The Last Hour (13 page)

We didn’t meet again until last fall. By that time he’d served in the Army, seen friends killed, been severely injured himself. He’d grown, certainly. But along with growing up, he’d picked up a world of trouble. Rage and pain and disillusionment. Things I’d believed Ray was free of … at first. It turned out Ray simply buried them deeper.

Walking beside me, Alexandra seemed older too, more experienced, more confident. She was getting ready to start her third year of pre-law, and it agreed with her. I suspect being out from under the shadow of our parents helped too.

As we stepped on the elevator, I glanced back down the hall. Major Smalls was still there, talking on the phone, pacing outside the door of the waiting room.

As the elevator door closed, Dylan asked, “When did Smalls show up?”

“Maybe twenty minutes before you? I assume the hospital called the Army, I certainly didn’t.”

He shook his head. “She should leave you alone.”

“Yeah, no shit.” I didn’t know what else to say. But the whole ride down in the elevator and in line in the cafeteria, I kept rolling it around in my mind, gnawing at it like an old bone.
 

When we got to the table I looked at Dylan and blurted out, “When did you find out about it?”

His eyebrows went up. “Find out about what?”

I waved my hand in the air, as if that would make things clearer. “Major Smalls ... the Army ... the
trial.”
I couldn’t help but emphasize that last word.

Dylan grimaced and looked down at the table. Was he avoiding my eyes? Avoiding responsibility? Or just thinking? I didn’t know. Finally he said, “When Ray got back from his first visit out to Texas. He sent me a text from the airport, basically ordering me to clear my schedule and meet him at Haakon’s Hall.”

“Haakon’s Hall?” The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

Alexandra chimed in, “It’s a restaurant in Morningside Heights. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s right off campus. A lot of the vets hang out there.”

“I don’t go there so much,” Dylan said. “Good food, but you know I don’t drink. I don’t really fit in with that bunch.”

“So why did he insist on meeting there?”

Dylan said, “Cause Ray wanted a drink or three. Understand ... Alex and I had a date that night, but when I got the text, Ray said he was calling whatever favors I owed him and to meet him there. And when Ray says he’s calling in a favor, I jump, okay? I owe him more than you know.”

I just stared at Dylan, and he shifted uncomfortably. I knew how much they owed each other, probably better than anyone else on earth, except Alexandra.

“Okay ... you’re right,” he said, even though I’d said nothing. “Anyway ... by the time I got there, Ray was already working on his second or third or fourth drink. He wasn’t stinking drunk yet, but he was pretty far gone.”

He swallowed, as if hesitant to continue, then said, “That’s when he told me.”

“About the shooting?”

He nodded. “Carrie ... I’d never seen him like that. He was ... jumpy, fidgeting, just ... completely freaked out. It was so unlike him I didn’t know what to think. So he starts telling me about what it was like after I got blown up. How they had to go right back into the field, because another unit got hit. And there’s Sherman, and he’s got no fire team at all, it’s just him, because I was gone, and Kowalski and Roberts were dead. It was just him; he was all that was left. They tacked him on to Hicks’ fire team, just an extra rifleman, completely outside the chain of … of…”

Dylan had begun to stutter, and I could see the effort on his face. Alexandra grabbed his hand, but she didn’t say anything. Finally, he blurted out, “Command. Chain of command. Anyway ... Ray said they were out in the field for another solid six days, and on the fifth day, a chopper drops in, and three new guys get out of the chopper. And they hand them over to Sherman. Here’s your new team, Sergeant. Can you believe that crap?”

I shook my head. I didn’t really understand all of it, but at this point, I needed to just let Dylan ramble and tell the story his way.

“So anyway ... Sherman’s telling me this story. And getting drunker and drunker, and louder and louder, while I’m sitting there drinking coffee. And then he blurts out, ‘They killed him, Dylan.’ And I swear you could hear the whole restaurant just go silent. So I get Sherman on his feet and pay the damn bill. We get across the street to the green, and he starts to sober up a little because it was damn cold out. And then he told me the whole story. There’s nothing Sherman could have done, Carrie, nothing at all. Except maybe get himself killed too.”

I stared at the table. There wasn’t anything here I didn’t already know. I’d sat in on some of the trial, and Ray had finally told me a lot of the details.

Alexandra said, “I remember that night ... you guys didn’t get back to the apartment until the middle of the night. Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

Dylan stared at her for a second and said, “It wasn’t my story to tell, Alex.”

Not his story to tell. He took that for granted. Yes, I could see that. They had a code, a code of loyalty to each other that superseded everything else. Except that Ray had broken that code.

Whenever I got upset about the Army, Ray would say he understood, but they were doing the right thing. Seeking justice for a twelve-year-old boy who couldn’t get it any other way. Thinking of that made me feel so selfish. Selfish for wanting my husband, selfish for wanting to have a normal life, a life that wasn’t caught up in a media frenzy and court martial and scandals at work.
 

Ray just said, “Those weren’t the cards we drew, baby. But we’ll meet it together.”

He was right. We could handle it with each other. But I didn’t think I was strong enough to go it alone.

After we struck out finding Daniel’s parents, Sarah took him to go look for the pediatric intensive care unit, while I followed Carrie down to the cafeteria. My mind kept turning around
why
he was in the hospital. He’d been on his way to the zoo with his parents. They must have been in the same accident as us. Were his parents even alive? I was distracted and tense as Carrie, Alex and Dylan talked in the cafeteria.

I could have done without Dylan telling that story to Carrie. For one thing, I didn’t get as drunk as he seemed to think I had. I was pretty seriously upset that night, though. Talking with Carrie about it, even in as little detail as I had, seemed to have started a snowball effect. I hadn’t been able to get my mind off of it, replaying the whole scene over and over again in my mind while I was on the flight back to New York. I’d been in Texas almost a week. A week Carrie and I spent every single moment together. By the time I got back to New York, I had to talk to Dylan, so I sent him a text from the airport and headed straight into town.

So there we were, sitting out on the green, and it felt like it was about forty degrees below zero, and I was freezing my balls off while I told my story to Dylan. And the whole time I was telling the story, I could see I was killing him. When I got to the part about Colton, he stood and started pacing around, then turned to face me suddenly.

“You’re serious about this. Sergeant Colton?” Dylan sounded desperate when he said it.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

Dylan shook his head. I could see the shock, the disappointment in his face. He walked away from me, breathing heavily. Clouds of tiny ice crystals floated away as he breathed.
 

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he shouted.

“What the fuck, Dylan? When was I supposed to tell you? When you were in the hospital, by open email? Or, let me guess, when you were getting yourself thrown in jail? Or should I have told you when you were fucking making yourself and Alex miserable?”

His face fell, almost as if I’d hit him. And then I felt like crap, because I
had
drunk a little too much, and the drink had taken whatever filters I normally maintain and thrown them out the window.

“Jesus, Dylan, I’m sorry. There just ... hasn’t been a chance. And honestly, I didn’t want to tell you. We all looked at Colton like he was our father. It was awful. You had enough crap to deal with.”

Dylan stomped his feet, trying to stay warm, and said, “All right. Yeah, I get it. I haven’t exactly been in the best shape this fall, have I?”

I shrugged, and he said, “Speaking of which, my leg’s starting to kill me. Let’s get inside somewhere warm.”

So we walked toward his apartment. “What happens now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. That’s gonna depend on the Army.”

“How so?” he asked, his face puzzled.

I swallowed then said, “Before I left ... and I mean right before I left … I reported it.”

“You’re shitting me. And they let you go?”

I bit my lip and looked away from him for a second. “I kind of took a coward’s way out, Paris. I wrote it all up and dropped it in the mail.”

He nodded. “Can’t blame you for that.”

We walked a little further, and then he spoke again. “Sherman ... you did the right thing. Reporting it.”

“I don’t know.”

“You did.”

“Maybe. But I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it from happening in the first place.”

Dylan didn’t have much answer to that. We got to his apartment a few minutes later. Alex was there, studying, but she took a break and the three of us hung out for a while playing cards and goofing off. Every once in a while, she gave Dylan and me a curious look, but she never asked what the deal was. And I was grateful for that.

The next morning I caught the Long Island Railroad back to Glen Cove and my parents’ place.
 

Glen Cove is a nice suburb of New York City, a train ride away but on Long Island. Firmly upper middle class, it doesn’t have the grime and crowding of Queens and Brooklyn, nor the pretensions of the Hamptons. My parents had ridden the dot com boom up, managed to hold on to their jobs with their company through the startup phase, and made a lot of money. They bought a million dollar home, but don’t think of it like you’d think of a million dollar home in North Carolina or Texas or some place: a million dollars doesn’t go a long way on Long Island. It was a nice, cozy place, four bedrooms with a two-car garage. It was the American dream. I grew up here, playing in the neighborhood, living a nice, decent life.

Unfortunately, all that vanished overnight in late 2008. When the economy went under, so did my parents’ company. I was already away in school at that point, so I missed the worst of what they went through, though I do vividly recall the conversation I had with my dad late in my junior year. That was when he broke it to me that the house was being foreclosed, and they wouldn’t be able to pay for my next year of school.
 

I think it broke my father’s heart having to make that call. He’s the guy you always see in the backyard grilling steaks, or hanging out with his buddies on Sunday afternoon with a beer watching the game. He took a lot of pride in providing the life we had, and it hit him hard when everything just evaporated out from under him. My parents moved into a crappy little apartment, still in Glen Cove, but a long step down from where they’d been. It took him eighteen months to find work again.

By that time I’d joined the Army. I wasn’t willing to put any more burdens on my parents, and the Army was a way to pay for college, plus, maybe find out a little about the kind of man I was.
 

The afternoon after I had my talk with Dylan, I rolled into Glen Cove at about one. It was unseasonably warm, so I threw my rucksack and jacket over my shoulder and walked from the train station to my parents’ apartment. Both of them would be at work this time of day. Dad had found work managing a restaurant at the waterfront, and Mom as an administrative assistant for a law office. Combined, they made about half of what their 2007 income was.

As I walked, my phone chirped, and I saw Carrie had messaged me:
I HAVE NEWS!!!! :)

I called her immediately.

“Hey, babe,” I said. “What’s the news?”

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you can’t call me babe anymore. It’s
Doctor
Babe to you.”

A wide grin spread over my face, and I immediately responded, “Next time I see you, let’s play doctor.”

She snickered on the other end of the line and said, “That’s not all.”

Now I raised my eyebrows. “Oh yeah? Spill it, Doctor Babe.”

“I like the sound of that,” she said.

“Oh trust me, you’ll like it better in person.”

“Well, here goes. I got the fellowship.”

“At NIH?”

“Yes!” Her voice carried a hushed, awed tone, but I could also hear the pride in her voice.
 

“You’re amazing,” I said.
 

“I agree, I am,” she replied. “But don’t let that stop you from saying it.”

“Nothing can stop me from saying it. You’re amazing. Wonderful. Fantastic. Beautiful. Smart. Funny. Doctor Babe, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted in life.”

She practically purred over the phone as she said, “You’re not so bad yourself. In fact, if you keep that up, I think I can put up with having you around.”

I grinned. “You’re sure?”

Then she dropped her voice to a near whisper, “Soldier, when I get to New York, I plan to take you back to my hotel and have my way with you.”

“I can’t wait,” I said.

So we said our goodbyes and I walked the rest of the way to my parents’ apartment with a huge smile on my face.
 

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine how ugly things would become at NIH once she was there. We had no idea. No idea what was brewing. No idea the Army and FBI had already gotten a court order to tap our phones, no idea that a jealous graduate assistant in Texas was already setting in motion what might be the end of Carrie’s career.

No. At that point, as I walked from the train station to my parents’ apartment, everything was hope.

My parents live in a large, three wing apartment building. It’s modest, but not unpleasant. I walked along happily as I approached the building. I wasn’t going to see Carrie until a few days after Christmas, but I knew we would talk every day, and I knew the time would come soon when we’d be together.