Chương 5
“Ethan.”
“What?”
Julian looked down.
“Yes.”
Ethan seemed disappointed by the lack of resistance.
He followed Leo toward the doors.
I started after them.
“Elena.”
I turned.
Julian stood alone in the emptied VIP aisle.
“Did you ever hate me?”
The question was so selfish that it almost relieved me.
“Yes.”
His eyes dropped.
“Do you still?”
I looked toward my sons.
Leo was pretending not to wait for me.
Ethan was attempting to balance his medal on his forehead.
Marissa was checking her watch with increasing aggression.
“I don't have time for it anymore,” I said.
Then I left him there.
Outside the auditorium, the evening had turned cool.
Cars crowded the pickup lane.
Parents loaded suitcases and poster tubes into trunks.
Someone was arguing with a rideshare driver about the wrong entrance.
Ordinary life had no respect for revelation.
Marissa opened the SUV door.
Leo climbed inside without speaking.
Ethan stopped beside me.
“Mom.”
“Yes?”
“Did Victoria know?”
“I don't know.”
“She looked like she knew something.”
“I saw that.”
“So what happens now?”
I looked back at the glass doors.
Julian had not come out.
“Now I go to work.”
Ethan frowned.
“That is a very general answer.”
“I am a general.”
He groaned.
“That was terrible.”
“It was excellent.”
Even Leo made a sound from inside the SUV.
Not quite a laugh.
Close enough.
We got in.
As the vehicle pulled away, my phone vibrated again.
This time the number was unfamiliar.
The message contained only seven words.
I kept the boys from him once.
Do not make me regret staying quiet.
I read the message twice before my brain accepted the pronoun.
The boys.
Not your boys.
Not his sons.
The boys.
Someone had known there were two.
Someone had known before Julian did.
I locked my phone and slipped it into my coat pocket.
Ethan was watching me from across the SUV.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was your bad-news face.”
“I have several faces.”
“You have four.”
Leo looked out the window.
“She has six.”
“Name them.”
“Work, angry, fake-not-angry, tired, disappointed, and the one she makes when people use the good scissors on cardboard.”
“That one is justified.”
Ethan nodded solemnly.
“Terrifying.”
Marissa sat in the front passenger seat and pretended not to hear us.
The city slid past in pieces of glass, brake lights, restaurants filling for dinner, and pedestrians moving with the confidence of people whose lives had not changed in an auditorium.
I checked the message again when the boys looked away.
No name.
No signature.
The number had a Virginia area code.
That meant almost nothing now.
People kept cell numbers through marriages, jobs, moves, and bad decisions.
I took a screenshot and forwarded it to myself through a secure personal archive I used for anything I did not want lost.
Then I turned my phone facedown on my thigh.
“Are we going to Grandma's?” Leo asked.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Claire will pick you up in the morning.”
“I thought we were going home Sunday.”
“You are.”
“With you?”
The question landed harder than it should have.
“If Washington cooperates.”
“Washington never cooperates.”
Marissa glanced back.
“I've been telling her that for years.”
“Colonel.”
“Ma'am.”
Ethan leaned forward.
“Does she yell at colonels?”
“Frequently.”
“Generals?”
“Selectively.”
“Presidents?”
Marissa considered.
“I enjoy employment.”
That got a laugh from both boys.
Leo's lasted less than a second.
Then his face closed again.
He stared at the medal resting against his sweater.
“Did you know he would be there?”
“No.”
“You knew Preston's last name.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn't check?”
“I didn't want to.”
He looked at me.
There it was.
Not accusation exactly.
Disappointment.
My least favorite of the six faces, apparently.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes adults make cowardly choices.”
Ethan frowned.
“You're calling yourself a coward?”
“Temporarily.”
“That seems healthy.”
“Don't get used to it.”
Leo leaned his head against the window.
“You should have told us.”
“I should have told you Preston might be connected to him.”
“No.”
His voice sharpened.
“You should have told us he was alive.”
I went still.
Ethan looked down.
Marissa's shoulders became rigid in the front seat.
“I never told you he was dead.”
“You said he wasn't part of our lives.”
“That is true.”
“You said there wasn't anything to know.”
“That was also true for a long time.”
“No, it wasn't.”
Leo turned toward me fully.
“There was always something to know.”
I had no answer that didn't sound like an officer drafting a defense.
So I didn't give one.
Leo laughed without humor.
“Exactly.”
“Leo.”
“No.”
He looked away again.
“I don't want the general version.”
That hurt because it was fair.
My mother lived forty minutes from the tournament venue in a narrow brick house outside Alexandria, close enough to Washington that every third neighbor seemed to have a badge, a clearance, or an opinion about federal parking.
By the time we reached her street, neither boy was speaking to me.
Ethan was asleep against the window.
Leo was pretending to be.
My mother opened the front door before the SUV stopped.
She wore slippers, black pants, and the old University of Michigan sweatshirt she had owned since before I was born.
At seventy-two, she had decided makeup was an organized conspiracy against women with better things to do.
Her white hair was cut short around a face that still managed to look judgmental from fifty feet away.
She saw the medals first.
“Oh, my babies.”
Ethan woke instantly.
“Grandma, I'm taller than you.”
“You can be six feet tall and still be my baby.”
“I'm five-six.”
“Then don't exaggerate while correcting me.”
Leo got out more slowly.
My mother hugged him.
His arms stayed at his sides for a moment.
Then they went around her.
She looked at me over his shoulder.
Something happened.
I watched her eyes sharpen.
She knew.
Not about Julian being there.
Something else.
I reached into my pocket and touched my phone.
May you like
“Mom.”
“Inside.”
