The Ones We Trust (5 page)

9

I’m halfway onto the driver’s seat, residual heat from Gabe’s enmity still pulsing my insides like a back draft, when I hear Jean’s voice, calling to me across her front lawn. “Abigail, wait.”

For a good second or two, I seriously consider ignoring her. Just leaping into my car, ducking my head and gunning it for home.

But now it’s too late. Jean is already halfway down the stone walkway, one hand waving in the air for me to stop, and she’s gaining. I don’t bother disguising my exasperation as I step out of the car and swing around to face her.

“I wanted to apologize for my son’s temper.” She steps off the curb and rounds the back of my car to where I’m standing on the street, keys clutched in a fist. “I really have taught him better. I promise.” Her expression, clear and pleasant, friendly even, sucks some of the steam from my anger.

“Sorry, but shouldn’t he be apologizing for himself?”

“Of course, dear, and he will eventually. It’s just that this rage he carries from his brother’s death...he lets it eat him up from inside. I know that’s not an excuse, but I hope you can at least understand what’s driving his grief. It’s one thing to lose the brother you idolize, another thing entirely when the country he died for isn’t honest about the circumstances surrounding his death.”

I’m kind of taken aback by her matter-of-fact tone, as if she’s talking about a new car purchase or the vacation she just booked to Florida rather than discussing one son’s grief at another’s death. From the start, Jean Armstrong has made no secret of her disgust at the way the army has been neither transparent nor honest about what happened to Zach, but I can’t sense an ounce of her anger now, only concern for Gabe.

Still. I can’t help but point out, “You seem to be managing very well.”

“Yes, well...” She smiles, and I catch a whiff of Gabe in it, the way one cheek is a little slower to rise, how the other folds into a dimple. “All these wrinkles don’t come for free, you see. I’m wiser, but that’s only because I’m ancient.”

Jean Armstrong is older and wiser, definitely, but she’s also got a force about her I can’t quite pin down. The media calls her fierce, and she certainly is when it comes to defending her sons, but it’s more than that. Much more. It’s a force that makes her seem stronger than she should be in her situation, sharper and more intense, as big and tall as any one of her boys. It’s a force that draws me into her field as surely as it must stave plenty of other people off.

“Take a walk with me, dear, would you?” She crooks an elbow in invitation, which is as endearing as it is ridiculous. In my heels, I have a good half foot and twenty pounds on her, and if anyone should be crooking an elbow here, it’s me. But because she’s Jean, because so far I haven’t discovered a single thing I don’t like about her, I toss my bag onto the seat, lock my car and loop my arm through hers.

She leads me around the side of her house, down a lavender-scented path and through a simple wooden gate, into her backyard. If I thought it was impressive before, from the few glimpses I got from her kitchen window, it’s a billion times better up close. Raised beds of blooms nestled between clumps of bushes and swaying grasses. Secret pathways leading to hidden clearings, and trellises dripping in vines. Benches and chairs everywhere, secluded under arbors or tucked behind fragrant plants, providing front-row seats for stargazing or butterfly watching.

“Beautiful,” I say, and the word seems absurdly lacking. “Did you do all this yourself?”

She laughs. “I would say it’s cheaper than therapy, but it would be a lie. That patch of tiger lilies alone could have fed all three of my boys for a month.” I follow her outstretched arm to a tall clump of yellow flowers, their trumpetlike blooms swinging in the breeze under the limbs of a massive oak. “Nick broke his arm in two places on that spot when he was eight. I swear, that boy would’ve lived up in that tree if he could have. I’d come outside and he’d be all the way at the top, waving down at me from the highest branch. It was only a matter of time before he fell out and broke something. I guess I should be thankful it wasn’t his neck.”

Now that I’m out of the spotlight of Gabe’s hateful glare, the knots in my shoulders unwind, and I find myself returning her smile. “He sounds like a handful.”

“He was nothing compared to those brothers of his. Gabe and Zach were the real troublemakers...” She shakes her head, but the gesture is more wistful than sad. “Do you know those two once removed every single item from their chemistry classroom and re-created the lab smack in the middle of the gym floor? I’m talking desks and microscopes and pencils and lab coats, all the way down to the very last petri dish. Don’t ask me how they got into the school on a weekend, because I never knew, and I still don’t want to. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer.”

I laugh. “I bet their old teachers are still talking about that one.”

“Those two were two peas in a pod. I always said God meant for them to be twins.”

I think about the sudden and overwhelming sense of déjà vu I got when I saw Gabe coming at me at Handyman Market, how for the second time in my life, I found myself getting flustered by those famous Armstrong genes. “They certainly do look the part.”

“That they do.” We round the corner, and Jean gestures to two chairs burrowed in a patch of wispy ferns. “Let’s sit, shall we?”

We settle in, and the early-October sun makes kaleidoscope patterns on my bare shins through the trees. I lean back onto the chair’s warm wood and think for possibly the hundredth time how much I like this woman sitting beside me. That if things had been different, if we’d met under different circumstances, through mutual friends at a party or volunteering for some local nonprofit, Jean and I might have been friends.

“I met him once,” I find myself saying. “Your son Zach, I mean. I interviewed him right before he left for basic training.”

“I know, dear.” I must look shocked, because she laughs at my expression. “I don’t just let anyone in my home. Unlike Gabe, I did my homework before you came over. Don’t take it personally, but I need to know who’s walking through my door these days.”

I think back to her questioning my motivations for coming, how she didn’t look the least bit surprised when I admitted my connections to the army. But if she already knew, then why not just call me out on it? Why not confront me? It occurs to me then that maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe her questions were a test.

“In your article,” she says, “you accused Zach of enlisting as a publicity stunt.”

Yes
, I think. Definitely
a test
.

I twist on my chair and give her my answer. “I didn’t accuse him. I questioned his motivations. Zach enlisted the same year President Obama began pulling out of Iraq, and to fight in a war that a solid majority of Americans didn’t want us fighting. I was only trying to figure out why then, why, if his motivations to serve were as pure as he claimed they were, it took him so long to enlist.”

“You compared him to a Kardashian.”

“True, but then I concluded that his motivations were completely unselfish, and that everything about him was very un-Kardashian-like. I believe I called him
the real deal
, but only because my editor restricted my use of the word
heroic
to three.”

“I’m not criticizing you, dear, I’m complimenting you. As the daughter of a three-star general, it would have been far easier for you to praise the pants off my son, but you didn’t let him off that easy. Yourself, either. I imagine your connections with the army made it difficult for you to come here today, no?”

A flutter of guilt where my father is concerned worms its way under my skin. Handing the Armstrongs proof about Ricky might have been the right thing to do, but my father will certainly not see it that way. His loyalty is to his country and the army first, and I’m pretty certain he will see my coming here, to the home of the family who has accused him, loudly and publicly, of misconduct, as a betrayal.

But as for me, my biggest loyalty is to my conscience. My conscience compelled me here. Objectively I know I should be loyal to my father, and that he will never understand, but the conscience isn’t objective. I had to come. I had to do the right thing. Zach Armstrong gave up everything for his country, including his life. I had to tell his surviving family what I found.

“I see,” she says, taking in my expression. “I’m sure once Gabe calms down, he’ll see what this visit is costing you, too.”

I look beyond her and across the yard, over swaying leaves and bobbing blooms, back up toward the house. Under the ruffled kitchen valance, Gabe is posed like a statue—legs wide, arms folded across his chest, big form taking up a good part of the window. I can’t make out his expression from this far, but I’d bet my every last penny it’s not pleasant.

“Anger can be like a buoy,” Jean says, following my gaze. “Sometimes it feels like the only thing holding your head above water, but you have to let go of it at some point. Otherwise, you’ll never make it back to shore.” She turns back to me, smiles. “He’ll get there.”

I don’t answer, mostly because I’m not entirely sure I agree. After what I’ve seen of Gabe thus far—his stubborn suspicion, his firecracker temper—I think he might not let go of that life vest anytime soon. But instead of saying any of this, I pose the question that’s been piling up on my tongue for the past twenty minutes. “Why did you bring me here? Why didn’t you just let me get in my car and leave?”

“We’ve not had the best experience with the media, as I’m sure you know, and the journalists we’ve interfaced with have been far too overzealous to be pleasant. No offense.”

Why do I feel as if she’s on a fishing expedition? As if I’m trying to dodge a hook I can’t quite see?

“No offense taken,” I say. “Journalists can be pretty hard-core.”

“But not you.”

“I already told you. I’m not a journalist.”

“But you were. And to use your own term on you, you were
the real deal
.” She cocks her head and studies me in a way that makes the breath freeze in my throat, my muscles tense for the head-on collision I can’t see but can sense coming. “That Chelsea woman really did a number on you, didn’t she?”

My breath leaves me in a loud whoosh, and I blink away a sudden burning in the corners of my eyes. I wish I’d grabbed my sunglasses from the center console of my car to hide behind, to protect me from Jean’s superhuman scrutiny. It’s an uncomfortable thing, being seen so clearly by a virtual stranger, one who seems to know the skeleton I’ve tucked away in the back of my closet, knows that much like her son, I cling to my guilt like a life buoy, too. Beating myself up for what happened feels so much easier than actually forgiving myself, or asking for others’ forgiveness.

“Yes,” I say, looking away. “She did.”

“I want to tell the world about Zach. I want to tell his story. And I want you to help me.”

And there it is, I think, the hook. Jean got me so distracted, so flustered and discombobulated with her Chelsea questions that I didn’t even feel it slide into my side. Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe after stumbling on Ricky, my curiosity has come alive. Maybe Jean’s hook simply doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.

“Why me?”

Jean smiles, not unkindly. “Because of all the things we’ve already talked about. Your connections with the army. Your experience with Chelsea. Both those things will make you very careful with your words, with how you choose to frame Zach’s story.”

“I haven’t agreed to frame
any
story.”

“What if I told you I plan to find Ricky?”

“I would say I have absolutely no doubt you will. But that doesn’t change my answer.”

“Actually, dear, you haven’t
told
me your answer.”

I open my mouth to say no. Helping Jean write Zach’s story isn’t just sticking a toe into the early-spring sunshine. It’s stepping into the sun at high noon, without clothes or blankets to keep me warm, without SPF or shades to protect myself from the sun’s harsh glare.

And yet I find myself considering the possibilities.

Because all those things that made me want to become a journalist are still there, have
always
been there, lurking just under the surface. Discipline and determination and temerity and a curiosity that, as evidenced by the very fact that I’m still sitting here, on a chair in Jean’s sunny backyard, just won’t stop.

But do I have the courage to try again, to trust myself not to make the same mistake I made with Chelsea all over again this time around, with Jean? That my words will not do someone harm?

Then again, they wouldn’t be my words, would they? They’d be Jean’s.

So how could any words poison her or her family, when essentially what she’s asking is for me to help her write
hers
? How would helping Jean be any different from what I’m doing now, with health care? The content would be all hers. I would just be curating it.

Jean reaches across the ferns, wraps her bony fingers around mine. “At least tell me you’ll think about it, will you?”

Before I can stop myself, before I know that I even intended to speak, I find myself saying to Jean, “I will.”

Part Two:
Wicked Lies

10

On Saturday, I steer my car across the border into Maryland, and the tax brackets rise like floodwaters all around me. The houses grow progressively bigger, their lots stretch wider and deeper, their lawns become greener and lusher. Minivans and hatchbacks give way to eight-cylinder SUVs and expensive German sports cars. They weave in and out of afternoon traffic on their way to the gym or the driving range or the mall, zipping around runners and pedestrians with diamond rings the size of marbles.

It’s here, at the tail end of a quiet residential street in Bethesda, that I find my brother Mike’s ten-thousand-square-foot monstrosity of stone and shingles. I ease to a stop behind my sister-in-law’s navy Range Rover, pluck the gift from the passenger’s seat and head up the herringbone walkway to the bleached oak double doors.

I punch the bell, and from somewhere inside a dog barks, a baby screams and my brother yells at both of them to quiet down. And then a door opens to reveal my niece, Rose, wearing a bright pink princess dress covered in what I sincerely hope is tomato sauce.

“Abbyyyyyyy! You came!” She pounces on me, wrapping herself around my right thigh like a monkey. Their dog, Ginger, comes sliding around the corner, and I brace for her attack to my other leg.

“Of course I came, goofball. I wouldn’t miss your third birthday party for the world.”

She looks up with wide and impossibly green eyes. “No, I’m four!”

“Silly me. I guess that’s why I got you a present, isn’t it?”

“But you already got me a present.”

Admittedly, I might have gone a little overboard with the giant pink-and-purple castle playhouse I paid the toy store to install in her backyard this past week, but I adore this child, would throw myself in front of a bus for her, hope if I ever have a daughter of my own she will be exactly like my adorable niece.

I hold out the bag. “I got you another one.”

Rose hops off my leg. A determined Ginger takes her place, licking frantically at the sauce on my jeans while Rose rips the package open in record time. “It’s a
teapot
!” she squeals as if she’s sixteen, and I’ve just given her the keys to a cherry-red convertible Mercedes. “And
cups
with
saucers
!”

“You and me, girlfriend, tea party in the castle. Just let me say hi to everyone first, okay?”

Rose gathers up her gift, hangs the bag from a handlebar on her tricycle, then peddles off down the hall.

My brother and his wife, Betsy, have a gorgeous home, rambling and gleaming with polished marble and dark hardwoods. Its rooms would be magazine worthy, were it not for the two toddlers who live here. Sippy cups and empty food wrappers and a trail of toys leading from room to room, like a messy Hansel and Gretel chain of clues. It’s as if Mike and Betsy, who before they had kids would roll their eyes with disdain at their less tidy friends, have given up trying to maintain any semblance of order. I don’t know what their descent into disarray means for me, the least organized person of the family, should I ever have kids, but it can’t be good.

I head through their chef’s kitchen, pausing to admire Rose’s cake, a sugary concoction shaped like stacked gift boxes smothered in buttercream bows and flowers, then follow the sound of voices and laughter toward the backyard.

I’m halfway down the back hallway when I hear my father’s voice in the den, fueled by authority and something much angrier, something that sticks my soles to the antique Aubusson runner. “If you have a point you’d like to make, I suggest you do it right here, right now, to my face. We’ve been friends for too long for stunts like the one you just pulled.”

My godfather’s familiar chuckle answers, but something about it pinches my insides like a swarm of mosquitoes eating me from the inside out. Especially when he follows it up with a rather testy, “I don’t like your tone, or what you’re accusing me of. And if you wanted to keep handing down orders, then perhaps you shouldn’t have retired.”

General Chris Rathburn is not technically my uncle, but I’ve known him all my life and I love him like one. He and Dad met in basic training, and they climbed the army ranks as friends and equals, landing with three stars apiece and matching general’s salaries up until my father retired last year. So why does Uncle Chris sound so condescending now?

“Fine. I’m asking you, then, as my longtime friend, as my brother in arms, to not take this any further. I’m asking you to do the right thing.” Dad’s tone is grave and humble and...unfamiliar. Tom Wolff is a man used to giving orders, not asking favors.

Uncle Chris doesn’t seem inclined to bow, either. “The right thing, according to whom? Besides, you and I both know it’s out of my hands now. Regardless of what you think of me and my involvement in this matter, I’m not the one fueling this investigation. Jean Armstrong is.”

Her name whips a lightning bolt up my spine, sticks the breath in my lungs. I know I shouldn’t be listening, but I can’t seem to move. I lean my upper body closer to the doorway, tilt my head so I can better hear.

“I’m not talking about the investigation, and you know it.”

“Look, Tom. You and I want the same thing here, and that’s for that family to back down. Where we disagree is how to go about getting there. But you’re no longer in charge here.” There’s a long, long pause, then Chris’s voice, darker now. “I am.”

The silence that spins out lasts forever. It’s the kind of silence that wraps around you like a shroud, the kind that turns the air thick and solid, the kind that makes you want to hear the answer as much as you dread it. I hold my breath and lean in, straining to hear what comes next.

Finally, it comes in the form of Rose’s high-pitched squeal from right behind me. “Everybody’s
outside
, silly!”

And then, before either my father or Uncle Chris can respond or come storming around the corner, I latch on to Rose’s hand and drag her out the door.

* * *

Rose and I emerge onto a stone terrace that could be on the cover of a Frontgate brochure. Designer wicker couches, teak dining tables, cushioned chaise longues in front of a rolling lawn as perfectly manicured as any golf course. Pretty, but with not even the slightest nod to the family who lives here.

Mom greets me as if she hasn’t seen me in months, as if I didn’t just meet her for coffee this past Thursday morning.

“Abigail!” she says, pushing a kiss on my cheek and strangling me in a hug. “How
are
you, dear?”

Margaret Wolff is the storybook version of a mother. The kind of mom who alphabetizes recipe cards and embroiders Christmas stockings and can whip up hot, hearty meals on a moment’s notice. While my father climbed the army’s ranks, collecting pins and adding stars to his sleeves, she stayed at home with me and Mike, packing our lunches and drilling us for spelling bees. Whenever I picture her, she always looks as she does now, in simple makeup, sensible shoes and a cheerful, frilly apron.

She releases me, and I dole out hugs to the rest of the family. My brother, Mike, hovering at the edge of the terrace with a Heineken and his orthodontist’s smile, toothy and white. His wife, Betsy, stretched out in an Adirondack chair nearby. Their son, Tommie, dressed in a diaper and onesie and waving an empty bubble container in a fist. Chris’s wife, Susan, my godmother, who gives Mom a run for her money when it comes to enthusiastic hellos.

By the time I’ve made my rounds, Dad and Uncle Chris are coming out the terrace door, and neither of them look particularly happy. Their knowing gazes land on me, lighting me up inside like a bonfire...or maybe that’s my own guilt at getting caught red-handed, eavesdropping on their conversation.

Uncle Chris breaks away from my father and comes across the terrace with a wide grin. “How’s my girl?” He tucks me under an arm and drops a kiss on my temple. “Isn’t it time for another one of our monthly lunches?”

“Way past. But you canceled the last two times.”

“Sorry, sugar. But things have been a little hectic, as I’m sure you know, with the Armstrong case.”

All around us, everyone has gone back to their conversations. Mom and Aunt Susan are exchanging recipes, Mike and Betsy are bickering about whose turn it is to change the baby’s diaper, Rose is sweet-talking Tommie into a bite of his cookie. Only my father is silent. His gaze is pinned to mine as if I might be concealing an IED. It’s more than just anger at the eavesdropping. It’s as if he’s searching for something in my answer.

I keep it as innocuous as possible. “I’ll bet,” I say, returning my gaze to Uncle Chris, and that’s that.

The party progresses the way most four-year-olds’ birthday parties do, with half-eaten hamburgers and puddles of spilled milk and more cake than any person should ever eat in one sitting. Dad barely says a word. Even worse, he spends most of every minute pumping a muscle in his jaw and glaring across the table at the man he always claimed was the brother he never had. Yet I can’t find even an ounce of affection between them now, only animosity. Whatever I walked into in that hallway is much bigger than the few sentences I overheard. There’s an electricity that crackles the air between them, and it soldiers every hair on my arms to attention.

Finally, when Tommie’s sugar high crashes into a sticky, sweaty meltdown, Mom takes him inside for a nap, and Rose and I escape with her tea set and a pitcher of lemonade to the castle playhouse at the back of the yard, nestled at the base of a big oak tree.

“I have a secret,” Rose tells me in an ironic twist. Another secret, this time from the four-year-old. Apparently, folks in this family learn early. “I’m asking Santa for a dog.”

Rose and I are seated cross-legged on the grass, the tea set spread out between us. Outside the plastic castle, the early-October sun is still beating down, but thanks to the playhouse’s position in the shade and a cross breeze blowing through the half-shuttered windows, inside the air holds the cool nip of fall.

I laugh and hand her a miniature teacup, delicately balanced on a miniature saucer. “You already have a dog.”

“I want a littler one.” Rose chugs her lemonade, then holds out her cup for a refill. “Jenny Kilkelly has one that’ll fit in a shoe. That’s the kind I want.”

For the next few minutes, Rose fills me in on every kid in her pre-K class, as well as a few of what I suspect are imaginary friends. Olivia threw up on Sam’s brand-new sneakers in the car-pool lane. Noah wants to be a girl for Halloween. Bridget and Bella, who are apparently identical twins, wear matching bows in their hair every day. Joseph has learned how to fly.

“Fly?” I say. “As in, flapping his wings like a bird?”

She gives me a don’t-be-dumb look. “No, silly. In an airplane. His dad taught him how.”

“Oh.” Schooled by a prekindergartener.

But Rose has already moved on, and to a girl by the name of Annie, who is going to live with her mother and brand-new father in Omaha, when my father’s voice booms from outside the castle roof. “Knock, knock.”

Rose springs to a stand and throws open the plastic shutters. “Grandpa! Want to come inside for some tea?” She leans her head out and lowers her voice to a shout-whisper. “It’s not really tea. It’s lemonade.”

“Thank you, sugar, but I wanted to talk to Abigail for a minute. How ’bout you run up to the house and see what Nana’s up to?”

She shrugs as if she couldn’t care either way, then takes off for the house, announcing loud enough for all of Bethesda to hear, “Nana, I gotta
pee
!”

As soon as she’s gone, I crawl across the grass and wedge my adult-sized body out the kid-sized door. “Is this about what happened in the hallway? Because I didn’t mean to overhear. I was walking out and—”

“Not exactly,” he says, cutting me off with a palm in the air. The sun hangs high in the sky above his head, backlighting him like an apparition, making him look even more stony-faced than I see he still is. “What I need to know is why you’re calling meetings with the Armstrongs.”

At first I think I must have heard him wrong. After all, it’s not as if I’ve told anyone other than Mandy and Victoria that I’ve had contact with either of the Armstrongs, and neither of them would pass the information on to my father.

I unfold myself, brushing the grass off my jeans. “Are you spying on me?”

“Answer the question, Abigail. Are you or are you not writing about the Armstrong case?”

By glossing over my question, my father has unwittingly also answered it. He’s been spying, all right, though I’m not sure if it’s on me or the Armstrongs. Dad may have retired four months into the investigation, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still involved—though, involved enough to spy on his own daughter? The idea seems as impossible to me as unicorns or counting to infinity or eating only one french fry.

“Whatever my conversations have been with the Armstrongs, they have nothing to do with you.”

“Of course they have to do with me. My department is under investigation because of Jean Armstrong. Where’s your loyalty?”

His condescending tone lights a fire under my temper. “Funny you should mention that word, because loyalty is
exactly
why I’m talking to the Armstrongs. One of the seven reasons why, actually, and I’m sure you can guess the other six.”

A muscle ticks in the general’s jaw. Dad knows I’m referring to the seven army values, the same ones he drilled into me from the moment I could talk, and he doesn’t like that I’m throwing them back in his face now. “Stop playing around here, darlin’, and tell me about your conversation with the Armstrongs. Because I can only assume you didn’t get together to talk about nutritional supplements for seniors or swap health care reform stories.”

Dad’s sarcasm doesn’t mitigate his message. He sees my contact with any of the Armstrongs as a personal betrayal, just as I suspected he would. Sure, I felt a tiny ping of guilt when I passed Ricky’s name on to the Armstrongs, but it was nothing compared to the one I would have felt if I’d sat on that transcript.

But still. Ricky Hernandez is sort of a gray area. I decide to gloss over him for now and give my father a very brief summary of the conversation’s conclusion instead. “Jean asked me to help her write Zach’s story.”