The Colonel Came Home With Her Novel by Coco

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 10 The next morning I went to the battalion HQ. I went to see Chaplain Harding. His office door was open. He was wearing reading glasses, going through paperwork. He looked up, saw me in the doorway, took his glasses off, and stood. “Ms. Bennett.” I noticed the

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,

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 08 Mrs. Miller sat in her seat and didn’t move. Everyone else had left. She stayed a long while. Captain Reyes took a couple of men and drove to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center to find me. Mrs. Coleman walked to the far end of the inpatient corridor

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 07 Doyle’s personal effects arrived at the battalion. The parcel was small — a standard military personal effects box, corners sealed with clear packing tape, mortuary affairs red tag on the top. Ethan opened it. Inside, a neatly folded set of Class A dress uniform, a pair of

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 06 The next morning I checked out. I didn’t go back. I dropped Sam off with my mother in Millbrook for a week, and I went to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center to pick up temp work. The head of Support Services was Mrs. Coleman, mid-fifties, gray hair

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

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 04 Three days later, my brother came back. I knew something was wrong the second he walked through my apartment door. He was walking with his head down, shoulders caved forward, defeated. He came into the living room, dropped into a chair, picked up a mug and chugged

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 03 Within a few days, people in the housing area were calling me jealous bitch behind my back. The first time I heard it was in the laundry room around noon. I was walking up when I heard the wives inside talking loud, the tap running unattended. “Colonel

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 02 That afternoon, the notice came down from Family Services. Lily was being moved into Fort Bragg family housing on the grounds that she was an unaccompanied evacuee brought back by Ethan from the war zone. The receiving unit was responsible for temporary placement, and Ethan was her

The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 01 Ethan came back safe after six months of deployment — and he brought back a girl with a swollen belly. I was standing at the entrance to the Fort Bragg family housing area, holding my son. My face went black. Around me, the wives who’d come out