Chương 6
Hannah looked at the house.
She had spent nineteen days afraid Daniel had abandoned her.
She had spent the morning being evicted.
She had just learned her husband was dead.
It seemed unreasonable that she should also be expected to make responsible medical decisions before lunch.
“Fine.”
Mercer approached after the paramedic stepped away.
“They’re taking you in?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have someone follow.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
She looked at his uniform.
“Why are there so many of you?”
He glanced toward the vehicles.
“We were returning from a memorial formation at the armory. Alvarez told me he’d found an address in Daniel’s personal notebook that didn’t match the one in our corrected records. We were twenty minutes away.”
Hannah stared at him.
“So this was luck?”
“Partly.”
She appreciated that he admitted it.
“I had already asked casualty assistance to try this address today,” he added. “We would have come either way. Just not like this.”
Hannah looked toward the boxes.
“Probably better timing than tomorrow.”
Mercer’s jaw tightened.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She shook her head.
“No. That was mean.”
“Sometimes mean is accurate.”
She looked at him.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
“Colonel?”
“Yes?”
“Did Daniel like you?”
Mercer blinked.
“I think so.”
“That’s not a very military answer.”
“He argued with me a lot.”
“Then he liked you.”
Mercer looked toward Alvarez.
“He was difficult.”
“Very.”
“He once corrected my route plan in front of a captain.”
“That sounds right.”
“He was also correct.”
“That definitely sounds right.”
The laugh came this time.
It hurt Hannah’s split lip.
She started crying immediately afterward.
No warning.
No graceful transition.
One second she was laughing about Daniel embarrassing an officer. The next she had both hands over her face, shoulders shaking while the paramedic pretended to reorganize equipment nearby.
Mercer stood in front of her.
He did not tell her to be strong.
He did not say Daniel would want anything.
He simply stayed.
At the hospital, the baby’s heartbeat was steady.
The doctor wanted several hours of monitoring because Hannah had been shoved off balance and was under severe stress. She lay on her side in a curtained observation room with elastic monitors around her abdomen while Daniel’s mother sent seven messages to the replacement phone Mercer’s staff had arranged.
Hannah did not answer any of them.
Mark sent one.
Dad admitted he opened one of Daniel’s letters. Police took a statement. I’m moving my stuff out. I put your boxes back. I’m sorry.
Lauren sent none.
Richard sent none.
Mercer had gone to change and handle whatever senior officers handled after arriving at a suburban house with part of a unit. Sergeant Alvarez remained in the hospital waiting room.
Hannah learned this only because a nurse asked whether “the Army guy with the scar” was family.
“No,” Hannah said.
Then, after a moment, “Maybe.”
She opened Daniel’s letter at 3:17 that afternoon.
The first line made her angry.
Han,
If you’re reading this, something went bad.
“Idiot,” she whispered.
The nurse glanced through the curtain.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Need anything?”
“No.”
The nurse nodded like that answer was common and left.
Hannah continued.
Daniel’s handwriting grew smaller toward the edges, as it always did when he underestimated how much he wanted to say.
He did not write like a man expecting to die.
That was the first thing she noticed.
He wrote like a man acknowledging the possibility and deeply resenting the inconvenience.
He reminded her the downstairs toilet still needed a new fill valve.
He said the key for the small fireproof box was taped behind the bottom drawer in his workbench.
He apologized for never throwing away the broken camping stove.
He told her his legal forms had been updated because “my family has gotten weird about the house, and I don’t want weird becoming cruel if I’m not there.”
Hannah stopped.
The monitor beside her continued its rhythm.
Daniel had seen it.
Not all of it.
Enough.
He wrote that he had recorded a beneficiary deed because the house had originally been his, and he wanted there to be no argument. He had updated insurance and retirement beneficiaries. He had named Hannah as executor in his will and created instructions for a trust to benefit their child.
Then the handwriting changed.
The sentences became less practical.
I need you to know something I should have said better before I left. You never had to earn your place with me. You never had to win against my family. I kept thinking I could make everybody calm down if I explained things the right way. That was cowardly in a boring, everyday way, and I’m sorry.
Hannah put the page down.
She stared at the ceiling.
That sounded like him.
Not the cowardly part.
The “boring, everyday way.”
Daniel distrusted dramatic self-judgment. He believed most failures happened while people were making coffee and postponing uncomfortable conversations.
She read on.
If things go wrong, don’t let anybody turn me into a saint. I was late to our wedding rehearsal. I lied about liking that lentil soup. I still think your cousin Matt cheats at cards.
A laugh escaped her.
Then another.
She covered her mouth.
Daniel had despised Matt’s card tricks.
She kept reading.
Tell our daughter I wanted to meet her. Not that I was watching over her. Not anything spooky. Tell her I wanted to know whether she got your laugh or my terrible feet. Tell her I was scared when I left and went anyway.
At the bottom, squeezed into the remaining margin:
And if my dad starts acting like the house belongs to him, call a lawyer before you call him back. Seriously.
Hannah pressed the letter flat against her chest.
The baby rolled beneath the monitors.
For several minutes she cried into the hospital pillow so quietly that nobody came in.
Later, Sergeant Alvarez stood in the doorway wearing civilian clothes someone must have brought him.
He hesitated.
May you like
“Mrs. Carter?”
Hannah wiped her face.
