Chương 4
My phone rang.
I looked at the screen.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then I remembered how many times silence had protected other people instead of me.
I answered.
“Lieutenant Carter?”
The voice belonged to Commander Grant.
“Yes.”
“We received some additional information from the housing office.”
I closed the notebook.
“What kind of information?”
“There were questions about the authorization.”
My grip tightened.
“What questions?”
A pause.
Not a dramatic pause.
A careful one.
“The request came from your mother’s account.”
I looked around the apartment.
“She created it?”
“Yes.”
The word landed quietly.
That made it worse.
I had expected anger.
I had expected some obvious sign that everything had been a lie.
But reality rarely gave you that.
Reality gave you a person you loved making a choice you hated.
“Did Richard know she did it?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
I looked at the old notebook on the floor.
“Why would she do that?”
Commander Grant did not answer immediately.
“I don’t know.”
That honesty surprised me.
People always wanted to explain things.
They wanted motives to be neat.
They wanted every person to fit into a category.
Good.
Bad.
Victim.
Villain.
But sometimes people lived in the uncomfortable space between those things.
“My mother spent twenty years making excuses for him,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And now she helped him find me.”
“We are investigating the authorization process.”
I almost smiled.
Investigating.
That was the word institutions used when life became too complicated for a simple answer.
I understood why.
Evidence mattered.
Facts mattered.
But a part of me wanted someone to say what I already knew.
She chose him.
“I need you to come back to base tomorrow,” Grant said.
“Why?”
“There are some things we need to discuss regarding your safety and the investigation.”
I looked toward the repaired door.
The temporary fix was obvious.
A metal plate covered the damaged area.
Someone had tried to make it functional.
Not normal.
Just functional.
“I’ll be there.”
After the call ended, I stayed on the floor.
The apartment was quiet.
Not peaceful.
Quiet.
There was a difference.
Peace felt like you belonged somewhere.
Quiet sometimes felt like you were waiting.
I opened the notebook again.
The next entries were not all about Richard.
That surprised me.
There were pages about school.
A teacher who encouraged me to apply for college.
A girl I had a crush on but never told.
A job at a grocery store where my manager complained that I organized the shelves too carefully.
I laughed softly when I read that.
Even then, apparently, I had been incapable of doing anything halfway.
The memory felt strange.
Not painful.
Not connected to fear.
Just mine.
A small piece of my life that Richard had never owned.
The next morning, Naval Station Norfolk looked exactly the same as it always did.
That bothered me.
Ships moved in the distance.
People walked with coffee in their hands.
Sailors joked outside buildings.
Someone complained about a schedule change.
Someone else laughed.
The world had not stopped because my world had cracked.
Maybe that was normal.
Maybe everyone was walking around carrying something nobody else could see.
Inside the security office, Commander Grant sat across from me with a folder.
He did not open it immediately.
“How are you sleeping?”
I looked at him.
“That’s an interesting first question.”
“It’s an important one.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
I looked down.
A few weeks earlier, I would have found the conversation uncomfortable and ended it quickly.
I was good at ending conversations.
That was another survival skill.
“I wake up a lot,” I admitted.
Grant nodded.
“Any contact from Richard?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Seven messages.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“You counted?”
I looked away.
“I count things.”
“What things?”
I shrugged.
“Doors.”
The answer came out before I could stop it.
The room went quiet.
Grant did not react like I expected.
He did not look sorry for me.
He did not look uncomfortable.
He just nodded.
“Because knowing where exits are helps you feel prepared.”
I swallowed.
“Something like that.”
He opened the folder.
Inside were printed documents.
The visitor authorization.
My mother’s request.
The approval history.
A copy of the access log.
“I want you to understand something,” Grant said.
“This investigation is not about proving whether you are believable.”
I stared at him.
“Then what is it about?”
“Finding out how someone gained access to a secured residence and whether anyone misused their privileges.”
My eyes moved to the papers.
There was a signature.
My mother’s.
A date.
A time.
And a note attached.
Family emergency.
I felt something twist in my chest.
“She wrote that?”
“Yes.”
I laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“She told them it was an emergency.”
Grant watched me carefully.
“Did she believe it was?”
I looked up.
“What?”
“Sometimes people convince themselves they are helping.”
I hated that possibility.
Because it made everything more complicated.
A person who intentionally hurt you was easier to understand.
A person who accidentally helped someone hurt you was harder.
“Are you defending her?”
“No.”
His answer was immediate.
“I’m explaining that understanding a person’s actions does not mean excusing them.”
I looked back at the document.
That distinction mattered.
I wished it did not.
A knock interrupted us.
A petty officer stepped inside.
“Commander, sorry.”
“What is it?”
“We found another issue.”
Grant’s expression changed.
“What issue?”
The petty officer glanced at me.
Then back at him.
“The access request wasn’t the only thing submitted.”
My stomach tightened.
“What else?”
He placed another file on the desk.
“Your mother requested copies of your housing records.”
The room became still.
I looked at Grant.
“Why?”
Nobody answered.
Because nobody knew.
And that was the part that scared me most.
May you like
The break-in was no longer just about one violent night.
It was becoming something that had started before Richard ever walked through my door.
