Unquiet Ghosts

by Glenn Meade

  Chad laid the bag at his feet. “What are you going to do, Kath, shoot me?”

  “If I have to. You’re coming back with me.”

  He gave a nervous, furious laugh. “You really reckon?”

  A thought hit me like a lightning bolt. “It’s funny the things that cross your mind when you realize someone you once trusted is a liar and a cheat and a killer.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I ever really meant anything to you. If you just stayed with me to find out if Jack was still alive and going to contact me and come back. Is that paranoid of me, or is it true, Chad?”

  He didn’t answer, his eyes flicking nervously toward the tunnel exit.

  I moved closer to him.

  “Stop right there, Kath.”

  “Keep your enemies close but your friends even closer. That applied to me, too? You just needed to know if Jack ever showed up, didn’t you? And then when he didn’t, and it was safe, you ditched me.”

  Chad said nothing. He didn’t have to. I knew I was right.

  I felt the reality of it rip open my chest.

  “And the crash. That was you.”

  “It’s not true. I’d never have deliberately harmed your children.”

  “Problem is, I can’t believe anything you say, Chad. Not a word. But you’re coming back with me. You’ll answer those questions, one way or another.”

  Distant gunfire. Noises. They were far away, though. Too far to help me. But Chad looked nervous. He didn’t need me slowing him down.

  “One thing you’d better believe. If you try to stop me, I will shoot. So put the gun away and go, Kath. Go before both of us regret it and something bad happens.”

  He brought up his pistol.

  I leveled mine. “I’ve got a gun, too.”

  “But you’re not going to use it.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “Yeah, I do.” A grin flickered on Chad’s face. “Tanner slipped the rounds out of Courtney’s weapon earlier in the evening as a precaution. In case she didn’t play along, he put in blanks instead.”

  I felt my heart hit the floor.

  “Go ahead. Pull the trigger, Kath.”

  I aimed toward the exit end of the chamber, near some loose rocks, and pulled the trigger, twisting my face and my body away in case of a ricochet. A round exploded. I waited for the dull thud of the bullet striking the walls, but there was nothing. I pulled the trigger again and again. The same. The gun spewed fire but no bullets.

  Blanks.

  “See?” Chad picked up the bag. “Got to go. There’s a four-wheeler out there with my name on it.”

  He went to move. I lunged after him.

  “Don’t. It’s not worth it, Kath. Just let it go.” He aimed the Sig right at my face.

  I didn’t know it, and neither did he, but pointing that gun at me was his big mistake.

  There was a soft click, like a hammer being cocked, and I looked around.

  Sean.

  He stood ten yards away, in those old pajamas and in his bare feet. He inched forward into the tunnel, fear in his face.

  The shotgun was in his hands. He must have followed me.

  Panic lit Chad’s face like a beacon, and he went to raise his Sig.

  Sean said, “No . . . don’t hurt her. Don’t!”

  Before Chad could even reply, Sean squeezed the trigger.

  The shotgun exploded, the noise like a sonic boom, and the roar seemed to echo forever in the darkness of the tunnel.

  106

  * * *

  I keep two photographs by my bed. They are my deepest wounds.

  I have moved back into the cottage, into those rooms where we were once happiest.

  On restless nights or when the rains pour or the winds scream, I leave my window blinds open a crack so the lunar light that washes into my room through the wooden slats falls on the faces in the photographs.

  I turn my eyes toward the images, and I see Jack’s face. I see the man and the love I once had and the hope of a good future that we dreamed of.

  War destroyed it, as it destroys so many other dreams, with its ruinous pain. In a way, the ones who survive are the ones who suffer most—the wounded in mind and body and spirit, the bereaved, those left behind. And even those who bring courage with them to war—it kills them, or it breaks them.

  It kills the good and the valiant and the brave, just as easily as it kills the fearful and the gentle and the cowardly. And those it does not kill it breaks. It breaks us all in the end, even those of us who are mere watchers from the shore, for we are broken by the same cruel tempest that destroys the ones we love.

  I have forgiven Jack. What demons he had to fight within his own tormented mind I can never know, but I believe that he did his best. That he tried to protect us all. That he was a good father, despite the wrong he did. I can be kind to him. I put my acceptance down to his damaged mental state. At least, that is my excuse.

  Broken by battle, wounded by war, he is not the man I married, nor do I know if he will ever be whole again or if his mind and spirit will ever find peace. All I can do is be there, try to quiet his silent screams, heal his damaged soul.

  There are many questions Jack must answer in the months ahead, so many questions, but the investigators who quiz him seem to be patient. And I have sought no retribution, pressed no charges, for I know that Jack has paid the price of his own brokenness.

  Sometimes I look back and see my children’s faces on that beach in South Carolina, and I weep. I weep for all the irreplaceable years that we have lost, that were taken from us.

  But when I see my father’s face in the photograph next to my mother’s, I cannot forgive him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He was a good man, once. But goodness was no longer the master of his soul.

  There is a question people sometimes ask: How do you cope with losing your family—a husband, a daughter, a mother, a father—an entire life? The answer is that you don’t. When you break, you become another person. But you muddle on, the victim of a battle you never sought. For a long time afterward, you are walking dead. You cry out to God. Sometimes you curse his name. Because we never really bury our departed. They live with us, minute by minute, day by day, year by year.

  And so it should be.

  For as the universe conspires to soothe your pain, it allows you to embrace your deepest wounds, to realize that making pain the only recalled measure of our love is to deny love.

  The music of your children’s laughter, your delight at the touch of their fingers trailing like silk upon your skin, the wondrous feel of their breath upon your face—these are all part of love’s price.

  And it is a price that is worth all the years of sorrow past and yet to come.

  * * *

  Jack sleeps for now in the room across the hall.

  Like cautious animals, we prowl around each other, wary of our territory, wary of offering or losing our hearts again, as if they are made of the most delicate glass.

  Sean sleeps near me, in a bed that I moved next to mine. I hear his breathing. He is content here. He is no longer the bright, happy boy I once raised, but he is alive. I know that he has trouble remembering me as his mother, but I also know that he feels a vague connection to me. Some primal instinct in him made him want to protect me, and for that I am grateful.

  Just as he is protected now. Safe at last.

  I live in the hope that someday the closed door in his mind will open again and he will see me as I see him. I dream, and I pray, but I do not know.

  Sometimes when I look at his face, I see Jack and Amy. I see the resemblance, and I hear the timbres of their voices in Sean’s tone. And each night, I still read him the Dr. Seuss stories that he loved. He listens, quietly, perhaps raptly, but I do not know if I reach him or if the memories I stir are still beyond his reach.
>
  But often, when he’s sleeping restlessly, he wakes and calls out, “Mommy?”

  The sound of his voice, the simple sound of my child calling my name, makes my heart soar. “It’s OK, Sean. Mommy’s here. Go back to sleep, my love.”

  And hearing the comfort of my answer, feeling the soft caress of my hand on his forehead, he closes his eyes again and falls back into the oblivion of rest.

  * * *

  I have started to write again.

  Not much, a page or two each day, less if I’m not feeling up to it, but it is a start. And in those small hours of the morning when I lie awake, writing, for no other reason than my troubled mind or when the wind or rain whispers or claws against the glass, I often ask myself what days lie ahead for Sean and me and Jack and if they will be glorious days or dark nights of the soul.

  And with Sean, will we ever truly reach each other? Find again the love we once had, the parent-and-child closeness that is nature’s powerful bond. Sometimes I see in his fleeting smiles the shadow of the Sean I once knew, and it lifts my heart. On days like those, I feel we will be all right.

  But again, I do not know.

  Nor do I know if Jack and I will ever be all right. And although he is not the person I married, who can say any of us is? We all open doors into other rooms, and sometimes our beloved follows us and sometimes not.

  All I know is that Sean is happy to be back in the company of his father and mother. And our son sleeps peacefully because of it. And so I wait patiently, hoping that Jack and I will again enter that room where we once found one another.

  We do not sleep together. But on nights when I hear him call out, when his nightmares assail his sleep, I go to him and lay a damp cloth upon his fevered brow.

  Will we ever love again? I can’t answer that, no more than I can say for certain if there is a world beyond this one, but I know the hopeful promise of it comforts me. I hope for better days, just as I hope for better days for Kyle, but that hope is all I truly have. And although my grief for Amy is a constant ache, I would have it no other way.

  Like the Celtic legend of the bird that sings just once in its life but more sweetly than any other creature on this earth, I have sought my own thorns to impale my heart upon.

  As we all do.

  Yet I know that the love I have had for Jack and Sean and Amy wasn’t just a chance occurrence in this chaotic world but a fateful strand in the tapestry of my life. That its meaning lies far beyond my comprehension.

  On those nights when I cannot sleep, I leave a lamp on in the landing. Its brilliance seeps under my door, a long strip of shimmering gold. It comforted Amy then, just as it comforts me now. Bright and shining, it glows like a spirit from another world, a fire’s afterglow, a sacred flame.

  It lifts my heart.

  It is as radiant as my daughter was, and is, and always will be. As we all are, so long as goodness is the master of our souls.

  What soothes me most is that splinter of gleaming light.

  It sends a golden orb to play upon the ceiling.

  On stormy nights, the orb dances. On hot nights, it is still.

  But it never, ever goes away.

  I call it Amy’s light.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  * * *

  During the U.S.-led war in Iraq, hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars were earmarked for the postwar rebuilding of the country.

  At the start of the conflict, the United Nations also set aside 23 billion U.S. dollars of Iraqi money, held in overseas accounts, to be used in reconstruction projects.

  An estimated $8 billion went missing in the fog of war during the U.S. occupation. Some estimates claim it was closer to $12 billion and even higher. Much of the money vanished into the back pockets and the secret Swiss and Middle Eastern bank accounts of Iraqi tribal and political leaders, U.S. military officials, and corrupt U.S. and international business contractors who benefited from the chaos and bid rigging. Notable among them were businessmen with ties to both Republican and Democratic parties.

  Ironically, missing money was also undoubtedly diverted to groups with links to Al-Qaeda to help fund their war against the United States.

  Iraq during this period was awash with cash. “We played football with bricks of hundred-dollar bills,” claimed one U.S. Army official.

  Henry Waxman, then chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said, “The money that’s gone into waste, fraud, and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous. . . . It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history.”

  A number of high-level Pentagon investigations could not explain what happened to many billions of missing dollars or discover the whereabouts of missing records that would have shed light on the thefts. Electronic records either were not kept or disappeared.

  One of the companies to profit most from the war was Houston-based engineering and construction firm KBR Inc., which was spun off from its parent, oil field–services provider Halliburton, in 2007. Halliburton was famous for its previous ties to Dick Cheney, the former U.S. vice president, who served in the Cabinet during the Iraq War.

  KBR was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the course of a decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, a practice that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks. Gag orders were frequently put in place by the U.S. government in certain cases to prevent press coverage.

  Also stolen during the Iraq conflict were many priceless historical artifacts from Iraqi museums and private collections. To this day, a large number of the artifacts have not been recovered.

  Nor has any completely credible official U.S. government evidence been offered regarding what happened to the missing $8 billion.

  Many of the thefts that occurred remain unsolved, and, remarkably, they have never been the subject of rigorous criminal investigation.

  Another striking irony: while U.S. Army veterans often struggle mentally and physically to survive their lifetime wounds of war, often without much-needed medical or psychological care, stolen billions remain unaccounted for, and the criminals and war profiteers responsible for some of the biggest thefts in world history remain free to enjoy their ill-gotten gains.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  To all those who helped me with my research, as always, my grateful thanks. A special thank-you to Jesse Flynn, researcher extraordinaire—I will keep my promise to be there for you when the NSA sends someone knocking on your door to take you in for questioning because of all the government websites you visited, all the firearms you checked up on, and the numerous law enforcement agents you were in contact with in your relentless hunt for information. And if you do end up with a black bag over your head in some compound, I’ll be there for you too, Jesse.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  * * *

  GLENN MEADE was born in Finglas, Dublin. Several of his novels have been international bestsellers, translated into more than twenty languages, and have enjoyed both critical and commercial success.

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