My Family Chose Her And Lost Me Forever Chapter 07
By month three at the field station, I’d lost twelve pounds.
The heat wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the gunfire at night.
The compound sat right on the edge of the security perimeter. First night, Marcus came into the bunkhouse in a flak vest.
“Outside the wire. Two kilometers. Go back to sleep. You’ll get used to it.”
I lay looking at the tin ceiling. The gunfire went on for half an hour.
Next morning, there were fresh bullet holes in a wall two streets over.
Marcus said this was Tuesday.
I went out with the assessment team to a school build. Two classrooms of corrugated tin and pallet wood. A room full of kids sitting on the dirt, writing letters with sticks.
They looked up when I came in. All at once. And they smiled at me.
Something in me — some knot that had been tied since I was eleven — loosened.
Being needed, I thought. So this is what it feels like.
A skinny little girl came up and wrapped both arms around my leg. The translator said, “She wants to know if you’re staying.”
I crouched down.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m staying.”
Back home, the second call came.
“Mr. Mercer. We’ve closed the Bennett case.”
Dad’s breathing stopped.
“Who did it?”
“Daniel Bennett did.”
The living room went silent.
“We’ve pulled his phone records and bank statements. In the month before the accident, Mr. Bennett was in regular contact with an individual who runs a business staging workplace injuries for insurance payouts.”
“Mr. Bennett had gambling debts. Significant ones. The plan was to loosen a few bolts on the scaffold — just enough for a controlled partial collapse. He’d position himself so as to sustain a survivable injury. The blame would go on your inspection walk, and they’d split the settlement.”
“He miscalculated the load. When he backed the bolts off, the whole section came down.”
“On his spine. He couldn’t move.”
Dad’s hand slid off the arm of the chair.
“He did it — to himself—”
“He did it to himself. It was never you. He was setting you up. It backfired on him.”
Mom was shaking.
Seven years.
Seven years of we owe that little girl.
She’d moved me out of the bed. Onto the floor. Onto the couch. Into the mudroom.
None of it — none of it — had ever been owed.
She dropped to the carpet.
“Then all these years — we—”
She couldn’t finish.
Ryan was on his feet.
“What the hell were we paying for?”
He kicked a dining chair over.
“Top of her class and she didn’t apply anywhere! She’s in a war zone, Dad, she’s in a war zone, and I told her to get out — and she did — she actually—”
Dad was on the floor with his head in his hands.
“It’s on me. I believed it first. If I’d looked at the report properly back then, your mother would never have brought that little girl home, Anna wouldn’t have had to—”
Mom was crying so hard she couldn’t get breath.
An eighteen-year-old girl. A passport, a duffel. Alone, in a place with gunfire outside the wire.
She couldn’t finish the thought.
Ryan leaned against the wall for a long moment.
“I’m going out there.”
Mom got up off the carpet.
“I’m coming.”
Dad stood and wiped his face.
“Call the program office first.”
Ethan worked every channel he had. Every answer came back the same.
Ms. Mercer is currently in-post. During the term of service she cannot be reached through outside channels.