The Ones We Trust

by Kimberly Belle

  “It was. I remember wondering, when they started handing out all those medals, what his family would think when they learned Zach’s death was from friendly fire. Ricky said they all knew it that same night. What a mess the army made of that, huh?” She shakes her head as if to flush it from her mind. “But you’re not here to talk about Zach.”

  “That’s okay. Any stories that help jog your memory are welcome,” I say, reviving one of my old standbys from my journalism days. It’s kind of like that word-association game, where one thought serves to spark others, even seemingly unrelated ones. It was my favorite and most effective technique to get sources talking.

  Graciela, though, doesn’t take the bait. She shifts in her chair and gives me a kind smile. “I’m really sorry, but David, or Dave, is not ringing any bells. Maybe Ricky mentioned him on his blog.”

  Gabe and I share a look, and he is clearly as stunned as I am.

  I clear my throat. “Ricky had a blog?”

  Graciela’s silence spikes my pulse, especially when I look back to find her staring at Gabe, her slightly squinted eyes studying his face. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

  My heart stutters to a stop, then kicks into triage territory.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. I told Gabe to wait in the car, told him that Graciela would recognize those famous Armstrong genes. Even with the mountain-man beard, he looks so much like his big-screen brother that Graciela would have to be either blind or Amish to not make the connection.

  “I don’t think so,” Gabe says, his tone easy and light.

  She tilts her head and studies him some more. “You just look so familiar.”

  “I get that a lot.” He lifts a casual shoulder. “But you look exactly like my high school girlfriend, so I definitely would have remembered meeting you.”

  “I’m sorry, Graciela,” I say, hijacking her attention, pulling it back to me and to the reason we’re here. “You said Ricky had a blog?”

  She tears her gaze from Gabe and nods. “Blogspot lost it, though. They told me it was a computer glitch. One day it was there, and the next it just vanished from their system. Thank God I made a printout of all the entries for our grandmother. She doesn’t have a computer.”

  Deep breath. Calm down. Focus.

  “Could I maybe take a look at those printouts?”

  “Sure. Be right back.” She hoists herself from the chair and waddles off, leaving Gabe and me alone in the tiny living room.

  “Mother mother motherfucker,” Gabe whispers.

  I don’t dare to respond, don’t dare to even look at him for fear of losing every last bit of my cool. We sit there in silence, the weight of what we just heard pushing down on us from all sides, until Graciela reappears, toting a three-inch binder and a short stack of well-thumbed envelopes.

  “I brought a few of his letters, as well, from May of 2010 on. That’s when he went to Baghdad. Maybe we can find something about Dave in there, too.”

  I look up at her gratefully, a sudden pang of guilt at her kindness curling at my belly. This is where the lines really get crossed, I think, where personal relationships skew integrity and lead to questionable behavior, like lying to a poor, pregnant woman grieving her dead brother.

  “I’m so sorry to intrude on you tonight, Graciela.”

  She waves off my apology, and I swallow down my remorse, concentrating instead on the letters. There is, of course, nothing in any of them about Dave, but we do find a few mentions of Zach and Nick. That the three of them waited out a late-spring sandstorm by arguing politics. That Nick came down with a mean case of food poisoning. That Zach was learning Arabic.

  And then finally, Gabe passes me a letter, pressing his knee against mine as he does so, that almost makes me gasp out loud. He catches my eye after I’ve read it, and I know what I need to do. I place the letter atop the pile on the coffee table and push to a stand.

  “Graciela, could you please show me to your restroom? I could use a little break.”

  “Of course.”

  I help her heave her enormous belly out of the chair, and she leads me down a short, dark hallway, flipping on lights as we go. We pull to a stop outside a plain, wooden door halfway down. It’s taken us all of three seconds to get here. Not nearly enough time.

  “I really can’t thank you enough for everything you’re doing,” I say, stalling. “I know it’s painful, and that you probably have a million things you’d rather be doing than carving open old wounds, but—”

  She stops me with a palm to my arm. “If you and I don’t talk about Ricky and David, then who will? Talking about them is how we keep our men alive, keep their memories fresh in our minds, right?” When I don’t answer, she tilts her head and gives me a sad smile. “Right?”

  “Right,” I whisper. Hot tears spring to my eyes, not because of all the reasons she thinks, but because I so thoroughly, completely, desperately hate everything about this conversation. The lies. The faking. The bullshit fictional fiancé that brought me here. I hate everything about it.

  “Oh, sweetie...” Graciela pulls me into an awkward embrace, smoothing a petite palm across my back. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it is to lose someone you love.”

  She releases me, and I don’t have to pretend to be traumatized as I slip into the tiny bathroom, because I am. Traumatized and sick, literally nauseous from the revolting lies I just spun to this poor woman. I grip the laminate countertop, throat burning and hands shaking, glaring at myself in the mirror. Flowers, as soon as I get home, the biggest bouquet I can afford. The gift won’t smother the guilt, but at least it will serve as a miserable sort of penance.

  Suddenly, getting out of here, out of Graciela’s house, out of her life, is my newest and most urgent goal.

  I return to the living room, pausing at the end of the couch. Gabe’s face is buried in the blog binder, but he slides me a look that tells me he’s got what we need.

  I turn back to Graciela, pinching out the first excuse I can think of to get us out of here. “Would it help if we made copies of what’s in the binder? That way we won’t keep you up.”

  “Would you mind?” She rubs a hand over her giant belly, looking beyond grateful at the suggestion. “I am pretty tired.”

  It’s all Gabe needs to hear; he slaps the book shut and stands, tucking it under his bicep. After a bit of discussion, we agree to leave the notebook between the front and screen doors so she can go straight to bed, and Graciela shows us, stunned and shaken and slightly giddy at our discovery, to the door.

  * * *

  I steer the car around the corner, slam the brakes and freak way the hell out.

  “I lied to her, Gabe! About her dead brother. Right to her face. I looked her in the eyes and lied! Oh, God.” I rest my forehead on the steering wheel. “I hate myself.”

  Gabe slides a palm up my shoulder, grips the back of my neck, gives it a gentle squeeze. “You had to.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe she would have told us. Maybe she would have been just as forthcoming if we’d told her the truth about why we were there. If anybody would understand, it would be her. She lost a brother, too.”

  My last point hits home with Gabe, I can tell. He removes his cap, rubbing a palm over his flattened hair. “Sometimes the end justifies the means.”

  The uncertainty in his tone brings fresh tears to my eyes. “That’s bullshit! It’s bullshit, and you know it. What if that had been your mother in there? What could possibly justify lying and stealing in your mind if it had been her?”

  Gabe doesn’t have to think about his answer. “The truth.”

  “Your truth. Not hers.”

  Gabe’s cell rings, and both of us ignore it.

  “Maybe,” he says, “but I can’t fix things until I know what Ricky knew. Not until I know what happened to Zach. We’re so close, Ab
igail. I can feel it in my bones.”

  It’s then that the realization hits with the force of a wrecking ball. Gabe and I may say we’re on the same team, sprinting toward the same goal line, but are we really? Gabe wants the truth, and I want it for him, too. Of course I do.

  But getting it isn’t game over for either of us, is it? Who knows what Gabe and his family will do with whatever is in Ricky’s blogs—seek retribution, fight for justice, demand amends. The answer for him, I suppose, will depend on the explosiveness of what we find.

  For me, however, this game ends in...what, exactly? When I began, I told myself it was to seek amends, to rehab my karma. I told myself it was pure, unabashed curiosity and nothing more that drove me to find Ricky, that sent me on this quest to ferret out what he knows, to uncover what really happened to Zach. But somewhere along the way, things got personal. Emotions became entangled. My father. Jean. Gabe. It’s all so convoluted now. I no longer know what’s right, as evidenced by my repulsive lies to a dead man’s sister.

  “I can’t do it, Gabe.” I shake my head, trying not to focus on the calm determination that lines his brow, trying not to think about how it must look so different from mine. “I have to go back there. I have to apologize.”

  Gabe shakes his head, and he opens his mouth to answer when his cell rings again. “Hold on,” he says, digging it out of his pocket. “I just need to make sure it’s not...” He flips it around so I can see the screen, and his mother’s name on the caller ID. He holds up a finger with one hand, swipes the screen with the thumb of his other.

  “Hey, what’s up?” He pauses to listen, and his gaze holds mine the entire time. “Yeah... I’m with her right now. You want me to ask?” Apparently, Jean’s answer is yes, because he drops the phone to his lap. “Mom wants to know if you’ve given her offer any thought.”

  I nod.

  “And?”

  And I can’t even think about Zach’s story right now. All I can think about is the look on Graciela’s face in the bathroom hallway, the way her eyes filled at our supposedly shared misfortune, her voice calling me sweetie.

  Gabe sees my distress, wraps his free hand around my head, cupping it, and leans his forehead against mine. “I swear to you, when this is over, you and I will go back, both of us, together, and we’ll apologize to Graciela. We’ll tell her everything. But for now, I’m begging you to let it go. Please, Abigail. I have to know what’s in those blogs.”

  It’s not his tone that does it, or his hand on my neck. It’s not his breath, warm and familiar on my lips, or his quiet desperation to learn the truth. It’s not even the way his eyes turn liquid and soft, watching me in a way that almost makes me forget about Graciela. It’s that one little word. Us. The promise of a future—together, his word—and of something magnificent blooming between us.

  I give him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

  He kisses me then, the barest brush of his lips against mine, but the tenderness and hope and desire feel like my reward, and they melt through my heart and solidify into something warm and golden. I’d promise him my soul right now if he asked.

  “And Mom?” he whispers. “What should I tell her?”

  “Tell her I say yes,” I say, at the same time telling myself it hasn’t been my answer all along.

  Part Three:

  The Space Between

  22

  After we make copies and return the original blog posts to Graciela, my iPhone directs us to the closest all-night diner, an IHOP on Frederick Boulevard. Inside it’s bright and warm and, rather unfortunately for us, crowded for ten-thirty on a Saturday night.

  A determined Gabe winds his way through the restaurant, leading us to a booth at a deserted corner in the back. The diners we pass on the way seem more interested in their late-night pancake platters than in paying attention to either of us, but we study them carefully anyway. No sign of the Members Only man, or anyone else suspicious-looking, for that matter.

  I slide into the booth on the side facing the restaurant, and Gabe sinks onto the bench next to me, positioning us both so we can keep a watchful eye on the room. He scoots in so close that if it weren’t for the fluorescent lights and sticky tabletop and overwhelming scent of bacon and syrup, I could almost pretend we were in a normal restaurant, and this was our first date.

  And then he smacks the pile of papers onto the table in front of us, and I remember. We have work to do.

  A woman in a blue-and-white waitress uniform comes to take our order. I’m not even remotely hungry, but since I haven’t eaten anything other than a couple of the granola bars I threw into my bag this morning, I order the breakfast sampler. Gabe orders the same and adds coffee and water for us both.

  As soon as she walks away, Gabe reaches for the stack with the eagerness of a kid ready to tear into his presents on Christmas morning.

  “Gabe, wait.” I slap a palm over the pile and pause until I have his full attention. “If the truth is in there, whatever it is, I will write it. Even if it proves my father is at fault. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it for you. I just wanted you to know that beforehand.”

  It was apparently the right thing to say. He abandons the papers and slides a palm up my neck, planting a long, slow one on me in a way that makes everything else fade away—the people and the noise and the smells. I know nothing but Gabe, kissing the breath from my lungs.

  “When this is done,” he says against my lips, “when we get back to DC, I’m going to take you on the most epic first date ever. Flowers, champagne, candlelit dinner, the works. I’m going to start all over at the beginning with you and make you fall for me the old-fashioned way.”

  What if I’ve already fallen? whispers through my mind, but I push it away with a grin. “Okay, but just so you know, I don’t put out on the first date.”

  “Good thing I like a challenge, then.” His face is serious, but there’s a teasing edge to his words because both of us know there will be no challenge. I’ve already fallen, and after last night, Gabe and I have already moved well past the boundaries of a promised first date.

  We untangle ourselves and dive into the blog copies, passing the sheets back and forth and making notes in the margins. We agree to create two piles—one for blog entries with any mention of Zach or his platoon as well as all the entries in the weeks before and after his death, and one for those without. Our food comes, and we mostly ignore it, pausing our work only occasionally for a lukewarm bite.

  What we do not ignore, what we cannot ignore, is the man with a denim jacket and goatee sliding into the booth next to us. Gabe and I fall silent, taking to whispers and written notes on my yellow notepad, and casting sideways glances at the man as he studies the menu.

  Before long, we’ve learned that Ricky became friends with Zach and Nick shortly after arriving in Kabul. He mentioned both of them plenty of times in his early blog entries.

  “I know Nick is...troubled,” I whisper to Gabe, “but he didn’t remember Ricky at all?”

  Something settles over his face. Dark, uneasy, despondent. He dips his head close, his breath hot on my ear. “Nick loses it every time I bring up Ricky’s name. I can’t get anything out of him other than a string of profanities and paranoia.”

  My heart heaves for him. I slide a palm up his thigh and press a kiss of solidarity to his shoulder.

  And then we return to our reading, and I am quickly swept up in Ricky’s stories. His writing was honest and true, and he had a raunchy sense of humor; it’s our blind luck that the blowup doll would have been right up his triple-X alley. Our coffee grows cold, and the two piles on the table before us grow higher. Within a little over two hours, we have divided all the papers. The man beside us has long since paid and gone.

  “Let me see that letter again,” I say.

  Gabe pulls Ricky’s swiped letter out of his back pocket and
unfolds it, smoothing it down on the table. We bend our heads over it, reading it for the second time.

  Dear G,

  I watched a friend of mine die yesterday. It is an image I will never forget, no matter how hard I try. There’s really no way to prepare yourself for something like that, and as much as you see it all around you in this godforsaken place, you never get used to it, either. Especially when it happens to a friend.

  But the thing that affected me even more than watching the bullets tear through his brain, is the way his brother sobbed over his body. Zach is just lying there, his skull in chunks on the desert floor, and Nick is on top of him, clutching him and wailing. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot.

  At the base afterward, you could have heard a pin drop. All of us just stood in the motor pool, sweat pouring down our necks and foreheads into our eyes, dripping off our knuckles onto the concrete, not saying a word, just staring at the ceiling, the walls, our shoes. Anywhere but at each other. The thing is, by then we all knew it wasn’t the enemy that killed Zach. It was one of us. It had to have been. I just thank God it wasn’t me.

  And then the commander came in and confirmed what we already knew. Not in so many words, but with some bullshit message about how we should avoid placing blame on any one person. One by one, we were questioned, briefed and sent to our respective tents. When they got to me, a civilian consultant there only to fix a stupid truck valve, they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. The commander practically signed my transfer papers himself. I don’t like it, but what can I do? Zach’s death is going to be a PR nightmare back home, and I guess the army wants to batten down the hatches.

  Death is so arbitrary here, G. A total crapshoot. We all fear our deaths, pray for our lives, miss our homes, wonder if we will ever return to our families. This time it was Zach, but it just as easily could have been me. It could have been Nick. It could have been anyone. Who’s next?

  Sorry to be so morose on you, sis. This place is starting to get to me.