Sunday nights

Sunday nights were the weekly separation built into Jennifer Rockwell and Trader Faulkner’s life together: although they cohabited, he regularly spent Sunday night in his office at CSU. The arrangement was not presented as evidence of distance between them. Instead, their Sunday routine combined a largely shared day and time together late in the afternoon with a customary parting. On March fourth, that pattern appeared to continue as usual, making the familiar schedule both a record of their intimacy and a source of contrast with the sudden death that followed.

The Weekly Arrangement

Jennifer and Trader lived together, but Sunday nights were the exception to their shared domestic life. Trader took his cot in his office on campus, a practice described as something he did every Sunday. The separation was therefore expected and recurrent, not a new decision made on the day Jennifer died. Its practical shape was simple: they spent the day together, and Trader left with a bag to stay elsewhere overnight.

The routine also gave their relationship a distinctive rhythm. Trader described them as preferring one another’s company to parties or time with their wider circle, which included friends, brothers, and Jennifer’s parents, Tom and Miriam Rockwell. They talked, laughed, and worked together; an evening at home suited them better than a night out. Yet he also described each as retaining a private intellectual life the other could not fully see. Their closeness, in his account, did not mean that either possessed the other completely. The weekly night apart existed within this pattern of attachment, not as proof that the relationship had become unwanted.

The Shape of March Fourth

Trader’s account of March fourth places the separation inside a detailed sequence of ordinary Sunday activities. They slept late, and he made breakfast at about ten-thirty. They read the Times in their bathrobes, each turning to a different section, and spent an hour working. Just before two, they went out together. They had a beef sandwich at Maurie’s, walked around Rodham Park, and played indoor tennis at the Brogan. Jennifer won, as she usually did, with a score of 3–6, 6–7.

They returned at about five-thirty, and Jennifer made lasagne while Trader packed a bag. The meal, packing, and parting belonged to a known routine: he was preparing to spend the night at his campus office, not announcing an uncharacteristic departure. The couple had also spent time together late Sunday afternoon before he left. When asked whether that parting had felt different, Trader could not identify a change in their familiar pattern. His recollection offers no special warning in the day’s ordinary events.

A Routine Against the Timeline

At 7:30 that evening, Trader was the last person known to have seen Jennifer. He described her mood as cheerful and normal, consistent with the apparently unremarkable day he recounted. Ten minutes later, an elderly neighbor in the attic apartment woke to a gunshot and called 911. At 7:55, a responding officer entered Jennifer’s apartment with the help of the neighbor, Mrs. Rolfe, who kept spare keys, and found her body.

The recurring Sunday arrangement also explains where Trader was when the news reached him. At about 11:15, Detective Oltan O’Boye went to Trader’s office at CSU. Trader was already there, dressed for the night in pajamas, a robe, and slippers. He initially met the news with disbelief and anger, then sat crying in the corridor after being brought downtown. The familiar plan to sleep apart had placed him at the office; it did not soften the shock of the interruption that came there.

Meaning and Limits of the Pattern

In the investigation, Sunday nights provide a dependable frame for reconstructing the final day: the shared activities, the packing, the last sighting, and Trader’s location later that night. But a regular schedule establishes where people were and what they usually did; by itself, it does not explain Jennifer’s death. The account of a cheerful last sighting and an ordinary parting supplies no decisive cause, and the weekly separation should not be mistaken for a newly revealed rupture.

The routine matters precisely because it was ordinary to them. A day filled with breakfast, reading, work, a walk, tennis, dinner, and a customary goodbye ended in a death that their established habits did not explain. Trader’s recollection can make the sequence concrete without making its outcome intelligible: the Sunday-night arrangement clarifies the circumstances surrounding the last time he saw Jennifer, while leaving the central question of why she died unresolved.