The Ones We Trust

by Kimberly Belle

  And then he shoves his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and says something even better.

  “I wanted to apologize. For losing my temper with you, twice now, and saying some things that were a little out of line.” My eyes widen, and he amends. “Okay, okay. Way out of line. Especially the part where I called you an army brat and threw you out of my mother’s house. And I might have said ‘fuck’ more times than I care to count, but in my own defense, I cuss a lot, so you probably shouldn’t take it personally. Regardless, I’m sorry.”

  Everything about his change of heart seems sincere—his repentant tone, his remorseful expression, the way his gaze sticks to mine the whole time it took him to say it—but the thunderhead that rolled onto his expression when I told him about Ricky is still imprinted on my brain. I picture his big form silhouetted in his mother’s kitchen window, all rage and repulsion that a Wolff army brat would dare darken her door, and a question elbows its way up my throat. “How much of that did your mother make you say?”

  One brow slides up his forehead, and he puffs out a laugh. “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

  “How much, Gabe?”

  Another sharp burst of breath. “Okay, if you really want to know, it was my therapist. He urged me to come here and express my frustration and anger in a ‘healthy, productive manner.’” He pulls his hands from his pockets to make quote marks in the air, then gives me a rueful grin. “The apology, as shitty as it was, was all mine.”

  I find myself softening just a tad at this little glimpse of the first Gabe I met, the one who was witty and friendly and personable, who didn’t take himself too seriously as he helped me gather all the items on my list. I liked that Gabe then, and I like him now.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to let either Gabe in just yet, literally or figuratively. Not until I know we’re on the same page. “I assume she told you what we talked about in the garden.”

  He nods.

  “As well as my answer.”

  Another nod. He looks at me inquisitively, opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it.

  “You walked all the way over here in the freezing rain, Gabe. Why don’t you just say what you’re thinking?”

  “Why does that feel like a trick question?” He follows up his words with a good-natured grin, but when I don’t share in his lightheartedness, his expression grows solemn. “Okay, fine. What I don’t get is how you can be so adamant you’re not a reporter one minute with me, and then one little request from Mom and you’re suddenly agreeing to write Zach’s story.”

  “Okay, first of all, I didn’t agree to anything other than to think about it. I’m thinking about helping your mother write Zach’s story because I like her and she asked. And ultimately, I wouldn’t be writing anything. They’re her words. I would only be helping put them in the right order.”

  “It would still be one hell of a byline.”

  “It’s not about the byline. It’s about the story.”

  “Which, if you help write it, is also your byline.”

  “I already told you, I don’t give a shit about the byline.” I frown, shaking my head in frustration, and start to close the door. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  Gabe presses a wet palm to the wood, stopping it at half-mast. “It’s cold as balls out here, but I’m still here, and I’m listening. Try me.”

  Gabe slips his hands into his jeans pockets and waits as if he’s not freezing his ass off, and I protest with a sigh, short and sharp, even as the words begin to take form in my head. The thing is, I want him to understand. I want him to know I didn’t walk into his mother’s house with the goal of walking out with a book deal. Other than the rhythmic patter of the rain and the occasional swish of tires rolling through puddles, the street is quiet, and Gabe’s eyes are wide and questioning.

  I decide to give him the answer he came here for.

  “Three years ago, my career imploded. I’m not telling you this because I’m looking for sympathy or encouragement or even understanding, because what happened was completely, one hundred percent my fault. My mistakes, I own them, and I deserved every bit of the fallout. But the thing is...all I’ve ever wanted to do was write, and not blurbs about hip replacements and dementia drugs like I’m doing now, but real stories, about subjects that I care about, that are relevant to me.”

  Gabe clearly wasn’t expecting my answer, but he manages to look only slightly puzzled by it. “My brother’s story is relevant to you?”

  I shake my head, immediately and emphatically. “Ricky Hernandez is relevant to me. Who he is, what he saw, is relevant to me. The truth is relevant to me. And whatever it is, if it’s as momentous as my gut is telling me it is, I can’t just sit on it. I have to send it out into the world. The public has a right to know the truth, even if it’s bad. Especially if it’s bad.”

  “So if all that’s true, what is there to think about? Why didn’t you just say yes?”

  He doesn’t sound accusatory, only genuinely curious, and so the truth simmers up before I’ve made the conscious decision to share it. “Because words can be just as deadly as warfare.”

  Gabe doesn’t ask anything further, but from the way he watches me, earnestly and with a sudden tenderness I didn’t expect, I am pretty certain he knows about Chelsea. Maybe his mother told him, maybe he did his own research. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he seems to understand.

  “Well, hell,” he says, flashing me a bemused grin worthy of one of his big brother’s rom-coms, except not the least bit practiced. “Mom told me I was being an ass-hat, and now, as usual, she was right. I should have used that in my apology, now that I think about it. That even my own mother thinks I’m an ass-hat.”

  I smile despite myself. “I doubt she used the word ass-hat.”

  “Nah, that one’s all mine, too. But that apology from before? Let me just add that I misjudged you. I assumed you were giving us Ricky for all the wrong reasons, that you came over there looking for a story, and I’m sorry. I’m an ass-hat, and I’m sorry.” He blows into his hands, shifts his big body back, pointing it away from my door. “So anyway, now that I can no longer feel my extremities, I’m just gonna...”

  And that’s when we hear it, a tinny thock thock thock that echoes up my street. Gabe looks over his shoulder, and the noise moves nearer, growing louder and sharper, crescendoing into an earsplitting roar as hail the size of golf balls kamikaze-dives from the sky, bouncing off the roofs, the pavement, the cars, the grass of my tiny front lawn.

  He turns back with a half-cocked grin. “I didn’t plan that, I swear.”

  I laugh, grab him by the sleeve and pull him inside.

  In the shelter of my hallway, Gabe dries off as best he can with a towel I fetch him from upstairs, and I hang his coat over a chair in the kitchen to drip on the white tile floor. While I’m in there, I snag a bottle of wine, an opener and two glasses from the stretch of cabinets by the back door, and carry them into the living room.

  I hold everything up for Gabe to see. “It’s not brandy, but it’ll warm your blood.”

  “Nice, thanks.”

  Gabe hangs the towel around his neck, and we settle on the couch. While he goes to work on the cork, I search for neutral ground, for something that won’t heave our fragile peace accord into a full-on nosedive like the Titanic, right before it snapped in two.

  I settle on, “I really like your mother.”

  He glances up from the bottle, grinning. “She really likes you back, which is kind of a big deal these days. She says no one was more surprised she asked you to help her with Zach’s story than she was, but you passed all her tests with flying colors.”

  “With her,” I remind him. “I passed the tests with her.”

  The cork pulls free with a light pop, and he pours a gener
ous glass of wine, then another.

  “Yeah, well, Mom has always been light-years smarter than I am, not to mention a great deal more levelheaded.” He shakes his head, thunks the bottle down on the table. “My therapist tells me I’m a work in progress, but between you and me, I think that’s psych-speak for you’re a real asshole.”

  I laugh. “At least he’s diplomatic.”

  “It’s because I pay him a shit-ton of cash.” He picks up the glasses and passes one to me. “So, Abigail Wolff, are we good?”

  I think about his question, tip my glass toward his. “We’re good.”

  We sip for a moment in silence, and I watch him over the rim, thinking how he looks so much like Zach but also doesn’t. They both share that famous Armstrong bone structure—angular and strong and utterly masculine—but Gabe’s angles are not quite as knife-edged, his forehead not quite so wide. Zach was the Hollywood version of Gabe—too shiny, too stiff, too perfect. Gabe’s good looks are real and rugged and raw, and now that I’ve seen both brothers up close, I’d choose Gabe over Zach any day.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” I say, and Gabe’s face takes on that solemn but standoffish quality I’ve seen a million times on the news. “I can’t imagine how much it sucks to lose a sibling, and then to lose him like that...” I curl my legs under me, turn to face him on the couch. “I’m really sorry. I wish I’d said it earlier, that first day at the market.”

  “Nah, you were right. I’ve thought a lot about what you should have done differently, how I would have handled the situation in your shoes, but the thing is, I don’t know. There’s not really a good answer. We’re in uncharted waters all around.”

  My head bobs in an enthusiastic nod. “You can say that again. How weird is it that I don’t know you, yet I know all these things about you?”

  “You know things about me?” One brow slides up his forehead, and a grin twists his lips. It’s a cocky expression for sure, but it looks awfully damn good on him. “Like what?”

  “Well, I know you went to Harvard on a full swimming scholarship, but despite your coach’s prodding and whispers of Olympic greatness, you ditched the pool for an MBA. After graduation, Goldman Sachs whisked you away to Wall Street, where you didn’t just climb but bounded up their corporate ladder. You were Manhattan’s most eligible bachelor for a few years, until you became engaged to some ketchup heiress—”

  “Mustard,” Gabe interrupts.

  “—sorry, to some mustard heiress. But for reasons I can only assume have something to do with your brother’s death, you gave all of that up to come home and stock shelves at a local hardware store.”

  “Not something.” He shakes his head. “Everything. My reasons had everything to do with Zach’s death. Who gives a shit about penthouse apartments and fancy parties when we are getting our brains blown out every day? I didn’t then, and I don’t now.”

  “What about the mustard heiress?”

  “What about her?”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “Well, she married some French baron last month, so I’d say pretty well.”

  A giggle pushes up my throat before I can stop it.

  Gabe looks confused, as if maybe he can’t decide whether to be amused or offended by my laughter. “What?”

  “Really?” I say, a little surprised it’s never occurred to him. I laugh again, one of those uncontrollable belly laughs that bubbles up because you’re trying to swallow it down. “Now she’s French mustard.”

  Gabe laughs now, too, and whatever doubts I had as to the tenacity of our fresh start float like a bad odor out the window. Gabe refills our wineglasses, then settles his big body back into my couch as if he owns it. He swings an arm up and across the back, points a long finger at my face. “All right, then. Fair’s fair. You know all these things about me. Now tell me some things about you.”

  “Okay...” I lean into the couch, feeling the soft leather crinkle and give under me, and think for a moment. “Rowing scholarship to UVA undergrad, followed by a master’s in journalism from Georgetown. After that, I slogged through a couple of shitty jobs until I found one I liked, which paid me approximately one-sixteenth of what you earned at Goldman Sachs. And I was never most eligible anything.”

  “Engaged?”

  “Almost. We lived together for a while, and we talked about it for longer than that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Timothy was a reporter, too, and his schedule was even crazier than mine. Most of the time, we were more like ships passing in the night than a real couple. Anyway, he didn’t like it much when I turned in my press pass. I think I was home too much for his tastes.”

  Weird. Usually, talking about Timothy, about all the reasons we crashed and burned, is something I’m hesitant to do. I don’t like the way it awakens all those old feelings of hurt, the way his name on my lips tightens a sharp and rusty barbed-wire band around my chest.

  But not tonight. Tonight I say the words without pausing to consider the subject, and then I brace for a pain that doesn’t come. What does come is a sense of instant and giddy relief at its absence. Huh.

  If Gabe senses it, he doesn’t let on. He lifts a shoulder, a no-big-loss gesture. “In my experience, people who don’t stick around during the hard times weren’t worth having around anyway. That’s one of the few perks from this shit show, actually, that it sure cleans out your Rolodex.”

  Even though I can’t detect a trace of bitterness in his voice, I read all sorts of things in his response. I read that in losing his brother, he’s lost a lot of others, too, either by watching them walk away or by cutting them loose. I read that some partings were met with a good-riddance attitude and some were more painful, and I can’t help but wonder which category the French-mustard ex falls into. And I read that, now that his Rolodex is trimmed down to a core group of people he knows and trusts, he’s not quick to add any new names into the mix. Will mine make the cut?

  A yearning wells up inside me, and I bury my nose in my glass. All those things I thought and felt those first two times at Handyman Market still ring true. The more I learn about Gabe, the more I like him, and the more I want him to like me back. I don’t trust myself to say anything.

  Outside my window, the sky has stopped dumping and the wind has settled, and the usual evening traffic has picked back up, people walking their dogs, cars sloshing past on the still drenched streets. But inside, it’s warm and dry.

  Gabe reaches for the wine. “Can I pour you another?”

  “Sure.” I hold up my empty glass.

  Much later, by the time he finally gets up to leave, we’ve polished off the whole bottle.

  13

  The mind has a habit of getting hung up on one way of thinking. It’s kind of like that old riddle, the one where you imagine you’re on a sinking boat surrounded by hungry sharks. How will you survive? Your brain is so busy mulling over the possibilities—I’ll punch them in the nose, I’ll swim like the dickens, I’ll pray to every god there is for a miracle—that it misses the most obvious answer: stop imagining.

  Kind of like how my mind got hung up on where to look for Ricky.

  Because up to now, it’s been so hung up on searching for Ricky Hernandez on the American military websites, that it hasn’t considered other possibilities. What if he’s a foreign coalition soldier? What if he’s not a soldier at all? He could be a military contractor, or even an embedded journalist. The possibilities roll through my head in the middle of the night like an army on attack, plucking me from my dreams and lurching me upright in my bed.

  I throw off my covers and launch myself out, snagging my robe from a chair on the way out of my room.

  Downstairs at my computer, it takes me three hours and five cups of coffee to find Ricardo Manuel Hernandez, and when I do, my heart plummets at the addres
s of the site I find him on: americancontractors.org, a website tracking casualty counts for Iraq and Afghanistan.

  According to the website, Ricky was killed on January 12, a mere two months after he may or may not have watched Zach die on a nearby battlefield. A link sends me to WAVY, a local NBC affiliate near Virginia Beach, with a lousy four-paragraph report on the basics of his death.

  VIRGINIA BEACH, VA—A civilian contractor for Intergon from Virginia Beach was killed in a roadside attack near Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday.

  Ricardo Manuel Hernandez, 38, died while on duty for the private contractor when the vehicle he was driving was attacked. An explosive hitting the windshield killed Hernandez and another security worker, sources said.

  A former mechanic, Hernandez worked for ten years at Portsmouth Auto Repair. His body is expected to arrive in Portsmouth on Thursday or Friday. Funeral plans are pending.

  Hernandez leaves behind a sister, Graciela Hernandez, of Portsmouth.

  A roadside attack near Kabul. Zach was stationed in Kabul, meaning if Ricky had been there for more than a few months, he and Zach would have been in the same place at the same time.

  With unsteady fingers, I type Intergon into the search field.

  According to their website, Intergon provides shelter, food and comfort to coalition troops across Afghanistan. I skim over their support operations—delivery of food, water and fuel, dining and laundry and housing services, morale and recreation activities—until my gaze glues to four little words at the bottom: spare parts and maintenance. I return to the army reports, skipping down to the mechanic sent to fix a valve on the broken-down MRAP.

  A mechanic.

  I return to the obit and stare, openmouthed and wide-eyed, at my screen. Ricky was a mechanic. A mechanic. One who would know, surely, how to fix a broken-down valve on a tank. My heart races and my skin tingles and my blood pressure explodes like a grenade.