MRS. SERENA JOY WATERFORD

"Mr. Tuello, to what do I owe this great honour?"

"Mrs. Waterford," Tuello said as the heavy metal door closed behind him, with the metallic security-beep signaling where the two of them were, "you may have forgotten."

"Oh, right, please forgive me, Mark," she said putting her hand to her forehead. She pointed to the sleeping baby in the bassinet beside her bed, "baby-brain, I guess." She managed a dull smile, "there's lots of help in here, not to the level of a martha, but I take it fairly day-by-day."

"Is she sleeping through the night?" Tuello asked.

"Me, I keep comparing this to what I would have faced back home. You forget, Nichole had started in our house." But that had been one-hundred lifetimes ago, she thought. When a baby came, she always thought that Fred would have settled down and become more of a 'family man'. Was she ever wrong. Fred had simply doubled down on his 'sickness', as she called it. Life had changed immeasurably, except for him.

"So, you're in luck, Mr. Tuello. My appointment calendar is not complex these days, and the baby is sleeping. Won't need feeding for a couple of hours."

Tuello sat at the spartan, utility table that the ITWC Detention Centre provided. He reached into his valise, took out a legal pad and a pen. "Let's get going, shall we, Mrs. Waterford."

Tuello explained that this was to be about Commander Nick Blaine, himself now resident there at the ITWC facility a couple of doors down. "Fred never had his day, and your disposition…. well, I'll leave that to you and you lawyer."

"You wear many hats, Mark."

He pulled out a single sheet, "I need your signature here, Mrs. Waterford. By signing you voluntarily wave your right to have your lawyer present. I mean, it's not that I plan to wander into matters which may impact you, and this will not be recorded. But you need to know that things you say can and probably will impact you."

Serena Joy smiled, "am I to be sworn for this little chat?" Tuello said she was not. "So, I'll sign. I can take care of myself."

Tuello thought, that's what Serena's lawyer had feared - the lawyer had a letter of complaint already in with Serena's prosecutor. But as always, Serena was overtly sure of herself.

COMMANDER NICK BLAINE

"We should never have given Nick the Carriage house, the tiny suite above the garage." Serena said that in retrospect, that had put him in harm's way. Or as she corrected herself, "from what I've learned about him here in Canada, it may have put people like June Osborne in harm's way."

Tuello asked for Serena's account of when Blaine first came into view at the Waterford household.

"Well, I didn't really pay him much thought, not originally. At first he'd just been one of Fred's drivers. I had no clue who he really was. That's when Fred had the Mercedes SUV, an older model. I'd wanted Fred to upgrade that, it could only reasonably seat four, including the driver."

"So, when did Blaine come 'into your thoughts', as you might say?"

Hearing the baby fuss briefly distracted her, but she continued, "Nick was never like the others, not an ordinary driver. I'd overheard Fred say that Nick had been a war-hero, from one of the first Chicago campaigns. As such, he'd been taken under High Commander Pryce's wing."

Serena thought for a minute. "It's not how I would have done it, making Nick a plain-Guardian. It was frustrating hearing the men strategize - most of them were clueless. Fred got badly embarrassed once at Chancery, he'd cited a passage in one of my books. The others bullied him, accused him of not wearing the pants in his own house."

"Blaine?" Tuello insisted.

"Ok, sorry. Nick, he was the quiet type. When he was driving me to and fro, he'd answer my questions. Seldom volunteered anything. It occurred to me that he might have had Eye training." She stopped, then added, "hero, driver, Guardian, probably an Eye. That was our Nick!"

"Mrs. Waterford," Tuello risked, "can I ask what is perhaps an awkward question?" She just looked at him with disgust.

"The answer is 'no', Mark. I was a married woman. In Gilead!" She sighed, "men. Your minds always go there." She then added, "never with me. Nick was smarter than that."

She then looked at the floor, "You may not know, but the whole Deeds' household had been salvaged - that was following the Rachel and Leah Centre bombing. Mrs. Deeds had been the closest thing to a friend I'd ever had in that place. Right next door. Glen Deeds, he was a powerful Commander."

Tuello said softly, "and Nick?"

"Mrs. Deeds was always in touch with what was going on, especially in her own house - but she was encyclopedic with other Commanders' homes, too. She was the one who told me that Rita had lost a son. I'd not known that, and Rita was with us! She was a woman you wanted to have tea with - regularly."

Tuello still had that 'Nick?' look on his face. "Oh, okay," Serena said, "Mrs Deeds was being sarcastic about Glen's 'abilities' regarding The Ceremony, Commander Deeds that is, his ability to father children. She then said to me, 'I'm not worried, though, it looks like Nick has eyes for our Ofglen'. She had said to me that if my Fred was similarly 'impaired', that was her word, that I should turn to Nick, too."

Serena remembered that Mrs. Deeds had also accused Serena of keeping Nick 'on-site' above the garage for exactly that purpose. Mrs. Deeds had said, "or else all children around here would look like the doctor at the clinic!"

Tuello put his pen down, "so, Mrs. Deeds was warning you that Nick may have been 'wandering' with Ofglen." Tuello made a mental note, that that was probably Dr. Emily Malek, now there in Toronto.

Tuello then switched gears.

"Mrs. Waterford," he asked, "is there anything you can say about Nick and your Handmaid?"

Serena caught him by surprise by saying nonchalantly, "which one?"

NICK AND FRED

Serena continued, "as the men in Chancery continued to alienate us, the Wives, things got out of control. I mean, I'd written the books undergirding Gilead. At first, I'd be in a meeting to explain things. Then doors were shut, right in my face. Most of the men, they had no clue. Naomi Putnam in her former life, she'd been a fundraiser for the Sons of Jacob. There was another Wife whose family were all West Pointers, she'd been pivotal in getting America's military on-side with the revolution."

She seemed to have a head of steam, "I remember the first time a door was slammed on me. Fred had said that it had been his fault, the 'unreasonable expectations' he had placed on me, as if I couldn't run rings around him."

Tuello repeated, "Nick?"

"Oh, right." She settled a bit remembering, "I think Nick wanted to rescue the Handmaid, this was the first one." She added that June Osborne had been damaged, but that the first Handmaid had been, 'really damaged'.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Fred started his illness thinking he was competing with Nick. Nick the virile, young hero. That's when Fred started inviting the Handmaid to his office, late at night. 'Late at night' was to forestall her from pad-pad-padding over to the Carriage house."

She looked quizzical when she said, "Fred's illness never extended to marthas. At least that's what Rita said." Tuello thought, 'what else was she supposed to say?'

"The morning that the Handmaid hanged herself, Nick took over. You could see it. Me, I think it was guilt on his part. I wish Fred could have felt at least some of that. All I could manage was, 'what did you think was going to happen?' He was like a little boy."

RACHEL AND LEAH

Tuello paused before asking. He did not want this conversation to blow-up too soon. He had planned to save it for last, but decided to go for it.

He said cautiously, "Why did you involve Nick with June Osborne? Was it as simple as to get her pregnant?"

"You've been throwing that in my face this whole time!" she snapped. "I've told you, her audio tape to her husband here in Canada confirms it - Nick and June were in a relationship, long before Nichole!"

"Mrs. Waterford, I apologize. Your lawyer and I had a discussion about this. There's nothing you can say, nothing I can take away which will have any practical effect on your legal troubles."

Serena looked calculating. "After I'd discovered Offred's pregnancy, she'd gone missing. Mayday had spirited her out of the hospital - no one knew how. Then again, if Nick had been involved, it's no wonder. She was gone for 92 days. I had to convince Fred to spin this as a kidnapping, when it was so obviously Mayday." She said that fortunately High Commander Pryce agreed, "probably as a way to protect Nick. But other Commanders, people like Cushing, they knew."

"Truth be told," she said. "It was Nick. Fred never wondered where Nick was going all that time. Me, I could see it. In Nick, I could see it in him." Serena then added, "Fred never put it together until I told him. I was right. How could Nick 'the driver' have all those unaccounted for leaves, for long periods in those 92 days? Fred was gormless that way."

"So here's the deal, Mr. Tuello. After the Rachel and Leah bombing, after the Deeds next door had been salvaged, all of them - swinging right there off the front of their house, right in our faces….. Ray Cushing was going to kill us all." Serena seemed to be reliving the fear, "it was at that point that I really needed Nick."

"'Warrants to the Consular of Divine Law'. I'd been involved in devising that process, but the men had edged me out and revised it. But with Nick, as soon as those words left my mouth, our fates were set. I'd asked Nick if he had ever helped Fred submit them, he said that he had. All I needed from him was to walk me through the current process. He warned me that those forms needed the Commander's signature. I told Nick that Fred would forgive me."

She sat back and said, "that was, as they say, that."

Tuello said, "we've come a long way from the things which Commander Blaine now stands accused. By the ICC, that is. Sounds like between you and him, you could have compiled quite the rap-sheet within Gilead!"

"From then, I knew," Serena concluded, as her baby started to fuss-herself awake. Serena got up to look into the bassinet, "Nick was Nick. Mayday, Eye, Guardian and now right down the hall, Commander. That was not how we had drawn it up when I was speaking at college campuses."

Serena picked up her baby who was starting with some muffled, tired-fusses. She was surprisingly good with the baby, that was not something Tuello expected.

"So let's just draw this to a close, Mrs. Waterford," Tuello said. "If it were you, if you were the ICC, considering Ofglen as well as at least two Offreds, would you convict him of any non-consensual sex-crimes?"

"Don't ask me that, Mark. You're trying to draw me in again, nice try. What Nick and June did, that was in the context of their relationship."

She then sat, and started unbuttoning herself for feeding the baby. "But he was involved in Fred's murder. He should at least swing for that."

MRS. EDEN BLAINE

As Serena picked up the baby, she walked to the settee where she settled in for the feeding.

Tuello assembled his paper into his valise, stood to leave, then said, "Mrs. Waterford, would you confirm that Commander Blaine's first wife was 15?" Tuello had just yesterday read Serena's final book, published just before the ban on women reading and writing.

In it, Serena had posited that a 'uterus' was the most valuable possession that any Nation State controlled. In the fertility crisis, a uterus needed to be 'weaponized', he'd remembered that word. A Uterus needed to be used regardless of the age of its possessor.

"Look, I know what you're getting at. Why don't you ask Nick how old Mrs. Blaine was."

She then looked down at her suckling daughter.

"While you're at it, ask him 'which' Mrs. Blaine. You do know, don't you, that Nick remarried?" No, Tuello had not known that.