“I’m proud of you, too,” I said, and kissed her.
“Thanks. I just wish we’d been able to get the mats on that second bomb before…it will be interesting to see if it was a radio-controlled detonation.”
“I’m sure Quantico’s on it.”
“See you at dinner?” she said, as I went back to the interrogation room door. “Nana Mama said she’s creating a masterpiece.”
“How could I miss that?”
Bree blew me a kiss, turned, and walked away.
I watched her go for a moment, more in love than ever. Then I turned the door handle and went inside, where retired Marine Gunnery Officer Tim Chorey continued to suffer for his country.
Chapter 9
I got home around seven to find Bree sitting on the front porch, looking as frazzled as I felt.
“Welcome home,” she said, raising a mug. “Want a beer?”
I sat down beside her and said, “Half a glass.”
She set the mug down, reached down by her side and came up with a second mug and a growler from Blue Jacket, a new brewery in a formerly industrial area in southwest DC.
“Goldfinch,” Bree said. “A Belgian blond ale. It’s good. Nana bought it.”
She poured me half a mug and I sipped it, loving the cold, almost lemony flavor. “Hey, that is good.”
We sat in silence for several minutes, listening to the street, and to the rattle of kitchen utensils from inside.
“Tough day all around,” Bree said.
“Especially for you,” I said, and reached out my hand.
She took it and smiled. “This is enough.”
I smiled and said, “It is, isn’t it?”
“All I could want.”
I focused on that. Not on the memories of how sick poor Chorey had gotten before I could get him admitted into the detox unit. How he’d refused to wear the hearing device or read my words after a while, retreating from the world and what it had done to him in the surest way he knew how.
“Dinner!” Nana Mama called.
Bree squeezed my hand, and we went inside. My ninety-something grandmother was making magic at the stove when we entered the kitchen.
“Whatever it is, it smells great,” I said, thinking there was curry involved.
“It always smells great when Nana Mama’s manning the stove,” said Jannie, my sixteen-year-old daughter, as she carried covered dishes from the counter to the table.
“Smells weird to me,” said Ali, my almost nine-year-old, who was already sitting at the table, studying an iPad. “Is it tofu? I hate tofu.”
“As you’ve told me every day since the last time we had it,” my grandmother said.
“Is it?”
“Not even close,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose on the way to the table. “No electronic devices at the dinner table, young man.”
Ali groaned. “It’s not a game, Nana. It’s homework.”