Chương 5
Mara sat on the edge of the bed. “How many views?”
“Enough that my niece sent it to me, and she thinks the Air Force is an airline.”
“Who posted it?”
“Account belongs to someone named Ashley Crane.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Apparently she attended the gala with a defense contractor who is old enough to have attended the invention of contracts.”
Mara closed her eyes.
Luis’s tone softened. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“That was too fast.”
“I’m tired.”
“That I believe.”
She heard a cupboard close on his end, then water running. Luis never sat still on phone calls. During deployments, he had dismantled pens, cleaned boots, or folded the same T-shirt twice while speaking.
“Briggs’s sister saw it,” he said.
Mara opened her eyes.
“Dana?”
“She called me.”
“What did she say?”
“She wanted to know why the news keeps calling you the sole hero of Kestrel Ridge.”
Mara looked at the rescue wings in her hand.
“I didn’t speak to the news.”
“I told her.”
“Did she believe you?”
“She believes you. She does not believe anybody with a microphone.”
That was reasonable.
Luis continued, “The foundation website has your picture on it already.”
“What picture?”
“The one from the medal ceremony. You’re standing next to Ward looking like somebody stole your truck.”
“I didn’t own a truck.”
“Exactly. Deep injustice.”
Mara almost smiled.
Luis waited.
“What do you need?” he asked.
The question reached her with more force than sympathy would have.
“I need to know what they’re using.”
“Mission details?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll look.”
“Don’t send anything classified.”
“I enjoy having a pension.”
“Luis.”
“I said I’ll look.”
She heard a refrigerator door open.
“Dana wants to speak with you,” he said.
“I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“You said that last year.”
Mara’s fingers closed around the wings.
“That was different.”
“No. It was earlier.”
He let the words sit.
Mara did not argue.
After the call, she opened the foundation website. The home page loaded slowly, then filled with a photograph of her younger face beneath a banner announcing COLONEL MARA HAYES TO LEAD FINAL HARBOR HOUSE CAMPAIGN.
The text described her as the legendary pilot of Kestrel Ridge.
It named no one else from the crew.
At the bottom was a red donation button.
Mara took a screenshot. Then another of the campaign page. She sent both to Ward with one sentence.
This is not what I agreed to.
His reply came less than a minute later.
I know. Meeting at 0800.
She slept badly and dreamed nothing she could remember. At six, she gave up, made coffee in the hotel machine, and drank it while standing at the window in a gray T-shirt and uniform trousers. Commuter traffic moved along the highway below. A man in the parking lot scraped frost from his windshield with a plastic room key.
At seven fourteen, Dana Briggs called.
Mara watched the phone ring until the screen went dark.
It rang again.
She answered.
Neither woman spoke immediately.
Dana finally said, “You still take your coffee black?”
Mara looked at the paper cup. “It isn’t coffee enough to matter.”
“That hotel stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Jonah used to put six sugars in it and then complain he couldn’t sleep.”
“I remember.”
The words opened something small and painful.
Dana breathed out. “I saw the video.”
“I know.”
“Luis talks.”
“He does.”
“He thinks silence is a medical condition.”
Mara sat in the chair beside her uniform jacket.
“I’m sorry about the website,” she said.
“Did you approve it?”
“No.”
“Then don’t apologize like you did.”
Mara rubbed her thumb along the edge of the wings.
Dana’s voice changed. “They called him support personnel.”
“Who?”
“The foundation’s campaign page. It says you rescued twelve people with support from three crew members. Support.”
Mara opened the website again. The sentence was there beneath the photograph.
“I hadn’t reached that section.”
“Well, I did.”
“They’ll remove it.”
“That isn’t what I’m asking.”
Mara knew.
Dana continued, “Jonah died because he stayed in the cabin after the fuel line ruptured. He got two people out before he came forward. You know that.”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t supporting you.”
“No.”
“He was doing the job.”
“Yes.”
The anger in Dana’s voice loosened, leaving exhaustion.
“I don’t want his picture on a billboard,” she said. “I don’t want a speech. I want them to stop turning four people into one clean face.”
Mara looked at her own face on the campaign page.
“I will stop it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then don’t promise.”
Mara closed the laptop.
“You’re right.”
Dana was quiet.
A truck backed up somewhere outside, making a slow electronic beeping sound.
“I was angry at you for a long time,” Dana said.
“I know.”
“No, you avoided me. That isn’t the same as knowing.”
Mara did not defend herself.
“I thought you got the medal and Jonah got a folded flag,” Dana continued. “I knew that wasn’t fair. Grief is not very interested in fair.”
“I should have called.”
“Yes.”
“I tried.”
“You dialed three times and hung up.”
Mara looked at the floor.
“How did you know?”
“Phone records. Also, Jonah’s mother told me you stood outside her house once for twenty minutes and drove away.”
Mara had forgotten the neighbor across the street.
Dana said, “You don’t get credit for almost knocking.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
Mara breathed.
“All right.”
Another silence passed between them, less hostile than the first.
Dana said, “Harbor House matters.”
“Yes.”
“My cousin used a place like it in Texas when her husband was in rehab.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You don’t know much about me anymore.”
“No.”
The answer hurt both of them. Mara could hear it.
Dana said, “If this campaign helps families, I don’t want it destroyed because some wealthy woman behaved badly.”
“Neither do I.”
“But if they use Jonah like background scenery, I will destroy it myself.”
“I believe you.”
“You should.”
May you like
The call ended without goodbye.
At eight, Mara entered a conference room at the foundation’s Arlington office wearing her service uniform rather than full dress. Ward stood beside the windows. Keene sat at the table with two foundation attorneys and a communications director named Philip Sloane, who wore a navy suit and the expression of a man who had been awake all night correcting other people’s disasters.
