Chương 5
Her phone began ringing.
Chief Mateo Ruiz.
She let it ring three times before answering.
“You alive?” he asked.
“That’s your opening?”
“I had a better one, but I’ve left twenty-eight messages and used all my material.”
“Cole told me.”
“That man cannot keep anything confidential tonight.”
Emily sat on the kitchen floor with her back against the cabinet.
Ruiz waited.
He was good at waiting too, but unlike Cole, he filled silence with ordinary noise. She heard a television in the background, a cabinet closing, and someone asking whether he wanted hot sauce.
“You saw the video,” she said.
“My wife saw it. Then my daughter. Then every human being with a phone.”
“I’m turning mine off.”
“Do that after you listen to me.”
“I listened to you for four years.”
“And ignored me for one.”
“Ten months.”
“Excellent. You can still count.”
Emily rested her head against the cabinet door.
Ruiz’s tone softened. “You shouldn’t have found out about the medal that way.”
“I knew about the medal.”
“You knew about the approval. You didn’t know Cole was carrying it around like a loaded weapon.”
“I told them no ceremony.”
“You told them no public ceremony.”
“That was public.”
“Yes. We’ve established the admiral made a mess.”
She closed her eyes. “Are you calling to defend him?”
“I’m calling because you’re going to make this mess the reason you disappear again.”
“I haven’t disappeared.”
“Your last message to me was a thumbs-up in November.”
“It communicated approval.”
“It communicated that you have a thumb.”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. It hurt the muscles around her ribs.
Ruiz heard it and did not react, which she appreciated.
The noise behind him quieted. “You saved me, Parker.”
“We saved each other.”
“You carried me up two ladders.”
“You were unconscious.”
“I was contributing morale.”
Her smile faded.
Through the apartment wall, a neighbor ran a vacuum cleaner. The sound rose and fell in slow passes.
Ruiz said, “You carried eleven of us out. Cole told the truth.”
“Not all of it.”
“No.”
The silence changed.
Emily’s eyes moved toward the framed ocean.
Petty Officer Daniel Cho had not made it out.
His name did not appear in the viral caption. His face would not fit the shape strangers wanted the story to have. Eleven saved sounded heroic. One lost sounded like a question.
“I have to go,” Emily said.
“Don’t.”
“I can’t do this tonight.”
“Then don’t do all of it. Stay on the phone and tell me what you had for dinner.”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s not dinner.”
“I had two cheese cubes at the hall.”
“Were they orange or white?”
She almost hung up.
“Orange.”
“Those are the bad ones.”
“They taste identical.”
“That is why your judgment is under review.”
“My judgment was cleared.”
The joke left his mouth and reached her as pain.
Neither spoke for several seconds.
“I’m sorry,” Ruiz said.
“It’s fine.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Emily opened a lower cabinet and found a box of crackers. She ate one without tasting it.
Ruiz’s breathing remained steady on the line.
“Did you call my father?” she asked.
“No.”
“Did you call Cole?”
“I complained to Cole in May that the delay was hurting the crew.”
“Harming the crew how?”
“Some of us wanted the commendation finished. Some wanted the record public. One sailor’s promotion package was being held up because the incident report stayed restricted during review. We weren’t all waiting politely for your family calendar.”
Emily sat straighter.
“No one told me that.”
“We tried.”
Her eyes moved to the dark phone screen, where twenty-eight unheard messages waited behind the call.
“You could have emailed.”
“I did.”
“My account filters—”
“I know what filters do.”
She bit the inside of her cheek.
Ruiz continued, “Cole was coming to your father’s event because the local association invited him. He told me he might speak to you afterward. That was the plan. Then he walked in and saw Gloria pointing at you.”
“He knew who she was?”
“I may have described her.”
“How?”
“You told me enough over the years.”
“I barely mentioned her.”
“You called her ‘the woman who alphabetizes sympathy cards.’ That stays with a person.”
Despite the pressure behind her eyes, Emily laughed again.
Ruiz let the moment breathe.
Then he said, “You don’t have to accept the medal. But you do have to stop pretending your silence affects only you.”
The refrigerator turned on with a low hum.
Emily put the cracker box aside.
“You sound like Cole.”
“I’m much better looking.”
“Debatable.”
“My wife says it’s not.”
Emily drew one knee to her chest.
“What do you want from me?”
“A conversation tomorrow. With the crew. One hour. Cameras off. No admirals unless we ask.”
“I’m working.”
“You took leave.”
“How do you know?”
“Lieutenant Weller called to ask whether one of us should check on you after the video.”
Emily pressed her fingers to her forehead.
“Everyone needs to stop managing me.”
“Then answer your phone before we form a committee.”
She did not agree.
She also did not refuse.
Ruiz recognized the difference.
“Ten hundred,” he said. “I’ll send a secure link.”
“Mateo.”
“Yeah?”
“Did Cho’s mother see the video?”
Ruiz did not answer immediately.
“I don’t know.”
That was the first thing all night that frightened Emily more than public humiliation.
She ended the call, ate three more crackers, and turned off her phone.
Sleep did not come.
At two in the morning, she stood at the sink drinking water while the washing machine overflowed with foam.
The dish soap she thought she had removed had been enough.
White bubbles pressed against the glass door and escaped along the floor in slow, ridiculous islands. Emily stared at them, then fetched two towels. She knelt and wiped the floor while wearing an old Navy T-shirt she had once planned to throw away.
May you like
Halfway through, she began laughing.
The sound was quiet and unpleasant. It turned into one sob before she stopped it.
