-to-know basis, and possibly even threatened incarceration if anyone leaked information about the attack to friends, family, or most paramount, to the press.

Anyhow, I read a quick story detailing Snowpocalypse, which is officially the biggest storm to ever hit DC and the second biggest storm to ever hit the mid-Atlantic. Three feet of snow fell in downtown DC, Annandale got forty inches, and Manassas, twenty minutes southwest, got forty-nine. It would have been one thing if meteorologists had correctly forecasted the storm — they only predicted three to five inches — and people could have prepared for it. But it snuck up on everyone. It came in like a lamb at just after midnight on Saturday, dropping light feathery snow for a few hours. But then around 6:00 a.m., the storm began to surge, dropping two and half inches per hour. By noon, over a foot and a half had already fallen, and without a Hummer the roads were impassable. If you hadn’t stocked up on food and water by then, you were SOL.

The snow continued to fall for another twenty hours packing the city in more snow than it had ever seen.

Forty percent of the affected blizzard area was without power, the heavy snow toppling power lines, and Pepco, the electric company, wasn’t making any promises the power would be restored within the week. Also, many of the cell phone towers, most with back-up generators only equipped to last twelve hours, had begun to fail.

Thank God we didn’t lose power.

At least, not yet.

I take a big spoonful of hot chili and think about how much worse things could have been. Then I find myself speculating on the timeline of events from my wedding night.