The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 09
Ethan came to find me at Cape Fear Valley.
It was a Saturday afternoon.
I was off. I’d taken Sam down to the little courtyard behind the apartment to kick a ball around.
The ball rolled up against a planter. Sam ran over, crouched to grab it, then stood up and shouted, “Daddy!”
I turned.
Ethan was standing at the edge of the courtyard, an ACU jacket unzipped.
He’d lost a lot of weight. His cheekbones stood out. A day’s worth of dark stubble on his jaw. Dark circles under his eyes.
He was holding a paper bag. He stood there looking at me, opened his mouth, closed it.
Sam ran over holding the ball, looked up at him.
Ethan crouched down, ruffled Sam’s hair, held the bag out. Said, Daddy bought you some candy.
Sam took the bag, turned back to look at me, didn’t open it.
I walked over and pulled Sam to my side.
“What are you doing here.”
“I came to see you and Sam.”
“You’ve seen us. You can go.”
He didn’t move.
“Honey.”
“Don’t call me honey. Call me Nora.”
He paused. Corrected himself.
“Nora. I have something to say to you. Give me ten minutes.”
I looked down at Sam.
Sam clutched the bag, looked back and forth between us, then tugged on my sleeve. Said, Mama, I want to go upstairs and draw.
I said okay, take the ball with you.
Sam ran off — thud, thud, thud — the ball tucked under his armpit, bouncing with each step.
That left the two of us in the courtyard.
The wind was blowing over from the hospital, carrying a smell of disinfectant.
He stood across from me for a moment, took a deep breath, and started.
“From beginning to end, I never figured out how to open this conversation.”
He said the night Doyle handed him the responsibility, it was late.
Doyle was lying on a field cot in the aid station.
Under two wool blankets, still shaking. His lips as white as paper.
When he pressed that MRE wrapper into Ethan’s hand, his fingers had already stiffened — Ethan couldn’t pry them apart.
He said: Colonel. I’m not afraid to die. I’m afraid of Lily being alone. You owe me a life. I don’t want the debt paid back to me. Take her and the baby home to America.
“I said yes.”
Ethan looked at me. His eyes had gone red around the rims.
“All I could think was, this is on me. Doyle took hits for me twice. I wouldn’t have come home without him. This was the last thing he ever asked me for.”
He said he thought he could handle it.
Thought he’d bring Lily back to Fort Bragg, get her settled, and once the ninety-day hold lifted he’d explain it to everyone and that would be that.
But he hadn’t counted on Mrs. Miller talking that way. Hadn’t counted on Mrs. Harding calling me out at a public meeting. Hadn’t counted on me being pinned under the tongues of the entire housing area for two months.
By the time he realized what was happening, I’d already been branded the woman who hounded a pregnant girl to tears.
And he couldn’t say a thing.
“Are you done.”
I frowned.
“I’m done.”
His voice was low, like someone was standing on his chest.
I looked at him.
“Everything you just said — you should have told me the day you came back to Fort Bragg.”
“We lived together. Slept in the same house. You couldn’t find one moment?”
“If you had told me then, I would have carried it with you. Whoever came at me, we’d have taken it together. I could have waited three months.”
“But you didn’t. You told me you couldn’t say, and then you told my brother. Told my parents. Told Mrs. Harding.”
“You even told Lily not to say. You made a girl like Lily — a good girl — walk around embarrassed in front of me.”
“Ethan. What was any of it for.”
His lips were trembling.
“You think you carried something. What did you carry? You carried your bond with your brother in arms. You couldn’t carry your wife getting trampled. You’re the Colonel with balls in the battalion. And you left your wife on the fire for two months.”
“You even — “
I laughed once, cold.
“When I wanted to speak for myself, you held my hand down under the table. Did you enjoy that?”
He lowered his head.
His shoulders slumped forward. Just like the day he knelt on the gravel.
“Ethan. I have nothing left to say to you. Go.”
He didn’t move.
I called Sam back down and took him by the hand and walked out.
At the apartment building’s front door, I heard him call out behind me.
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t turn around.
That night I bathed Sam and put him in bed. He tore open the paper bag and popped a Hershey’s Kiss in his mouth.
The foil crinkled for a minute, and then, with the candy in his cheek, he asked me: Did Daddy do something bad?
I said yes.
He thought for a long time. Then he asked: Will he do it again?
I said no, he won’t. But some things — once you do them, they stay done. Fixing it after doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Sam said, Oh. He flattened the foil out on the little table, smoothed it over and over with his fingernail, folded it into a tiny square, tucked it under his pillow, and rolled over and went to sleep.
I sat by the bed watching him for a while, then took out the divorce petition I’d already drafted and copied it over clean.
I wrote slowly. Stroke by stroke. When I got to the signature line the pen ran dry. I shook it twice and kept going.
Sam’s breathing was even beside me. A corner of the little foil square peeked out from under his pillow.