The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 05
Ethan turned Fort Bragg upside down.
He went first to the Greyhound station and showed my picture to the ticket agents.
The third one told him she’d seen me get on a bus headed toward downtown Fayetteville with Sam.
He drove to Fayetteville and worked his way down the street, hitting every diner and motel, asking. He asked until dark and came up empty.
Captain Reyes split a team up to look for us. Ethan sat in the Greyhound waiting room for an entire night.
The plastic bench dug into his back. He got up and walked outside and smoked two cigarettes, the tips glowing on and off in the dark.
Just before dawn, the Fayetteville PD called the battalion duty office.
The soldier on duty ran over to Captain Reyes’s quarters and pounded on the door. “Mrs. Hayes spent last night in the Greyhound waiting room with her son. Patrol officers questioned her.”
“They asked her a couple of questions, she said she was military family, they saw the ID and didn’t file anything. Let her go.”
The housing area was in an uproar too.
Mrs. Miller was gossiping in the laundry room.
“What kind of decent wife runs off with her kid in the middle of the night?”
Someone else piped up: “Give it a rest. She took the child, didn’t she?”
Mrs. Miller rolled her eyes. Said if she had the nerve to leave, she’d better not try coming back.
Mrs. Harding walked past the laundry room.
The room went dead silent.
Mrs. Harding glanced at Mrs. Miller, said nothing, picked up her laundry basket, and walked out.
That afternoon she went to Ethan’s office. Door closed. She was inside less than ten minutes. When she came out, her face was grim.
Captain Reyes passed her in the corridor and called out, “Ma’am.”
She waved him off. “Don’t. I handled this one wrong.”
Jake spent two days looking for me in Fayetteville.
He found me and Sam in a cheap motel on the west side of town. I was sharpening Sam’s crayons.
The room was small, no afternoon sun.
Sam was at the little table, drawing — a stick figure with a smaller stick figure beside it.
Jake pushed the door open. Sam didn’t look up. Just called out, “Uncle Jake.”
Jake sat down across from me, reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and slid it across the table.
I opened it.
A KIA notification — DD Form 1300.
Fresh paper, standard format, red DoD seal at the bottom.
Name: Michael Doyle. Rank: Sergeant. Date of death: exactly one week before Ethan rotated out of theater.
I looked up at Jake.
He fished a pack of Marlboro Reds out of his pocket, stuck one between his lips, and reached for his lighter. I frowned.
“Not in front of Sam.”
Jake caught my expression, tucked the lighter back and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth.
He flipped the DD Form over.
On the back, a small strip of beige paper had been fixed — the edges still showed the serrated print of an MRE wrapper. Torn from the inner lining of a ration bag.
A single line was scrawled on it in pencil. The handwriting was ragged, strokes trailing off, the last character dragging into a long line like the writer’s hand had given out halfway through.
Colonel — the kid’s yours to look after. — Doyle.
Jake said, “Doyle was Captain Chase’s recon sergeant. Two days before Chase was killed, he ran a piece of intel through a Taliban blockade zone.”
“He got the intel back to the FOB. Didn’t survive. Before he went, he had Lily brought to his bedside at the aid station. Told her to find Ethan.”
“Told the Colonel he owed him one — but he didn’t want the debt paid back to him. He wanted Ethan to take care of his woman and the child.”
I gripped the DD Form, the edges of the paper cutting into my palm.
“When you looked into this before, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Ethan told me not to. Command put a 90-day OPSEC hold on it. It touches HUMINT networks still running in theater and assets on Chase’s line who haven’t been extracted yet.”
He paused.
“Anybody leaks a word — court-martial.”
He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot.
“Nor. Ethan didn’t do anything wrong. He just couldn’t tell you.”
I slapped the DD Form down on the table.
“Couldn’t tell me? Then how did you find out?”
Jake froze.
“You all knew. Mrs. Harding knew. You knew. Mom and Dad came running, they knew. Doesn’t it matter that all of you knew? Who’s the one who’s been getting shredded in the housing area for two months? Who?”
“‘Can’t say’ — and then what? You looked into it and turned it up in three days. Mom and Dad show up, and he tells them the whole story. The one person who most deserved to know the truth was the one you all kept in the dark, and now you want me to forgive him? In your dreams.”
I glared at Jake.
Jake said nothing.
He couldn’t bring himself to say just let him off easy again.
I took a deep breath and pointed at the door.
“Get out. I don’t want to see you right now.”
Jake didn’t move.
So I said it plainly.
“Fine. Jake, you’re not leaving? Then I’ll leave.”
I started packing, ready to take Sam and switch motels.
Jake stood up right away, looked at me, his face bitter.
“Get out! I don’t want to see you!”
I slammed the door in his face.
That night I sat on the hard motel bed holding Sam.
He was asleep, breathing evenly, still clutching that crayon.
I pulled the crayon out of his fingers and set it on the table, took his drawing over to the lamp, and looked at it again.
In the drawing, there was only me and Sam.
Two stick figures, one big, one small, holding hands. Next to them, a lopsided sun.
I folded the drawing, turned off the light, lay down.