Instinct drives me. I grab the wrist and snap it on intuition. A raw, feral cry escapes and I freeze for half a second before disbelief and horror twist together. My voice rasps, “Fasa?”
Tears streak her face. There’s nothing of the diminutive woman I married two days ago in front of me. Instead, she screams in almost perfect English, “They have my sisters! They promise if I deliver your body, they let them live! You—must—die!”
“Fasa, let me help you,” I offer, knowing what this must be doing to my new responsibility. “You don’t have to?—”
“I DO!” she screams. “They want SEAL. Not just an American. You.”
She targeted us. Not the uniform. Not our country. Walker. Me. Not because either of us mattered but because killing me would give her a reward.
I sweep her legs out from under her and aim my gun at her. She sobs into the sand until Walker returns mere seconds later. The situation explodes into shouting, restraints, and her being carted off.
“She never looked in my direction again. Not once.”
“What would you have done if she did, Uncle Charlie?” Kalie asks me.
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth. Was she really a villain or a victim of her own circumstances?”
Her face is thoughtful as she weighs my words in her mind.
After a long silence, I share, “I did forgive her. She wasn’t a monster. She was raised in a world where lives were bargaining chips. And she made a vow to protect someone she loved.”
“Do you think she made it out?” Emily rasps.
I don’t delude myself. “No. I don’t. I wish I did but back then, even more so than today, betrayal was very black and white.” Istare into her dark blue eyes. “But we know it isn’t that clean; is it?”
“No,” she whispers.
“It seeps in like poison. Changes the way you trust, the very way you love. For years, I couldn’t look at anyone without wondering if they were going to try to cut me next.” I glance in Rhoswen’s direction and find tears dripping down her face, just like the first time I told her about Fasa.
Emily speaks up, “What happened to your marriage?”
“Technically? The paperwork was never filed. It never existed according to the U.S. military.”
“But it did,” Holly protests, her fingers linked with her husband’s.
“Yes. And my scars from it are very real.” My eyes drift over to Corinna’s golden orbs. “I was given some R&R when I came home. I met up with a woman who I never really forgot.”
Rhoswen lifts her fingers and dabs them beneath her eyes because she knows what’s coming. That’s when I fell in love for the first time and when I swore I’d never believe in God ever again.
That is until the day I met this family and they healed my heart.
CHAPTER NINE
PAST—FOUR MONTHS AND THREE WEEKS AGO
Charlie plannedour next few dates. We went hiking in the Catskills. We drove to Philadelphia to see the Army–Navy game. When I mentioned to Charlie I was surprised it wasn’t held at either Bear Mountain or Annapolis, he informed me that due to Philly being almost exactly between both schools, “It’s the traditional location of where it’s hosted. Besides, are you going to tell me you’d have turned down a chance to go to Reading Terminal Market?”
I had been in the process of shoving a Beiler’s whoopee pie in my mouth at the time so I mumbled, “No,” around a mouthful of rich chocolate and cream.
Now, it was my turn and we were headed north. For the last hour and fifty-two minutes, I’ve been pretending there wasn’t a secondary reason we were driving to Boston for the night.
But there is.
Now, on our way to see the Red Sox hopefully trounce on Charlie’s beloved Yankees at Fenway, I’ve planted a detour along the way. He just doesn’t realize it yet. I held off mentioning it during his rant about drivers in Rhode Island being worse than Connecticut and my reading of the history department group chat where we were voting over which student was submitting the most ridiculous end of summer semester questions. I’ve read aloud our chosen winner, “‘For formatting, do you prefer MLA, Chicago, or illuminated manuscript?’”
He chortles. “That’s actually damn funny.”
“If I was grading on sarcasm, this one would get an A. Tragically, I can’t.”
