Chương 7
At the curb, one of the Marine honor guards waited beside a dark sedan. He was a staff sergeant named Cole, according to the nameplate Tori had noticed when she arrived.
“Ma’am,” he said.
“At ease.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly.
“I can drive you.”
“I have a car.”
“The public affairs officer is trying to reach you. Your phone’s probably in the locker with the wedding party’s things.”
Tori had surrendered it because Elaine claimed visible phones would ruin the photographs.
Of course.
Cole held out his own phone. “They called the detail commander.”
Tori took it.
The public affairs officer spoke quickly. The clip had passed half a million views in less than an hour. Several accounts had identified Tori from the public medal citation. Someone had connected Daniel Whitfield’s name to the operation. A cable producer had already left messages with Marine headquarters and the Whitfield Foundation.
“We are not commenting on casualty details,” Tori said.
“No, ma’am. We’re preparing a statement confirming the award and asking for privacy.”
“Do not describe me as reuniting with the family.”
“We weren’t planning to.”
“Good.”
There was a pause.
“Captain, your medal citation is public. People are comparing it with the Whitfield casualty report.”
“They’ll find differences.”
“That’s the concern.”
“Whose concern?”
Another pause.
“Everyone’s.”
Tori looked back through the ballroom windows. Elaine stood beneath a chandelier, speaking to two women with the intense composure she used when rewriting events in real time.
“I’ll report to Quantico Monday morning,” Tori said.
“We may need you sooner.”
“Then send an order.”
She ended the call and returned the phone to Cole.
He hesitated. “For what it’s worth, ma’am, my wife saw the clip.”
Tori waited.
“She said your mother looked like she’d swallowed a battery.”
Tori stared at him.
Cole’s face remained perfectly straight.
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. It was brief and inappropriate and exactly what her body needed.
“Staff Sergeant.”
“Ma’am.”
“Never repeat that.”
“No, ma’am.”
He opened the sedan door.
She looked toward the parking lot, where her own car was blocked by three departing limousines.
“Fine,” she said. “But you’re taking me back for my phone first.”
When Tori returned to her apartment in Arlington, the quiet felt artificial. Her dress shoes clicked across the wood floor. She took off her cover, set it on the kitchen counter, and stood beneath the dim light over the stove without moving.
Her apartment contained almost nothing her mother would have chosen. The sofa was brown because it had been available. The dining table had one chair with a loose joint she kept meaning to repair. A small basil plant leaned toward the window. On the refrigerator, held by a magnet from a gas station in Arizona, was a grocery list written three days earlier: coffee, detergent, eggs, something green.
She opened the refrigerator.
There were no eggs.
Her phone vibrated on the counter with more messages than it could display. Calls from her command, former Marines, cousins she had not seen in years, unknown numbers, and her father. Three messages from Wes. None from Elaine.
There was one from Rebecca.
Tomorrow. Ten. Please come alone.
Tori typed, I will.
She changed out of her uniform carefully. The Silver Star went into its case. The jacket went onto a padded hanger. She inspected the fabric for stains even though she knew there were none. Routine required no emotion and therefore asked less of her than thought.
When she removed the skirt, the pale scar along her thigh showed in the bedroom mirror. It ran from above her knee toward her hip, uneven where surgeons had opened the wound more than once. Daniel had been trapped by his left leg. Tori’s injury had also been on the left.
She disliked the symmetry.
In sweatpants and an old Marine Corps T-shirt, she made coffee she did not need. At seven thirty, someone knocked on her door.
She checked the peephole.
Robert stood in the hallway holding a paper grocery bag.
Tori opened the door but did not invite him in.
“I brought food,” he said.
“I have food.”
He glanced past her at the empty refrigerator shelves visible from the entry.
“I brought eggs.”
She looked at the bag.
“Also coffee. The kind you like.”
“You don’t know what kind I like.”
“I asked the man at the store what people under forty buy.”
Tori almost smiled despite herself. “That is a dangerous research method.”
“He recommended something from Ethiopia. I’m not certain I bought coffee. The packaging was very confident.”
She stepped aside.
Robert entered carefully. He had removed the boutonniere but still wore the dark wedding suit. Without the flower, there was a small pinhole in his lapel. He placed the bag on the counter and began unloading eggs, coffee, oranges, bread, and a bag of spinach.
“You bought something green.”
“I remembered.”
Tori sat at the table.
Robert noticed the loose chair and chose it anyway. The joint shifted beneath him.
“That’s going to collapse.”
“I deserve uncertainty.”
“Don’t make jokes until I decide whether I’m angry.”
He nodded.
For a while, he folded the top of the paper bag into narrower and narrower strips. Tori drank coffee that had gone bitter on the warmer.
Finally she said, “Why did you give her the letter?”
Robert looked at the bag.
“You had been home six weeks. You weren’t sleeping. You had a fever from the infection, and you were taking medications that made you confused. Your mother said the letter might expose you legally.”
“I had already given statements.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
“I knew you had spoken to investigators. I didn’t understand the process.”
“You could have asked me.”
“You were furious whenever anyone questioned you.”
“I was in pain.”
“I know.”
“No, you knew I was difficult.”
Robert flinched.
Tori set down her cup. “Those are different things.”
“Yes.”
May you like
He unfolded the paper bag, then folded it again.
“Your mother read the letter in the kitchen,” he said. “She cried. I had not seen her cry about what happened to you. Not once. She cried over that boy.”
