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was forty-one.”
    “How old are your children?”
    “Our daughter, Erica, is thirteen, and Steven is ten.”
    “When did you get married?”
    “We got married in 1998 in Palo Alto. It would have been fourteen years this summer.”
    I nodded as I quickly jotted down her answers in my notebook.
    “I know this is hard on you, Katherine, and I apologize,” Toni said. Katherine nodded. “But,” Toni continued, “I’m afraid I have some sensitive questions that I need you to answer for me. Is that all right?” Katherine nodded again. Toni said, “Okay. First, were there any problems at home? Problems between the two of you?”
    “Absolutely none,” Katherine said.
    “Any recent fights?”
    “None.”
    “I don’t mean to imply anything at all by this, but were the two of you faithful to each other? Is it possible that Thomas might have had an outside girlfriend?”
    Katherine thought for a minute, and then she said, “Toni, are you familiar with W.H. Auden’s ‘Funeral Blues’?”
    Toni nodded. “Certainly,” she said. She paused for a moment, thinking, and then added, “I understand what you're saying.”
    I didn’t. “Please explain it to me,” I said.
    “Auden wrote a poem that perfectly describes losing someone you love,” Toni said. “Go watch
Four Weddings and a Funeral
. They used it there.”
    Katherine stared down at the table. “That’s how we felt about each other. The very idea of doing anything that would have hurt Thomas would have been the same as if I were hurting myself. I could never have been unfaithful to him. I’m sure Thomas felt the same way.”
    Katherine looked up at Toni. Toni nodded that she understood.
    I looked at Toni. She nodded now to me. She was satisfied with that line of questioning. I took a deep breath. “Let me change directions,” I said. “Was Thomas healthy? Had there been any recent bad news regarding his health?”
    Katherine looked up, relieved to have left the previous topic. “He had a physical at Swedish Medical Center just this past January. Everything was fine—normal,” she said. “He was very healthy. He was a dedicated runner. He loved it. He ran almost every day—much of the time at Discovery Park where they found him. He didn’t smoke.”
    “Any drug or alcohol use?” I asked.
    “None whatsoever.”
    “Anyone else in the family have any serious medical conditions?”
    “No. We’re all in fine health.”
    “Prior to the time of Thomas’s death, had you noticed any changes in his personal appearance? Any weight gain or loss?” Toni asked.
    “No, nothing like that,” Katherine said.
    “How about a change in the way he dressed—anything out of character?”
    “No. He was a runner. He always wore running shoes and blue jeans, usually with some sort of polo shirt. Every day, same thing.”
    I made a note of her answer in my notebook. “Okay,” I said. “Tell us about the business.” Business problems are one of the primary factors leading to suicide.
    “Our business is called Applied Cryptographic Solutions. We usually just say ACS. Thomas founded the company four years ago.”
    “What does ACS do?” I asked.
    “They write cryptography software,” she said. “They write computer code for use on websites that allow transactions to be sent over the Internet securely. Have you ever seen ‘SSL’ mentioned when you order something online? ACS does a lot of work with that.”
    “How does the business do, financially speaking?” I asked.
    “So far, we’re still in the ‘investment’ phase. That means we lose a little money every quarter. We haven’t turned a profit yet. There’s a lot of competition, and it takes quite a long time to bring a successful new product to market.”
    “Is that a problem—losing money every quarter?”
    “No. I was left quite well off when my parents died. We’re able to provide seed money to the business indefinitely, as long as we manage our overhead like we’ve been doing. There