I lift both palms from the table. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I even put him through my content curation software. There were seven and a half million hits for Ricky Hernandez, most of them Facebook and Twitter profiles. A couple athletes, an author, a youth minister, a sound designer, but unfortunately, no soldier. There were a few possibilities in the military databases but none of them our Ricky, which means I’ve kind of hit a wall.”
Gabe snorts. “I thought you were excellent at research.”
I stifle a sigh and smother my rising exasperation with her son in a sugary smile I aim at Jean. “No matter how many times I try to convince your son otherwise, Gabe insists on thinking I’m here because I’m writing an article. But let me assure you, unless he’s somehow relevant to health care for active seniors, my boss at Health&Wealth.com couldn’t care less about Ricky Hernandez.”
Jean’s brow crumples, but I can’t detect even an ounce of the suspicion that darkened her son’s brow when I told him much the same thing. To me, Jean only looks confused. “Then why are you here?”
Because you’re one of the good guys. And despite your son’s volatile temper, I think he is, too.
“Because I don’t know why the DOD buried his name and testimony, but I do know I can’t just sit on him. Maybe he’s nothing, but maybe he’s the person who blows this investigation wide-open. Either way, I believe you have the right to know he exists, and that he was there, fighting in the battle that killed your son.”
“But why?” I must look as if I still don’t understand, because she adds, “Everybody wants something, Abigail. What is it that you want?”
I blow out a long breath, thinking through how to give a simple response to such a complicated question. Where to begin? With Chelsea’s suicide and how I feel responsible? With my karmic imbalance, and my hope that by doing right by the Armstrongs, I can atone for what I did wrong by Chelsea? Those answers are all too complex, and far too lengthy, to condense into a few short sentences.
But my coming here is more than just for atonement.
It’s also because of a sense of righteousness.
Jean Armstrong lost a son, and under what she has always insisted were suspicious circumstances. Now that I know Ricky exists, I’m beginning to think she may have a point.
So even though my father is one of the generals on the other end of her pointer finger, even though by coming here I might be handing her something that could look bad for his defense, I needed to come here anyway. I felt morally obligated to do something that could be construed as immoral...or at the very least, disloyal to both my father and the organization he spent his entire adult life serving.
“I come from a military family,” I tell them both, but mostly Jean. “My father was in the army, as was his father and the one before him. I’m not a soldier, but that doesn’t mean my father didn’t teach me to live by the seven army values. They were hammered into me from the day I was born, and they’re what brought me here today. So, to answer your question, I want a healthy conscience.”
Gabe pushes away from the table so fast, he almost topples backward on his chair. “Un-fucking-believable.”
His mother flaps a palm in his direction, but she never takes her eyes off me.
“You’re General Wolff’s daughter.”
It’s not Gabe’s words that skitter up my body like a battalion of scorpions, stinging my skin and straightening my spine, but his mean and spiteful tone. I feel my face flush and my body heat, but somehow I manage to sit still. I will not apologize for being a Wolff, even though I feel as if I’m being x-rayed, as if my skin is being stripped off to reveal something he clearly finds repulsive.
“Yes.” I lift my chin and superglue my glare to his. “I’m his daughter. General Rathburn is my godfather.”
Gabe stands, his entire body shaking with barely contained fury. “Get out.”
The words fall into the air between us with finality, like Donald Trump saying you’re fired, or a spouse saying I want a divorce. There’s no going back from a statement that absolute.
I reach for my bag, push to a stand.
“Gabe...” Jean says, his name a one-word warning for him to calm down, sit down, pipe down.
“No, Mom. If I had known she was General Wolff’s army brat—” the way he says it—Wolff’s army brat—as if he’s talking about a child molester or a serial killer, crawls across my skin like a bad rash “—I would’ve never let her in the door. She lied to me in order to gain entry into your home, and I want her gone. Now.”
And this is when I’ve had enough, when that little fire that’s been sending up smoke signals from the pit of my belly roars to life, licking at my organs, sizzling through my veins, growing and pulsing with heat. Gabe Armstrong doesn’t know me or my father. He doesn’t know anything about us.
“When would have been the appropriate time to fill you in on my lineage, Gabe? When we were discussing the different types of shower drains? I never lied to you about my name, and I certainly never made a secret about my motivations for coming here.”
Gabe’s gaze slides to me, and it burns me clear to the bone. “No fucking comment.”
“For the last time. I came to give you that transcript, the operative word here being give. And though I don’t need your gratitude, I certainly don’t need all your suspicion and hostility, either.” I give his mother a tight-lipped smile. “Thank you for the tea. Your home, especially your garden, is lovely. I wish you all the best.”
She blinks at me in surprise, and that’s the last thing I notice before I march out of her kitchen, down the hallway and out her sunny yellow door.
I’m halfway onto the driver’s seat, residual heat from Gabe’s enmity still pulsing my insides like a back draft, when I hear Jean’s voice, calling to me across her front lawn. “Abigail, wait.”
For a good second or two, I seriously consider ignoring her. Just leaping into my car, ducking my head and gunning it for home.
But now it’s too late. Jean is already halfway down the stone walkway, one hand waving in the air for me to stop, and she’s gaining. I don’t bother disguising my exasperation as I step out of the car and swing around to face her.
“I wanted to apologize for my son’s temper.” She steps off the curb and rounds the back of my car to where I’m standing on the street, keys clutched in a fist. “I really have taught him better. I promise.” Her expression, clear and pleasant, friendly even, sucks some of the steam from my anger.
“Sorry, but shouldn’t he be apologizing for himself?”
“Of course, dear, and he will eventually. It’s just that this rage he carries from his brother’s death...he lets it eat him up from inside. I know that’s not an excuse, but I hope you can at least understand what’s driving his grief. It’s one thing to lose the brother you idolize, another thing entirely when the country he died for isn’t honest about the circumstances surrounding his death.”
I’m kind of taken aback by her matter-of-fact tone, as if she’s talking about a new car purchase or the vacation she just booked to Florida rather than discussing one son’s grief at another’s death. From the start, Jean Armstrong has made no secret of her disgust at the way the army has been neither transparent nor honest about what happened to Zach, but I can’t sense an ounce of her anger now, only concern for Gabe.
Still. I can’t help but point out, “You