The Red Gloves Collection (36 page)

It was a way of life.

So why the attitude from Hannah? As if Christmas wouldn’t be the same if she and Jack didn’t come? Carol fixed herself a salad for lunch and mulled over the situation. Hannah was beyond the sentimentality of the working class, wasn’t she? The girl understood their lifestyle, how power and position came with a certain type of independence, one that didn’t have room for hurt feelings or needy pairings between parents and children.

She loved Hannah, of course—loved her the way mothers in her social strata best loved their children. Not with gushy hugs or kisses or flowery words, but with actions. The proper way. Carol and Jack paid for the house in The Colony and tuition at TJ Prep, the best education a child could ask for. Beyond that they provided Hannah private instruction in dance, voice, and piano, and finishing school. In a few short years, Carol had plans for her daughter to work with her.

That was love, wasn’t it?

But as Carol finished her salad, as she made her way to the back door and studied the meticulous gardens around the cobblestone patio, she thought of something she hadn’t before: maybe Hannah was lonely. She was still young, after all. Maybe her schoolwork and lessons and practices had worn her out, and left her wanting adult company more than a quiet grandmother could give.

The clock ticked out a steady rhythm in the background and a pleasant lemony smell wafted through the kitchen, the result of something the housekeeper was working on in the next room. Carol squinted at the sun-sprayed shrubs in the back of the yard. Yes, that had to be the problem. Hannah simply wanted a little life in the old house.

So who could spend Christmas with Hannah? She and Jack were out of the question, at least for now. But there had to be someone in their circle, someone besides Grandmother Paul, who could spend a few days with Hannah over the Christmas break.

Then, for the first time in years, a thought came to Carol.

Maybe it was time to tell her about Mike Conner. Mike, who had been Carol’s first love, the man she lived with for nearly four years after Hannah was born. The man Hannah knew nothing about.

Her biological father.

Carol had hoped to wait until Hannah was eighteen to tell her, but she was fifteen now. That was old enough, wasn’t it? She held her breath as she made her way through the kitchen and into her office. The box was still tucked away under the desk, in the corner of the room. The box held everything that reminded Carol of her old life, the one she’d lived before she married Jack.

She remembered to exhale. Then, with quiet steps, she crossed the room, pulled the box into the middle of the floor, and removed the lid. The first thing inside was a manila envelope with a single name written in black permanent ink across the top:
Mike.

A rush of feelings came over her and she could see the vast stretch of Pacific Ocean, hear the steady rush of waves against the shore, feel the warm sand between her toes as she sat on the beach watching him surf. She’d met him there, and from the beginning he’d had a surfboard tucked under one arm.

Carol closed her eyes and allowed the memory to have its way with her. She had been a dreamer back then, and Mike her blond, blue-eyed dream boy. Her parents had taught her about prestige and propriety and marrying well, but Carol ignored their advice. She’d been a hopeless romantic who had her own ideas about love, and all of them centered around Mike Conner.

“He’s a drifter,” her mother had told her. “With him you’ll never amount to anything.”

“He loves me, Mother,” Carol insisted. “We’ll find our own way.”

“He’s not the marrying type.” Despair rang in her mother’s voice. “You’ll find nothing but heartbreak.”

In the end, she’d been right—after four years of scrimping and barely getting by, Carol and Mike began fighting. The magic was long worn off by then, and Carol had to admit the truth in her mother’s prediction. Mike wasn’t the marrying type. He’d never even asked her, not until she first brought up leaving. But by then it was over. Mike had enlisted in the Army and gone to Fort Sill in Oklahoma for training. Three weeks later, alone and anxious for her old life, Carol and Hannah left one rainy April morning and never looked back.

Knowing she couldn’t marry him, Carol hadn’t put Mike’s name on Hannah’s birth certificate, and he hadn’t argued about the fact. Not at first, anyway. Probably because he’d figured Carol would come around eventually, and the two of them would marry. Then he could easily add his name to Hannah’s birth records.

In the months before he enlisted, he’d been anxious for it all—marriage, a proper place on Hannah’s birth certificate, a family life together. But by then, Carol was ready to go home, ready for the life her parents had wanted for her. When she and Hannah said good-bye to the small beach house, Carol left behind no information or letters or forwarding address. She returned to Maryland and picked up with Jack Roberts—high-society politician and former playboy. The two were married within a year, and Carol’s mother moved into Jack’s guesthouse while she and Jack and Hannah took the main house—a veritable mansion.

Life improved overnight for everyone except Hannah. For two years Hannah had talked about her daddy, asking where he was and crying for him. Sometimes Jack would hold her and rock her, telling her that he was her father now. Always, though, they had known Hannah would be fine—and she was. In time she forgot about the daddy they’d left behind, believing that Jack was, indeed, her father.

But she deserved to know about Mike, and now was as good a time as any.

Carol held the envelope to her face and breathed in. It smelled old and musty and faintly like the sea, the scent of forgotten days and bygones. She opened the flap and pulled out the first picture. It was a photo of Mike and Hannah, just around the time when Hannah was starting to walk. The two were cuddled in a worn-out recliner, and Mike was reading to her. He’d always been reading to her. Hannah had one pudgy arm draped along the back of his neck, her grin reached from one ear to the other.

Carol set the picture aside and sorted through the rest of the envelope. After a few minutes she chose two photographs—the first one, and one of Mike with his surfboard, his blond hair cut short per the instructions of his Army enlisting officer. She sifted through the bag again and found a metal lapel pin—a pair of wings Mike bought in the days before he left for training.

“Daddy’s gonna be a pilot one day, Hannah. An Army pilot. Then I’ll have a real pair of wings.”
She could hear him still, full of confidence and hope that he’d make good on his dreams and give Carol the life he thought she wanted.

By the time Mike had plans to leave for training, he was worried Carol would bolt, that she’d pick up her things one day, leave with Hannah, and never look back. Before he left he’d pulled her aside and given her the wings, the ones he’d bought. Sincerity rang in his words.
“I want Hannah to have these. Make sure, okay?”

A gust of guilt blew over Carol. She’d forgotten his request until now. Forgotten it as if he’d never even asked. She blinked and set the wings in the pile with the two photographs. At least she was taking care of it now. It wasn’t too late. Besides, if Hannah were any younger she wouldn’t have appreciated this—not the pictures nor the wings nor the information about Mike.

Carol sorted through the envelope and pulled out a list of details scribbled on an old, yellowed piece of notebook paper. The list represented all the information she’d had on Mike Conner back then.

She studied the sheet: his name, an old address and phone number in Pismo Beach, California. His age back then—twenty-three—and his birth date. And the fact that he’d joined the Army in early spring 1994.

That was it—all she had to remember him by.

For nearly a minute Carol studied the sheet and wondered. Was this the right thing for Hannah? The right timing? Would she be angry that she hadn’t been told sooner? She hesitated and stared at the photo. It had been her decision to keep the information from Hannah. If Hannah was upset, they’d work through it, the same way they’d work through spending a Christmas apart.

Parenting wasn’t much different from a business arrangement where most of the time the details ran smoothly, but some days brought disturbing news and hard work.

Carol made a copy of the detailed information and slipped it with the photos into a new envelope. Then she typed a quick letter of explanation. She was sorry about the past, but there was nothing she could do about it. Hannah needed to know. Maybe if the girl spent the holidays looking up Mike Conner, the distraction would keep her from being lonely.

Carol sealed the envelope, addressed it, and set it in the outgoing mail tray. She glanced at her watch. It was time to put together the invite list for the black-tie Christmas party.

CHAPTER TWO

T
he mission would be the most dangerous Mike Conner Meade had ever faced. At least that’s what his commander had told him.

He dropped into a dusty canvas chair and kicked his feet up on his rumpled cot. Another week of gusty wind and blinding sand, no relief in sight. Baghdad gave new meaning to the word
desert
—even when things were cooling down. It was sky and sand, sometimes the same color, and a hot grittiness that ground itself into the spaces between his teeth and his socks and the layers of his sleeping bag. It was a parched dry heat that seemed to age him ten years in as many days.

The meeting with his commander, Colonel Jared Whalin, was set to take place in five minutes, three tents down in the shanty barracks where they lived. The meeting was private. No one knew about the mission, not yet.

If Colonel Whalin had his way, only a handful ever would.

Two minutes ticked past and then another two. Mike stretched out his legs and wondered how long it had been since he’d sat on a surfboard, his legs dangling into the ocean while he waited for the perfect wave. After three years of tours in Iraq he’d never look at sand again the same way. His surfer days felt like they belonged to another person, someone he didn’t even try to remember.

He checked his watch. It was time.

He stood, shook his pants legs down around his boots, pressed his lips together, and slipped out through the flap in his tent. A burst of wind and sand hit him in the face and he squinted hard. Every step felt like a countdown to destiny—a destiny he had avoided every year, every mission, until now. He breathed in through his nose. Days like this he wished he hadn’t given up smoking.

“Meade, that you?”

Meade. That was the name they knew him by—his legal last name. Conner, his middle name and the name he’d actually used all his civilian life, wasn’t something that had followed him into the Army. Mike Meade. That was who he was now. No surfer-boy nicknames for the U.S. military.

Mike grabbed the canvas flap and stepped inside. “Yes, sir.” He straightened and gave a sharp salute. He had to talk over the sound of the wind and the flapping tent. “You wanted to talk about the mission, sir?”

“Yes.” Colonel Whalin sat behind his desk, one elbow anchored amid a slew of documents. He gestured in Mike’s direction. “At ease.” He sounded tired, defeated. “Listen, Meade, we don’t want you to run this mission. Assign it to someone else.”

Mike spread his legs apart and allowed his spine and shoulders to relax. He had expected this. “Can you run through the details, sir? I’m a little unclear.”

The colonel sorted through the paperwork in front of him. “One of these days we’ll pack up our tents and go home, you know that?” He rested his forearms on the desk. “But we’re not quite there, not yet.”

“Sir.” Mike wouldn’t say more. Not until the man got more specific.

A long sigh passed through the colonel’s gray teeth. “We found the headquarters for a group of insurgents just outside Baghdad, you know that much, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” the colonel narrowed his eyes. “They’re set up in an old, abandoned grade school.” He waved his hand in the air, disgusted. “Living quarters, training compound, the whole works. Hiding where kids used to play.”

“The goal, sir?”

The colonel leveled his gaze at Mike. “The mission is two-fold.” He pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket, tapped it twice, and slipped a cigarette between his lips. “Fly six Rangers in at night, rappel onto the roof of the building adjacent to their dorm area. The Rangers break in through the windows, capture the insurgents, and get back out. A ground crew will be waiting to pick up the men. But you’ll provide air cover. We’re looking at ten, eleven minutes tops.”

Mike swallowed.
Eleven minutes?
The chopper would be the biggest target in the area, stationary long enough for an insurgent to grab a rocket-propelled grenade and bring the bird down three times over. No wonder Colonel Whalin had told him it was dangerous. He looked straight ahead. “The second part?”

“Reconnaissance.” He pulled a lighter from the top drawer of his desk and lit his cigarette. “We have a feeling they’re holding prisoners there. You and your copilot will have night-vision goggles, of course. We want as much information as you can get.”

“Will we use a gunner, sir?” Not all missions included a gunner at the open door of the chopper. But if the chopper was going to hang in the air for eleven minutes, it would be a must.

“Definitely.” The colonel rubbed his eyes. His throat was thick. “There’ll be nine men altogether. Pilot, copilot, the gunner, and six Rangers.” He took a long drag from his cigarette. “A lot rides on it, Meade. We need someone capable. But let’s use the young guys. A dispensable crew.”

“Beg your pardon, sir.” Mike clenched his jaw. “I don’t have a crew like that.”

“I know.” Colonel Whalin pinned the cigarette between his lips and tossed up his hands. His tone was gravelly. “You get what I mean. The mission’s dangerous. It’s crazy dangerous.”

Mike unclenched his jaw. “I figured it was something like that, sir. I’m not worried; I can handle it.”

“Of course you can handle it.” His commander let the cigarette dangle from his lower lip. “Your crew’s the best we’ve got, Meade. I want you to think about the other crews, all five of them.” He inhaled sharply and let the smoke filter out through his nose. “I need an answer by tomorrow. Your top two choices.”