The Ones We Trust (16 page)

Sometime after dawn, I wake in his arms.

I know what we missed. What we read over and over and over and missed. Our minds got so hung up on Ricky that we didn’t see Nick, sitting in the seat right beside him. All this time, the answer was right there in front of us. We just didn’t see it.

Gently, I lift Gabe’s arm from my hip and slip out of bed. He stirs under the crumpled sheets, but his eyes remain closed, his breathing slow and steady.

In the dim morning sunlight poking through the curtains, I scramble around until I find my T-shirt and panties on the floor and noiselessly pull them on, and then I begin sorting through the papers on the bed. Within less than a minute, I find the blog entry I’m looking for, the one dated just two days after Zach’s death. My eyes skip down to the last paragraph.

On the drive back to base, I could feel the weight of Nick’s empty seat beside me. He was in whatever truck had the gruesome task of carrying back the body of his brother. I thought of all the things I should have said to him as they were loading what was left of Zach into a body bag, the things I will surely tell Nick the next time I see him. That I will miss Zach, that I was blessed to have known him, that I will never forget him. But mostly I will say that Zach was my brother, too. He was my brother.

I reach for my computer and turn it on. As I wait for it to power up, I reread that paragraph again and again, rolling the words around in my brain. No matter how hard I try, I can’t figure any other way around it. According to Ricky, Nick rode out on the seat beside him, which means Nick was in the
second
convoy, not the first.

Then why do all the official army reports state Nick was in the first convoy with his brother Zach?

I pull up the reports on my screen and start scrolling. In every account, on almost every page, there is some mention of both Armstrong brothers in the first convoy. It’s as if the army bent over backward to make certain this point was clear, stating and restating this detail more often than necessary.

I check the blog entry again and there it is:
Nick’s empty seat beside me
. But why would the army want to bury the fact that Nick was in the second convoy, unless...

My father’s voice slices through the confusion in my head.
Do
not
open that Pandora’s box, Abigail.

Something inside me splits open, letting in light, filling me with understanding I don’t want to grasp, dropping the bottom out of my world.

“Oh. My. God.”

On the next bed, Gabe awakens at the sound of my voice.

23

It takes Gabe’s sleep-befuddled brain a few beats to register the look on my face. When it does, he shoots straight up in bed, the thin sheet pooling around his waist. “What’s wrong?”

I have no fucking idea how to answer that question. The only thing I
do
know is that I can’t speak the words I think to be true. If neither of us says those awful words out loud, then maybe they won’t be true. I’m having a nightmare. I’m being punked. I’m waiting for the punch line.

Yet slicing through the steady hum of the room’s air-conditioning unit, I hear my own voice, high and hysterical, already believing.

I shake my head, stare at the veins pulsing on the back of my hands. “Nothing.”

One hand still clutches the blog entry like a crumpled bouquet, and my mind searches for a way to release it without Gabe noticing, to slip it under my thigh maybe, or let it slide from my hands onto the floor. I can feel Gabe’s eyes sliding over me, looking for clues, and I sit here frozen. I can’t seem to look up, to meet his gaze head-on. The room is stuffed full of silence.

He snatches his jeans off the floor and thrusts his legs in, pulling them up over his bare ass. “Please, Abigail. You’re scaring me. What?”

“Nothing.” I try to smile, but dread swirls inside my chest until I think I’ll drown. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Really.”

Bile touches the back of my throat at the lie, and I swallow down a thick, burning ball of it.

Gabe shoves aside the mountain of papers in front of me, wraps his big palms around both my biceps and shakes. “Tell me.”

The shoulder he sets behind the words rattles me to the innermost point in my belly, or maybe he was trying to shake the answer out of me, I don’t know. Either way, in all the commotion, Gabe notices Ricky’s blog entry in my fist.

He snatches the paper up, gaze flashing over the words.

I can’t watch. I don’t want to see the moment when realization hits his face. I launch myself off the bed and run to the sink by the bathroom, burying my face in a hand towel. I hear him come around the corner, picture his big body filling up the tiny hallway, the paper still in his hand, and I don’t dare look. Is his face bathed in confusion, or horror?

“What am I not seeing?” He pulls the towel from my hands and tosses it onto the floor, tipping my face up to his. His eyes brim with tears, ones I can barely see through my own. “Please. Just tell me.”

But I can’t. My lips won’t form the words, my tongue won’t push them out. It’s bad enough that I was the one to work it out in the first place, I cannot, no,
will not
say what I think I know out loud. This is math Gabe is going to have to figure out on his own.

He looks back to the paper. “But what... I don’t...”

There’s a long silence, one that expands and fills the room until it becomes almost tangible. A silence that presses down on my skin and fills my lungs with cotton. That it’s taking Gabe longer to fully comprehend is something I don’t fault him for, will
never
fault him for, given the circumstances.

“But that’s not right.” He shakes his head, hard, like a dog choking on a bone, and the paper floats to the floor. “That’s not fucking right. Nick was with Zach. He was—”

I look away, but by now it’s too late. I’ve already seen it, those beautiful, horrified eyes, that angular, trembling jaw. Gabe did the math, and he came to the same sickening conclusion I just did.

“Maybe we’re wrong.” I’m surprised I can even speak, as thick and rubbery as my tongue feels. The words come out slow and slurred. “We can’t possibly know for sure.”

“We know.”

“Maybe we don’t.”

“We know, Abigail. We fucking know!
Jesus.
Mom kept telling me to let it go, that Zach was gone and nothing could bring him back, but I wouldn’t listen. I had to have someone to blame. I had to know, and now...” The snag in his voice tells me he’s barely holding it together, as does the way his hands are shaking. He shoves both of them in his hair and pulls, his face twisting into a tight wad, his bare chest heaving. “I’m such a shit! Why didn’t I
listen
to her?”

“Gabe.” I reach out for him, sliding a hand onto his waist, and he flinches. My hand drops back to my side. “None of this is your fault.”

Gabe turns and stalks back into the room. Halfway there he freezes, blinking around at the rumpled sheets and papers and pens, the empty water bottles strewn among our clothes on the floor, the piled-up bedspreads in the corner, taking everything in as if he’s seeing it for the first time. His breathing has calmed somewhat, and I might think he’s okay, were it not for his clenched fists and the muscles across his back, standing up under his skin like rope.

And then his shoulders broaden, his back expands and his lungs fill with air. He’s bracing for a fresh gale of grief, I think, and then it comes, folding him double and pushing an awful, keening howl up his throat that knifes me in the center of the heart, a direct hit. And then before I can take even a step in his direction, he straightens, brings an arm back and punches the wall with his fist.

“Gabe!” I run to him, reaching for his injured hand, but he yanks it away, only to beat the wall again and again and again. “Gabe, stop. Stop!”

Gabe doesn’t stop. He keeps going until the wall crumples and bloody streaks coat the striped vinyl wallpaper.

On one of his backward swings, I latch on to his arm by the elbow, throwing all my weight and strength into the effort. It’s like dragging an oar upstream, sluggish and heavy, and it lifts me clear off the carpet. I clench down, hold on tight. The action whirls his big body around, and his expression is so downright terrifying I have to remind myself his fury is not aimed at me.

“Gabe, it’s okay,” I say, even though it’s not. Even though it’s the opposite of okay. I press both hands to his bearded cheeks, force his gaze to mine. A drop of something splats on my foot, and I know without looking that it’s blood. “I’ll help you. It’ll be okay.”

He hauls a hitching breath, and he nods, quick and eager as if he believes me. A jagged pain ripples up my throat, aching with tears I can no longer hold back, not for Nick or for Zach but for Gabe. For the man who so desperately wants me to make it okay, and for the knowledge that I can’t. I can’t make any of this okay.

He collapses into me, and we fall back onto the bed, on top of the papers and trash and wrecked sheets, his body pressing down on top of mine like a deadweight. My face is mashed into his shoulder and my ribs are creaking under his mass, but I don’t push him off or complain, because that’s when I feel it.

It starts slowly, silently, like a hurricane rolling in off the ocean. His chest jerks once, twice, again. The movements tear up his torso and throat, building in strength and speed, churning into sharp and violent sobs. Gabe is sobbing on top of me, and with a force that threatens to break my bones. His skin is damp and salty, his entire body heaving, and I would stay here under him forever, not moving, barely breathing, if I have to.

Because though I can’t do anything to take away his pain, the least I can do is bear the weight of it.

* * *

Bright November sunshine streams through the windshield in slices of gold, lighting up Gabe slumped in my passenger’s seat. His eyes are dull and lifeless, but his cheeks glint with silver tracks of dried tears, disappearing into the dark scruff of his beard. He hasn’t said a word for the past hour, and though I’m trying to be supportive and give him some space, his silence is eating away at me. I don’t know what to do, what to say, how to help. I’m way out of my league here.

I toss my bag onto the floor behind my seat and climb behind the wheel. “What now?”

Gabe stares out the side window, onto a row of scraggly bushes at the edge of the hotel lot.

“Gabe.” I touch a finger to his arm, and his skin flinches like a horse’s hide swatting away flies. “What now? Do you want to go home?”

“Eagle Rock, Virginia,” he says without looking over, his voice flatlined.

For a moment, I’m confused. “Is that where Nick is?”

He gives me a quick bob of his head and nothing more.

“Is that... Gabe, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Just take me there.”

Sighing, I punch the coordinates into my navigation system, which tells me Eagle Rock is nudged up against the West Virginia border, a good five-hour drive to the northwest.

I think of all the things I should do. Call my father and beg him to meet us there. Swing by the Naval Medical Center for a psychologist trained in dealing with PTSD. I don’t know what Gabe hopes to accomplish by confronting Nick with our discovery, but nothing about this feels like a good idea.

“Maybe he doesn’t remember. I’m not sure you should be the one to tell him if he’s repressed it.” I don’t know much about PTSD, but if ever there was cause for a licensed professional, I’d imagine this would be it. “This is way over both of our heads.”

“I have to know.” Now, finally, he looks over, and what I see there breaks my heart. “I have to know for sure. So either take me there, or take me to a Hertz counter.”

I put the car in gear, follow the little white line guiding me toward the highway and take him there.

As we roar up I-64 in haunting, suffocating silence, I use the time to turn every bit of information we learned over and over in my mind, but no matter how I twist or turn it, I can’t come up with any other explanation than the one I already have. Gabe and Jean were right. The army was lying about what happened to Zach, but with good reason. The best possible reason. The only reason that could make a lie like theirs okay.

My father’s words suddenly echo in my ears, the words lighting up across my mind in gleaming strobe letters.
Just because something’s the truth, that doesn’t make it right.
My father knew about Nick and Zach. He
had
to know. But in trying to steer me away from Ricky, was Dad covering his own ass, or attempting to spare Gabe and his family the devastation of ever discovering the truth? The last one clamps down on my heart, threatens to pinch it in two.

And then I remember his other words, the ones telling me not to open that box, and my vision swims and blurs. My father knew about Nick all along. When he confronted me in the bathroom hallway. When I confronted him with the memo. He told me I didn’t have all the facts, that I should not be so quick to judge, that I didn’t want to get involved in a matter I knew nothing about. He did everything to stop me from learning the truth, even—oh, God—asking me to trust him. To
trust
him.

Thinking about it makes me light-headed with guilt. After Eagle Rock, after whatever happens there, I am driving straight to my father to apologize.

Just past Richmond, I need a bathroom and gas break, and I pull over at an Exxon. I fill my tank, use the restroom, purchase two sodas and two packs of peanut butter crackers, and return to the car, only to find Gabe in the exact same position. The soda and crackers remain untouched in the console between us, and we drive the rest of the way in silence.

At some time past five, just as the sun is sinking behind the bald trees, I roll up the two-block stretch of homes and businesses that comprise the entire town of Eagle Rock. I pull onto the gravel on the side of the road and tap Gabe on the arm.

“We’re in Eagle Rock.”

Gabe looks up, and he speaks for the first time since Portsmouth. “Find the diner.”

Maw and Paw’s Diner is a little farther down on the right, and I pull to a stop in front of it. I’m parked in the middle of the two-lane street, but in a town like Eagle Rock, it doesn’t really matter. There’s not exactly a whole lot of traffic.

“Take the next right,” he instructs me, “and go two miles up the hill.”

I follow his directions, keeping a careful eye on my odometer as I climb higher and higher into the Jefferson National Forest. Just as I’m approaching the two-mile mark, Gabe points to a mailbox at the edge of a dirt road, and I turn into the shadowy tunnel. We’re swallowed up by the woods, thick trees that rise up all around us like giant headstones. We emerge in a clearing with, at its center, a lone wooden cabin. It sits dark and deserted, blending into the forest as if it’s been here forever.

I still my engine as the front door swings open, and a tall figure in jeans and a flannel shirt steps out onto the long front porch. The first thing that comes to mind is Bigfoot, even though I recognize him immediately. It’s Nick but hairier, long strands of it covering his face, draping over his eyes and brushing the tips of his shoulders.

Gabe reaches for the handle, and for the first time since we left Portsmouth, his gaze finds mine. “Wait here.”