The Ones We Trust

“You mentioned it, and now it’s my turn to talk. No fucking comment.”

And there it is, I think. The infamous no fucking comment.

Gabe doesn’t wait for me to argue it, just does an abrupt about-face, cursing under his breath and crossing the entire length of the aisle, past the extension cords and rolls of electrical wire and every kind of lightbulb imaginable, in three angry strides. At the end, he hangs a sharp left and ducks around the corner. I hustle to where he disappeared from sight and lean my head around the corner.

“I found a thirty-sixth soldier.”

My revelation stops him as I knew it would, as instantly and absolutely as it stopped me when I discovered it. His back goes ramrod straight, and he turns, that famous Armstrong jaw clenched and tight, those legendary eyes raking me up and down. I can tell he’s trying to decide whether or not to believe me, so I decide to help him out. I step into the aisle with square shoulders and a high chin, looking him straight in the eye.

“I’ve studied every single document that’s been released,” he says, stalking back up the aisle, his boots thumping out ominous notes on the hard floor until he pulls up right in front of me. “Read every single interview and report and transcript there is. There’s no thirty-sixth soldier.”

“That’s because you’ve only seen the censored versions.”

“And you haven’t.” His jaw is set on neutral, but there’s the slightest crease between his brows, as if maybe he doesn’t believe my claims, but he doesn’t quite dismiss them, either.

“I have every single unmarked letter, period and comma of the medic’s transcript, which include the name of a thirty-sixth soldier that was censored from the version the DOD released.” I reach into my bag, pull out a business card and pass it to him.

He glares at it for a second or two, then looks back up. “What does Health&Wealth.com have to do with my brother’s case?”

“Nothing, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Send me some times that work for you and your mother, and we’ll set something up.”

“My mother. Of course. There’s no thirty-sixth soldier, is there? This is all just another bullshit ruse to get an interview with her.”

I can’t hold back the exasperated sigh that pushes up from my lungs. “Of course there’s a thirty-sixth soldier. Why would I make something like that up?”

Gabe looks at me as if I might be coated in anthrax, his eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Why don’t you just give the copy to me?”

I don’t tell Gabe that I seriously considered doing exactly that, passing him Ricky’s name and washing my hands of the entire episode. But the more I thought about it, the more I contemplated my reasons for wanting to give the Armstrongs Ricky, the more I realized giving Gabe his name would be like confessing my sins to the priest’s secretary. I need to go straight to the top, which means I need to hand Ricky to his mother.

“Look, Gabe. I realize you’re suspicious of my intentions, and honestly, I can’t say I blame you. Journalists are pretty ruthless when they smell a story, and they’ve crucified you and your mother for daring to take on the US Army, but again, and I’m just being completely honest here, it’s exactly because of the behavior you’ve shown me in the past five minutes.”

He hauls a breath to respond, but I don’t give him the chance.

“You don’t have to explain. I get it. You lost a brother, you’re allowed to be angry. But your mother lost a son, and in my book that means she needs to be in the room when I hand over the name. Believe me or don’t. Call me or don’t. I’ve never met your mother, but I think I know enough about her to know that if she were standing here right now, she wouldn’t let that soldier just walk away.”

And then that’s just what I do. I turn and walk away.

Because even though my skills at approaching sources may be a little rusty, I can still read one like a book, and I know one thing for sure. Gabe might not want to, but he believes me, and he’ll call.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, I’m walking through my front door when the text pings my phone.

Wednesday, 3 pm. 4538 Davidson Street. Gabe

8

Jean Armstrong lives in a traditional brick colonial on a quiet, tree-lined street just outside the western beltway. I ease to a stop at the curb, gazing out my car window at the lace-hung windows, the perfectly clipped boxwood hedges that lead to the front door. So this is the house where the Armstrong boys grew up. Where they took first steps and left for first dates, where they swung from a tire on the hundred-year-old magnolia and roughhoused on the wide, grassy lawn, where only ten months ago, a solemn-faced chaplain and uniformed CNO trudged up to the sunny yellow door, carrying a task heavier than holding the front line.

I reach for my bag and climb out of the car, smoothing my skirt as I make my way to the door. For some reason I didn’t give too much thought to at the time, I dressed to impress. Makeup, hair, heels, the works. Part of my effort is that the more that I read up on Jean, the more I really like her. The few quotes she’s given the media have been so smart and thoughtful, and I’ve always been drawn to smart, thoughtful people. And besides, it’s hard not to feel affection for a grieving mother.

But there’s more to it than just wanting Jean to like me. As much as I hate to admit it, I can’t deny my glossy hair and five-inch stilettos are also a teeny tiny bit for Gabe. To remind him of the first time we met, before my accidental discovery torpedoed our connection, when he seemed to like me enough to ask my name. I don’t know what that says about me that I want him to like me again, but there it is. I do.

I climb the few steps to the door and aim my finger at the bell, but before I can make contact, the door opens and Gabe steps out, swinging the door shut with a soft click. He’s in those same faded and worn jeans, but he’s traded his apron for a T-shirt and nice wool sweater, and accessorized them both with what I’m beginning to recognize as his trademark scowl.

“Here’s how it’s going to go down,” he says without so much as a hello. “We go inside, you give Mom the papers and answer our questions, and then you leave. You don’t get to ask us anything, and you sure as hell can’t use anything we do or say in your article. All of it, every single second, is off the record. Do you understand?”

“I’ve already told you—” and at least a dozen times “—I’m not writing an article.”

He gives me a get-real look. “Right.”

I’m getting awfully tired of his assumptions and accusations, but in light of what happened with his brother, I’m also giving him a long, long rope. I let it go.

“Did you bring the transcript?”

I pat my bag and summon up a smile. “Got it right here. Along with my notepad, digital camera and voice recorder.”

“Jesus, seriously?”

“Of course not. Journalists don’t use paper these days, not since Evernote.” I give him a toothy smile to let him know I’m kidding, but when his scowl still doesn’t relent, my eyes go wide. “Come on, Gabe, it was a joke. I’m not... You know what? Never mind. Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

“Gladly.” He flings open the front door and takes off in long strides down the hall.

I breathe deeply and step inside, taking in what I can of Jean Armstrong’s home as I follow in Gabe’s fumes toward the back of the house. Light, rambling rooms filled with flowers and painted in warm, sunny colors. Thick carpets and overstuffed couches begging to be sunk into. Smiling family photographs everywhere, decorating the walls and covering corner tables. It’s a home filled with laughter and love, much like the one I grew up in, though you’d never know it from the man marching in front of me.

We emerge in an enormous kitchen on the back of the house, where it smells like flowers and vanilla and something else, something warm and delicious. Jean Armstrong hovers over a whistling teapot at the stove, lost in thought.

“Mom,” Gabe says, his tone warm and obliging, much like the first day we met. It’s such a drastic transformation from the one he used with me just a few seconds ago that I feel almost disoriented, at the same time as this new animosity between us wrings my insides in a way I don’t want to consider too closely. “Abigail is here.”

Mrs. Armstrong switches off the gas. She’s much prettier in person than on screen and in print, her auburn hair richer, her eyes brighter, her skin more glowing. She’s smaller than I expected, too. Her sons must have inherited their height from their father, who died when Zach was still in grade school.

I cross the room and wrap both palms around her tiny, birdlike hand. “I know these are not the happiest of circumstances, Mrs. Armstrong, but I hope you don’t mind me saying, it’s an honor to meet you in person.”

She pats her free hand over mine. “Now, why would I mind you saying something so lovely? I was just making some tea. Would you like a cup?” At my nod, she reaches for her son’s arm. “Gabe, be a dear and get the mugs, would you?” She turns back to me, points me to a washed pine table by a wall of windows. “Have a seat, Abigail. We’ll be right there.”

I head over and drop my bag on the table, looking out at a garden worthy of a Martha Stewart magazine cover. Even now, when most plants should have wilted and shriveled in the last of the Indian summer’s heat, Jean’s garden is still full and lush and filled with color. It’s the kind of garden that can belong only to a master gardener, one who spends the bulk of every dry-sky day coaxing plants out of the ground.

While Gabe pours the tea, I sink onto a padded chair across from Jean. “I assume Gabe’s told you why I’m here.”

Jean and Gabe share a look, then Jean says, “He told me you have information you’d like to share about Zach’s murder.”

Though it’s not the first time I’ve heard Zach’s death referred to as “murder” from one of the Armstrongs, it startles me all the same. I take it in with a nod and move on.

“As I told Gabe earlier this week, I’ve found evidence of a thirty-sixth soldier in Zach’s unit.” I slide the transcript from my bag and across the table. “His name is Ricky Hernandez.”

Gabe flips the papers around, and he and his mother bend over them. I give them all the time they need, sipping at my tea and taking another good look out the window. Jean’s garden really is beautiful, meticulously maintained and wild at the same time. As picturesque as, well, a picture.

Gabe is the first to speak, and the hard edge is back in his voice. “Where did you get this?”

“Someone left it on my doorstep.”

“Who?”

I give him one of his own get-real looks, a pretty decent imitation judging by the way the creases in his scowl fold in on themselves even further. “He didn’t exactly stick around to introduce himself.”

“Then how do you know it’s real?”

“Because, first of all, why would anyone go to the trouble to doctor up a fake version for me? Especially since I’m not a journalist. And second—” I slide another packet of papers across the table, the censored version from the DOD’s website “—it matches up exactly to this one. Word for word, letter for letter. Except for the blacked-out ones, of course.”

There’s a long, stunned silence. Finally, Gabe swipes a palm up the back of his head. “Those motherfuckers.”

Mrs. Armstrong backhands him with a light slap on the chest. “Language.”

I bite the inside of my lip, a smile tickling under my cheekbones. The gesture makes me like Jean even more, and not only because it makes Gabe look so properly chastised. There’s just something sweet about a mother still disciplining her thirty-three-year-old son.

“Okay,” Jean says, returning her attention to the transcripts, “so who’s Ricky?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, was he interviewed?”

“If he was, they didn’t release his transcripts.”

“Was he in the first convoy or second? Where was he positioned when Zach was killed? Did he see it happen, did he see who pulled the trigger, was it him?”

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.

9

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 seem to be managing very well.”

“Yes, well...” She smiles, and I catch a whiff of Gabe in it, the way one cheek is a little slower to rise, how the other folds into a dimple. “All these wrinkles don’t come for free, you see. I’m wiser, but that’s only because I’m ancient.”

Jean Armstrong is older and wiser, definitely, but she’s also got a force about her I can’t quite pin down. The media calls her fierce, and she certainly is when it comes to defending her sons, but it’s more than that. Much more. It’s a force that makes her seem stronger than she should be in her situation, sharper and more intense, as big and tall as any one of her boys. It’s a force that draws me into her field as surely as it must stave plenty of other people off.

“Take a walk with me, dear, would you?” She crooks an elbow in invitation, which is as endearing as it is ridiculous. In my heels, I have a good half foot and twenty pounds on her, and if anyone should be crooking an elbow here, it’s me. But because she’s Jean, because so far I haven’t discovered a single thing I don’t like about her, I toss my bag onto the seat, lock my car and loop my arm through hers.

She leads me around the side of her house, down a lavender-scented path and through a simple wooden gate, into her backyard. If I thought it was impressive before, from the few glimpses I got from her kitchen window, it’s a billion times better up close. Raised beds of blooms nestled between clumps of bushes and swaying grasses. Secret pathways leading to hidden clearings, and trellises dripping in vines. Benches and chairs everywhere, secluded under arbors or tucked behind fragrant plants, providing front-row seats for stargazing or butterfly watching.

“Beautiful,” I say, and the word seems absurdly lacking. “Did you do all this yourself?”

She laughs. “I would say it’s cheaper than therapy, but it would be a lie. That patch of tiger lilies alone could have fed all three of my boys for a month.” I follow her outstretched arm to a tall clump of yellow flowers, their trumpetlike blooms swinging in the breeze under the limbs of a massive oak. “Nick broke his arm in two places on that spot when he was eight. I swear, that boy would’ve lived up in that tree if he could have. I’d come outside and he’d be all the way at the top, waving down at me from the highest branch. It was only a matter of time before he fell out and broke something. I guess I should be thankful it wasn’t his neck.”

Now that I’m out of the spotlight of Gabe’s hateful glare, the knots in my shoulders unwind, and I find myself returning her smile. “He sounds like a handful.”

“He was nothing compared to those brothers of his. Gabe and Zach were the real troublemakers...” She shakes her head, but the gesture is more wistful than sad. “Do you know those two once removed every single item from their chemistry classroom and re-created the lab smack in the middle of the gym floor? I’m talking desks and microscopes and pencils and lab coats, all the way down to the very last petri dish. Don’t ask me how they got into the school on a weekend, because I never knew, and I still don’t want to. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer.”

I laugh. “I bet their old teachers are still talking about that one.”

“Those two were two peas in a pod. I always said God meant for them to be twins.”

I think about the sudden and overwhelming sense of déjà vu I got when I saw Gabe coming at me at Handyman Market, how for the second time in my life, I found myself getting flustered by those famous Armstrong genes. “They certainly do look the part.”

“That they do.” We round the corner, and Jean gestures to two chairs burrowed in a patch of wispy ferns. “Let’s sit, shall we?”

We settle in, and the early-October sun makes kaleidoscope patterns on my bare shins through the trees. I lean back onto the chair’s warm wood and think for possibly the hundredth time how much I like this woman sitting beside me. That if things had been different, if we’d met under different circumstances, through mutual friends at a party or volunteering for some local nonprofit, Jean and I might have been friends.

“I met him once,” I find myself saying. “Your son Zach, I mean. I interviewed him right before he left for basic training.”

“I know, dear.” I must look shocked, because she laughs at my expression. “I don’t just let anyone in my home. Unlike Gabe, I did my homework before you came over. Don’t take it personally, but I need to know who’s walking through my door these days.”