Abby give him an exclusive interview? Is he slimy enough to ask?
Any reporter worth his salt would have been on the phone already, but Flint is still unsure. Abby was his friend. She is his friend, unless you factor in the fact that they haven’t had any contact beyond joke e-mails for the past year. Is he a scumbag for thinking about swooping in on her? It reminds him of the joke: When you X-ray the chest of a reporter, is there any dark spot for a heart?
On the other hand, shouldn’t he e-mail and offer his help? Abby is his friend, and she could use someone from the inside to help her field the media. He’d like to help, and it looks like he’s stuck here for at least another day or two with this wind storm brewing. On second thought, the wind storm is going to keep other reporters from flying in. He opens his mail files to send Abby an e-mail.
In the meantime, he can always join a convoy heading over to Camp Desert Mission and see what’s what. Stanton’s brother, Noah, is stationed there, too, a medic, the report says. Maybe Noah wants to talk. He scrolls through his address book and clicks on Abby’s name. He’ll offer to help, and if it delays his return to Seattle, he can tell Delilah it’s business.
Which it is.
Sort of.
Chapter 9
Fort Lewis
Abby
“What time did it happen?” Abby asks. “I don’t have that information,” Sgt. Jason Palumbo answers, thoughtfully tapping one finger against the rim of his mug of tea.
Having spent the past few hours in her kitchen with him, Abby no longer finds him intimidating. The sergeant is the messenger, her only line of access to John’s whereabouts, and oddly she feels compelled to hold on to this man as if he offered a lifeline.
“We do know that he was shot during a warehouse raid, sometime yesterday,” he adds.
“Yesterday…” Abby says.
“And their day is our night. They’re eleven hours ahead,” Suz reminds her, dumping the wet coffee grounds so that she can start a fresh pot. “What time did you have that dream?”
“In the middle of the night. Though it wasn’t so much a dream.” Abby bites her lower lip. “It felt like he was right here with me. His side of the bed was even warm.” She hugs herself and closes her eyes, trapped between the memory and the raw pain of here and now. She has said too much, exposed an open wound. “I know it sounds crazy.”
Suz leans back and fingers the charm strung around her neck, a golden “S” that was a gift from her husband. “Honey, when you look up crazy in the dictionary my picture’s printed there. What did John say to you?”
“He just said my name, over and over.” Abby rakes one hand through her dark hair and holds it in a knot at the back of her neck, remembering. “At one point, the room was rocking and rumbling. The pictures and bowls on my bureau were shaking. Did we have an earthquake last night?”
“Not that I know of, but then I’ve been known to sleep through tornadoes.” Suz turns to Sgt. Palumbo. “You read about anything rocking the Richter scale, Sarge?”
“Nothing that I’ve heard about,” he says. The casualty assistance officer does not strike Abby as a man who believes in the supernatural, though Abby doesn’t sense that he’s judging her. Instead, she perceives concern, sympathy. And she’s come to appreciate that tiny spot on his chin where he nicked himself shaving. Against the smooth fabric and shiny buttons of his dress uniform, it’s nice to know he’s a human being.
“Well, I say it’s all more than a coincidence, you seeing him in your dream and now this.” Suz punctuates the end of her sentence with the whirring bean grinder, then dumps the fresh-ground coffee into the filter. “Quite a coinkeedink, if you ask me. I wonder what he was trying to tell you.”
“I don’t know.” Was there a message? Abby wonders, feeling revived by the earthy smell of ground coffee beans. Or was John just making one last connection, saying good-bye? She presses her lips together to ward off tears. And here she was thinking she’d gone beyond tears to numb denial.
“I didn’t hear Scott’s voice when he was killed,” Suz says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I sure would have liked to. Could’ve used a few tips on how to get the car started on wet days, where to reinvest his four-oh-one-K.”
Pressing a napkin to her eyes, Abby feels comforted by her friend’s ramble.
Beyond the kitchen, her house is swollen with people who’ve brought casseroles, cold cuts, and fruit, flowers and deepest regrets. Glancing out at them from the arched kitchen entry, watching two women move respectfully past her Monet print, Abby has the feeling that her entire life is being turned inside out, giving all the world a view of the snags and broken fibers she has held in her pocket all these years. It’s a raw, vulnerable feeling only somewhat softened by the warm support of the military community, which she did not fully embrace in her time here at Fort Lewis. John was the one who dove in willy-nilly, and now Abby, a more private person, is being forced to open up and let strangers in.
You’re going to love the Northwest, John told her when they first learned of his assignment at Fort Lewis. It’s a beautiful slice of the planet.
And Abby was beginning to share his love for all the green grass and trees, the more mellow pace in which people took the time to look you in the eyes. She didn’t mind trading the East Coast humidity for the dry air, even if it meant skies were gray for much of the year. They had met back east while John was at Rutgers and Abby attended Wagner College on Staten Island. Geographically challenged from the start, the logistics of their relationship only got worse as John signed on to play football with the Seattle Seahawks while Abby remained in the dorms on Grymes Hill to finish her senior year at Wagner. New York to Seattle, tough commute.
Abby presses her palms to the familiar kitchen table. This place became her home in the past year. Their home. Although she stopped making three-egg omelets and buying green salads that wilted in the refrigerator, she still considers herself part of a couple, half of a whole.
And now the other half is gone.
The sergeant holds up two pamphlets and then places them on the kitchen table. “I’ll leave these here for you to go through when things quiet down. They’ve got everything you’ll need to know about benefits, burial, and setting up the funeral.”
A funeral. She’s supposed to bury her husband. It all seems incongruous. “I’m having trouble processing at the moment,” Abby says flatly.
“And that’s no surprise.” Suz places a fresh mug of coffee in front of her, tips some cream from a small pitcher into it, stirs for her.
Abby wonders who had the presence of mind to bring cream. She and John are strictly one percent milk people.
John was. Would she ever get used to saying that?
“We can handle all the arrangements for you, Abby,” he is saying. “As much as you like.”
As her CAO, Sgt. Palumbo has already explained many of these things for Abby, but although she has been sitting politely and trying to listen, she feels as if she’s playing a role, pretending to be herself in her own home while friends and strangers pass through the kitchen extending regrets and condolences. Now that the initial shock has worn thin, she’s operating on autopilot, going through all the motions of talking and breathing though her mind is a million miles away fighting the information that John is gone. She cannot believe it. It seems ludicrous that such information could simply be passed to Sgt. Palumbo to pass on to her. Maybe the information is wrong. “Can I ask you…” She lifts her face to the sergeant. “Has the army ever made a mistake in something like this? I mean, maybe they’ve got the wrong guy.”
He sighs. “I’ve never heard of it happening. At least, not in our lifetime. When John’s remains arrive at Dover Air Force Base, they’ll run tests to verify his identity.”
“Oh.”