“We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Do you think they need a real reason to stick us away somewhere? He as good as told us that. National security, Michelle. Like McKinney said, it trumps the Constitution. Hell, they might even send us to Gitmo. No one would ever find us.”
“Well, I’m not giving up.”
“I didn’t say anything about giving up. I just meant we had to do it smart.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Oh, don’t worry. When I think of one you’ll be the first to know.”
CHAPTER
20
TYLER WINGO SAT ON HIS BED in his room and studied the piece of paper. He’d written down the message he’d received from his father before deleting it. Not that he could ever forget it. But he’d written it down because that made it seem more real than if it was just in his head.
His father’s message was both straightforward and puzzling.
I am sorry. Please forgive me.
Sorry for what, Dad? What do you want me to forgive you for? Dying? But you can’t be dead. You aren’t dead.
Tyler folded the paper twice and slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans. He lay back on his bed and gazed around his room. Every surface carried memories of his father, from the sports and music posters on the walls, to the baseball glove and football gathering dust on a shelf, to the framed photo of the two of them at a swim meet where his father had been a timer.
Tyler snaked a hand inside his T-shirt and pulled out the pair of official dog tags his father had had made for him. He rubbed the flat metal between his fingers and wondered where his dad might be right now. Did he have his dog tags? Was he safe? Was the email sent after he was supposedly dead really from him? Or was it somehow a big mistake? He knew his father had written it, because it had been in their special code.
He rolled over onto his stomach and stared at the raindrops on his window. It had been a gloomy day and now a cold overcast night and thus a perfect ma
tch for what he was feeling. He had always thought that he would know if his dad had been injured over there. He thought he would just feel it. But then again he thought he would be able to tell that about his mom. And he and his dad had found her on the floor of her bathroom with a bullet in her head and the gun beside her. Her suicide note had been neatly folded and on the counter next to the sink. Its contents had been terse.
I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. I’ll miss you.
He shook his head to rid himself of the image of this final message from her. But it was always there, just in the back of his mind, ready to poke out when he least expected it. It could drive the smile off his face in a split second or drown a laugh in his throat.
He rose and walked over to his desk, an old-style military metal model that his father had gotten when the Army had cleaned out some surplus inventory during the expansion of Fort Belvoir in Alexandria.
He sat down, slid open the top drawer, and pulled the photo out.
He traced the faces of his father, his mom, and him. They had been at the Army 5K that he had run with his dad. They were happy, all smiles; the sun was shining and they were celebrating with ice cream cones after the run. Hugs, smiles, and ice cream barely five years ago. Then less than a year later everything had changed. No, everything had collapsed. His life became something else entirely. It was as though this room, this photo even, didn’t belong to him. As though it were telling the history of someone else, because Tyler really no longer recognized the person that used to be him.
First, his mom dying. And then his dad marrying a woman Tyler didn’t really even know. And now his dad was gone. In a way each of the people in that photo, his dad, his mom, and even him, was truly gone.
“Tyler?”
He didn’t move. He just sat there staring at the photo.
Jean slipped into the room and perched on the edge of his bed.
“Tyler?” she said again but barely above a whisper.
He still didn’t move.
“Can you at least look at me?”
He finally looked at her blankly.
She said, “You didn’t eat your dinner.”