The Ones We Trust (15 page)

Gabe sees my distress, wraps his free hand around my head, cupping it, and leans his forehead against mine. “I swear to you, when this is over, you and I will go back, both of us, together, and we’ll apologize to Graciela. We’ll tell her everything. But for now, I’m begging you to let it go. Please, Abigail. I
have
to know what’s in those blogs.”

It’s not his tone that does it, or his hand on my neck. It’s not his breath, warm and familiar on my lips, or his quiet desperation to learn the truth. It’s not even the way his eyes turn liquid and soft, watching me in a way that almost makes me forget about Graciela. It’s that one little word.
Us.
The promise of a future—
together
, his word—and of something magnificent blooming between us.

I give him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

He kisses me then, the barest brush of his lips against mine, but the tenderness and hope and desire feel like my reward, and they melt through my heart and solidify into something warm and golden. I’d promise him my soul right now if he asked.

“And Mom?” he whispers. “What should I tell her?”

“Tell her I say yes,” I say, at the same time telling myself it hasn’t been my answer all along.

Part Three:
The Space Between

22

After we make copies and return the original blog posts to Graciela, my iPhone directs us to the closest all-night diner, an IHOP on Frederick Boulevard. Inside it’s bright and warm and, rather unfortunately for us, crowded for ten-thirty on a Saturday night.

A determined Gabe winds his way through the restaurant, leading us to a booth at a deserted corner in the back. The diners we pass on the way seem more interested in their late-night pancake platters than in paying attention to either of us, but we study them carefully anyway. No sign of the Members Only man, or anyone else suspicious-looking, for that matter.

I slide into the booth on the side facing the restaurant, and Gabe sinks onto the bench next to me, positioning us both so we can keep a watchful eye on the room. He scoots in so close that if it weren’t for the fluorescent lights and sticky tabletop and overwhelming scent of bacon and syrup, I could almost pretend we were in a normal restaurant, and this was our first date.

And then he smacks the pile of papers onto the table in front of us, and I remember. We have work to do.

A woman in a blue-and-white waitress uniform comes to take our order. I’m not even remotely hungry, but since I haven’t eaten anything other than a couple of the granola bars I threw into my bag this morning, I order the breakfast sampler. Gabe orders the same and adds coffee and water for us both.

As soon as she walks away, Gabe reaches for the stack with the eagerness of a kid ready to tear into his presents on Christmas morning.

“Gabe, wait.” I slap a palm over the pile and pause until I have his full attention. “If the truth is in there, whatever it is, I will write it. Even if it proves my father is at fault. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it for you. I just wanted you to know that beforehand.”

It was apparently the right thing to say. He abandons the papers and slides a palm up my neck, planting a long, slow one on me in a way that makes everything else fade away—the people and the noise and the smells. I know nothing but Gabe, kissing the breath from my lungs.

“When this is done,” he says against my lips, “when we get back to DC, I’m going to take you on the most epic first date ever. Flowers, champagne, candlelit dinner, the works. I’m going to start all over at the beginning with you and make you fall for me the old-fashioned way.”

What if I’ve already fallen?
whispers through my mind, but I push it away with a grin. “Okay, but just so you know, I don’t put out on the first date.”

“Good thing I like a challenge, then.” His face is serious, but there’s a teasing edge to his words because both of us know there will be no challenge. I’ve already fallen, and after last night, Gabe and I have already moved well past the boundaries of a promised first date.

We untangle ourselves and dive into the blog copies, passing the sheets back and forth and making notes in the margins. We agree to create two piles—one for blog entries with any mention of Zach or his platoon as well as all the entries in the weeks before and after his death, and one for those without. Our food comes, and we mostly ignore it, pausing our work only occasionally for a lukewarm bite.

What we do not ignore, what we
cannot
ignore, is the man with a denim jacket and goatee sliding into the booth next to us. Gabe and I fall silent, taking to whispers and written notes on my yellow notepad, and casting sideways glances at the man as he studies the menu.

Before long, we’ve learned that Ricky became friends with Zach and Nick shortly after arriving in Kabul. He mentioned both of them plenty of times in his early blog entries.

“I know Nick is...troubled,” I whisper to Gabe, “but he didn’t remember Ricky at all?”

Something settles over his face. Dark, uneasy, despondent. He dips his head close, his breath hot on my ear. “Nick loses it every time I bring up Ricky’s name. I can’t get anything out of him other than a string of profanities and paranoia.”

My heart heaves for him. I slide a palm up his thigh and press a kiss of solidarity to his shoulder.

And then we return to our reading, and I am quickly swept up in Ricky’s stories. His writing was honest and true, and he had a raunchy sense of humor; it’s our blind luck that the blowup doll would have been right up his triple-X alley. Our coffee grows cold, and the two piles on the table before us grow higher. Within a little over two hours, we have divided all the papers. The man beside us has long since paid and gone.

“Let me see that letter again,” I say.

Gabe pulls Ricky’s swiped letter out of his back pocket and unfolds it, smoothing it down on the table. We bend our heads over it, reading it for the second time.

Dear G,

I watched a friend of mine die yesterday. It is an image I will never forget, no matter how hard I try. There’s really no way to prepare yourself for something like that, and as much as you see it all around you in this godforsaken place, you never get used to it, either. Especially when it happens to a friend.

But the thing that affected me even more than watching the bullets tear through his brain, is the way his brother sobbed over his body. Zach is just lying there, his skull in chunks on the desert floor, and Nick is on top of him, clutching him and wailing. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot.

At the base afterward, you could have heard a pin drop. All of us just stood in the motor pool, sweat pouring down our necks and foreheads into our eyes, dripping off our knuckles onto the concrete, not saying a word, just staring at the ceiling, the walls, our shoes. Anywhere but at each other. The thing is, by then we all knew it wasn’t the enemy that killed Zach. It was one of us. It had to have been. I just thank God it wasn’t me.

And then the commander came in and confirmed what we already knew. Not in so many words, but with some bullshit message about how we should avoid placing blame on any one person. One by one, we were questioned, briefed and sent to our respective tents. When they got to me, a civilian consultant there only to fix a stupid truck valve, they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. The commander practically signed my transfer papers himself. I don’t like it, but what can I do? Zach’s death is going to be a PR nightmare back home, and I guess the army wants to batten down the hatches.

Death is so arbitrary here, G. A total crapshoot. We all fear our deaths, pray for our lives, miss our homes, wonder if we will ever return to our families. This time it was Zach, but it just as easily could have been me. It could have been Nick. It could have been anyone. Who’s next?

Sorry to be so morose on you, sis. This place is starting to get to me.

I love you,

R

My vision blurs, and I draw a shaky breath. “They knew. Everyone knew.” There’s a hitch in my voice I don’t bother disguising. “That very same day, they knew.”

Gabe’s jaw clenches. “And they tried to conceal it.”

Another person chooses a table too close for comfort, this time a slender blonde in her midforties. She throws more than one glance in our direction as she pretends to read the menu, and that’s all I need to know. We need more privacy than the IHOP can afford. I write
HOTEL?
in big, block letters on my notepad, and Gabe nods his agreement. While he pays the bill, I gather up the stacks of papers and our things, and we meet at the door.

It doesn’t take us long to find an ancient motel on a cross street, but Gabe nixes it. “Those places are crawling with bedbugs,” he declares, so I drive on. A little farther up the road, we find a newer-looking chain hotel, and I pull into the lot. A disinterested night clerk checks us in and hands us two keys, pointing us to the elevator that will take us to room 213.

“Very romantic,” I say, taking in the worn carpeting, cheap wall unit and two double beds.

Behind me, Gabe activates the double lock and straps the chain across the door.

With my thumb and forefinger, I remove the ratty bedspread and synthetic blanket from both beds, dumping them in a pile in the corner. When he gives me a look, I say a little defensively, “I watch
CSI
. I know what’s on those things.”

We spread our papers out over the stiff cotton sheets of the beds and get to work, each reclining on a headboard. We reread every entry in the Zach pile, and when we don’t find anything more than what was in Ricky’s letter, we reread the other pile, as well. When we don’t find anything after that, we start all over again. I read until my eyes burn. I read until the letters blur and the lines run together on the page, and then I read some more. If there is something else there, something beyond what we already know from the letter, I’m too tired to see it. And from the bleak look that has swallowed Gabe’s face, he’s not seeing it, either.

Finally, at somewhere around four in the morning, I collapse onto the pillows behind me. “What are we missing?”

On the next bed, Gabe drops the paper he was holding, and it skates to the floor. “Maybe the letter is all there is.”

“There’s got to be more.” My voice is boiling with desperation. “Why else would the blog just disappear? There’s got to be more.”

“There’s not. Goddammit all to hell.” Gabe slumps onto the pillows, draping an arm over his face. The past forty-eight hours have been such a roller-coaster ride of emotions for me, I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him. I go to him, gingerly moving the papers onto the other bed and curling up at his side. I kiss his temple, his scruffy cheek, his clenched jaw. Except for his quiet breathing, Gabe doesn’t move at all.

“I just hoped...” His voice breaks and then falls still.

In my time as a journalist, I covered more tragedies than I can count. I’ve stood among hysterical parents and shocked survivors outside schools and malls and fast-food restaurants while a gunman wreaked havoc inside. I’ve interviewed weeping mothers who’ve lost a child to an inner-city gang or a serial killer or a lunatic with a semiautomatic rifle. I’ve questioned rape survivors and tsunami survivors and every other survivor you can come up with, but never,
never
have their emotions touched me as deeply as Gabe’s does now.

I scoot even closer and bury my face in his neck. My voice is barely a whisper. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

“I still call him,” he says, and the words reach into my chest and put a choke hold on my heart. “I still pay for his cell phone service, just so I can still feel like I’m talking to him. I don’t ever want to stop...” He wipes his eyes on his sleeve and turns to me, and what I see in his face breaks my heart. “Stupid, right?”

“No.” My eyes fill with tears for Gabe, and for a man I never really knew. I wrap myself around him until not even a whisper of air can make its way between our bodies. “No. It’s
not
stupid. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I told him about you.”

His words hit me like a lightning strike, blowing me apart with a billion volts. Gabe called his dead brother, the one he spent his entire life worshipping, the one he looked up to and sought approval from, and told him about me. It takes me a couple of tries to find my voice.

“What did you tell him?” I whisper into his chest.

“That I’ve found someone who softens that constant ache in my chest. Someone who makes me smile again.” He rolls onto his side to face me, pushing the hair back off my temple, tucking it behind my ear. “It’s true, you know. You’re that person.”

I lie here for an endless moment, unable to breathe, thinking back to the last time anyone said something so beautiful to me. My high school boyfriend, the first to tell me he loved me. Rose this past February, when she asked me to be her Valentine. My grandmother’s whispered words before she took her last breath. None of them comes even close.

I soften the ache. I make him smile. I’m that person for him.

I do the only thing I can think of to show him what his words mean to me. I undress him. I start with his boots and socks and work my way up. I let him help only when absolutely necessary, whispering for him to lift up his hips or sit up enough for me to peel him out of his sweater. This isn’t about sex or physical release. This is about me helping him forget his brothers even if only for a minute. This is about me loving away his pain.

I kiss every inch of him. His forehead, his cheeks, his earlobe, the scruffy spot at the hinge of his jaw. Gabe doesn’t move other than to bunch up the sheets in two tight fists. I kiss his Adam’s apple, the hollow of his neck, the center of his chest, holding there until I feel it, his heart beating steady and sure underneath. Gabe’s big, beautiful body hums like a high-voltage electrical wire, and I am the lightning rod. I kiss every inch of him, licking down one side and up the other, nipping with my teeth and soothing with my tongue, lingering on places that provoke a gasp or a sigh or a groan.

And then without warning, he flips me. “My turn,” he says, his voice low and rough.

His hands are licks of fire as he slides them across my body, peeling off my clothes with burning, urgent fingers, an inferno boiling my blood and consuming me with heat. Every nerve ending in my body springs to attention. I arch up to meet him and moan. He answers it with one of his own.

He makes love to me then, and it’s as if he is searching for something in me, some way to fill him up and make him complete again, and maybe I’m doing the same with him. It is so different from the last time, more bittersweet maybe, and far more powerful. I watch him above me, my heart pounding in my chest as if it’s trying to break free, and something inside of me is breaking open, spilling out everywhere. At the last moment, right as I’m about to cry out his name, he pushes the hair off my brow and holds my gaze until both of us fall off the edge and into each other’s arms.

Afterward, he holds me as if he will never let me go, and I do the same with him. As I’m drifting off, three little words bubble up in my throat but go unsaid, the dizzying realization I’m in love with the man next to me almost floating me back to consciousness, but the pull of exhaustion is too great.

By the time I reach the far side of a sigh, I’m asleep.

* * *