by Tanya Biank
“Nobody said anything. I just think I should think about my future. I’m sorry. But it’s better this way.”
Andrea Lynne paused for a second, baffled by the turnaround but determined not to let it faze her. “Absolutely. I hope you do well. Good-bye.” And she hung up.
She was a grown woman. It bothered her that the Bragg mafia would try to control her personal life. All because she wasn’t “behaving” as an Army widow should, that her life wasn’t what people would expect. As Mrs. Rennie M. Cory Jr., she had been the wife, mother, friend, homemaker, and, as she saw it, coleader with her husband in the military. As Rennie Cory’s widow, she could have been expected—before Rennie died, she, too, would have expected herself—to do volunteer work and be content with Rennie’s memory.
She could have continued to pursue all the things that gave her joy, cultivating her garden, caring for her children, painting and listening to music, captivating her secret admirers. Yes, she still wanted admiration, she admitted that. What she never counted on, what no one outside could have known, was that Rennie had become so much a part of her that when he died, a lot of her went into the earth with him. She had found out over the last few months that she needed some other men to get through the days, to figure herself out, to understand her relationship with Rennie, and to determine how she would go on from here.
“Know yourself, know who you are”—hadn’t she always told her young Army wives that? Now she had to apply her advice to her own shattered life. Once she was the perfectly dressed and made-up woman, with manicured nails, freshly glossed lips, and hair expertly arranged, the one who helped all the others, who e-mailed and called them and sent the little card or gift. That was no longer who she was. She chafed at being “expected” to play any role. No matter what people thought.
Little Rennie got into the car. Halfway home Andrea Lynne gingerly raised what was on her mind.
“You know, Rennie, we’re still a family. And a family protects each other. What happens within the walls of our home is private. It belongs to us.” Her son remained silent.
“Believe it or not, Rennie, some people are going to think badly of me no matter what I do. It doesn’t matter that I’m a widow. If I wear black, they’ll say, ‘Oh, she’s taking it too hard.’ If I wear bright clothes, they’ll say, ‘She must not remember what happened to her husband.’ If I work, they’ll say, ‘She needs to be with her kids.’ If I don’t, they’ll say, ‘She needs to get on with her own life.’ If they see me with anyone, they’ll say, ‘Oh, she’s dating already!’ even if I’m just friends with that person. If they see me laugh or having dinner out, they’ll assume I am not grieving anymore.”
She looked over at her son as they waited at a stoplight on Ramsey Street. “Rennie, has anyone said anything to you about me?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, looking straight ahead.
Andrea Lynne knew he would never tell her, never hurt her. Little Rennie constantly reminded her of his father. Her love for her son was almost painful.
“Rennie, do you understand who Roland is?”
“He’s a friend of Dad’s,” he said, acting bored.
“And mine,” Andrea Lynne chimed in. “But do you understand who he is? Roland knew your dad a very long time. Daddy and Roland were like you and Andrew—boyhood friends. Like brothers. Better than brothers because they held on to a bond without a family connecting them. They lived together in college, and Roland adored your father.
“When Daddy got orders for Vietnam, Roland almost lost his life in a head-on collision that same month. He didn’t tell anyone. Not even his mother. For six months he recovered by himself. When he finally called, Daddy was already gone to Vietnam. Later he said that there must have been some reason he survived. You know, Roland has very few friends. He never had children of his own. Dad had us, a family that needed him. Roland came to help us for Dad.” Andrea Lynne paused. “But he stayed to help us for us.”
She pulled into the driveway and looked over at her son again. “That’s who Roland is.”
They walked inside, and Andrea Lynne followed her son upstairs into his room. “Is there anything else?” she asked.
“No,” he blurted out, visibly upset, “but you can never marry.” Little Rennie broke down in tears.
“I don’t want to be anyone else’s wife,” she said. “I was Daddy’s wife. No one can take your dad’s place. You know that.” She pulled him close to her again.
“Now listen to me. You have a girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
“Do you spend time with her on the weekends after work?”
“Sometimes.”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you like to hold her hand?”
“Mom,” he whined.
“Hold on—and maybe you might want to kiss her once in a while—”
“Mom!” he said again, pulling away.
“Okay, well, you just want to spend time with her, to have fun, to feel better, maybe, and that’s it, right? Well, that’s how I feel about Roland.”
Rennie looked at her, and she knew they understood each other.
“Now, I need to ask you something. Did anyone ever ask you about my relationship with Roland?”
“No,” he said hesitantly.
“Well, anyone who does is not my friend and not yours either. Because whatever impression they may have is wrong. It’s none of their business, and they should not be discussing it with my children.”
He nodded, with his eyes locked on her.
“I’m going to remind you, what happens within this family is private. Even the simplest things. You would be surprised at what people make of the most innocent scenarios. If I weren’t a widow, no one would think twice. But I’m just learning!”
As Andrea Lynne walked down the stairs she couldn’t help running the conversation over and over in her mind. She had never explained her relationship with Roland to anyone, not even her girlfriends. She didn’t really understand it herself.
During the winter Roland had played a big role in her survival. He seemed different from other men she’d met. He didn’t compliment her on her physical beauty or flirt with her. She knew he was looking out for her, and a part of her wondered if their friendship could or should develop into something more. She was not looking for another Rennie. What he had done for her only Rennie could do, and she didn’t need that anymore. She had new wounds, blanks spaces that were gouged out from grief and heartache, and she needed someone who could fill those.
On an evening when Andrea Lynne had been especially depressed, she asked Roland if they could talk. “But not in the kitchen tonight,” she said. “On the couch.”
She wanted to sit down and relax. Her legs hurt from standing, and she didn’t want to perch on a stool. She turned the lights off in the kitchen and carried a candle into the family room. They had never sat on the couch together before. She put in a Leon Russell CD, music Rennie had liked. Andrea Lynne sat with her legs crossed, a cup of hot tea, laced with Jack Daniels and honey, in her hand. Roland said nothing, till she broke the silence.
“I’m depending far too much on you, Roland. I call you over every decision that I make, and it’s bothering me. You’re going to get tired of that.”
“No, I won’t. I’m not here out of friendship for Rennie,” he said. “Oh, in the beginning, I came because of Rennie, but I wouldn’t have stayed this long if it weren’t for you. As long as I can help you, I will. I’m your friend.”
Andrea Lynne nodded, though she didn’t really understand the words. Men don’t befriend women. They just don’t. And if Roland could, then what’s wrong with me? Am I unattractive? It just didn’t make sense to her.
She was so tired. It seemed she never slept. She looked terrible.
Andrea Lynne was wearing black pajama sweatpants and a black tank. No bra, no panties. She had showered but had no makeup on, and her hair had dried into ringlets. Her eyes felt papery from crying too much. She sat back and list
ened to the music. She found herself edging toward Roland but quickly stopped.
“It’s odd that I have so much difficulty sleeping,” she said, “and yet, whenever you drive me anywhere, I sleep in your car. Even for fifteen minutes I can fall fast asleep.”
They were quiet again. After a minute she asked, “Roland, would you mind if I leaned against you?”
She placed her head against his arm. “If I could just stay by you for a little while, I might be better … .” Her voice trailed off. They stayed like that, listening to the CD. Then she said, “I just want you to know how much your friendship has meant to me.” She sat up and slowly moved her face closer to his. Most people found Roland intimidating, but she wasn’t afraid of him. He had a big heart.
Andrea Lynne wanted to tell him something, but she didn’t know what. She was operating by instinct now, and she almost panicked. But Roland came closer, too. He closed his eyes, and their lips met. His hands came from somewhere, reached under her arms, and pulled her on top of him. He kissed her more forcefully now, although his lips were softer than she would have guessed.
She never kissed anyone like this before. He was so patient, tender, and unassuming. She wanted to kiss him all night. When she finally moved back, he pulled her to him again and held her close. His hands caressed her back under her clothes. He felt her waist and rib cage as though he were measuring her. As Roland kissed her again, she hesitated. He stopped and looked at her. “I will never leave you,” he said in a clear voice.
Andrea Lynne’s chin dropped, and he lifted it with his right hand. “Listen to me, I am not going anywhere. I am staying with you. I will not leave you.”
I will not leave you. The words brought her up short and echoed in her head. They were the same words Rennie had always used, the very ones she had repeated when she first heard the news of his death: “Rennie would never leave me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By June soldiers were popping their malaria pills, buying extra gear, and tooling around Fayetteville wearing their newly issued tan desert uniforms and matching boots, a sure sign of upcoming six-month deployments to Afghanistan. But Special Forces soldiers, who often grew beards and wore the traditional garb of the Afghans, had been quietly coming and going for months. At the beginning of the second week of June, a Green Beret came home without his team to work out some marital issues. Instead, he shot his wife in the head and then turned the gun on himself. Few details were reported, and the murder-suicide received minimal publicity, partly because no one wanted to talk about the case—not the family, not the police, especially not the Special Forces. What I have learned since has never been reported and makes this tragedy a cautionary tale. Gossip spreads quickly in the compact neighborhoods on Army posts. This time it may have been deadly.
Sergeant First Class Rigoberto Nieves, of the 3rd Special Forces Group, had been in Afghanistan when he asked his superiors if he could return home for a few days to deal with his marital problems. He wasn’t busy anyway, he griped, just sweating in the hundred-plus-degree heat, sitting around and feeling depressed. His wife, Teresa, wanted a separation, and Rigoberto was eager to confront her with a rumor he’d heard.
Teresa was a pretty, petite, twenty-eight-year-old nursing student. Of Mexican descent, she had long, highlighted brown hair, pretty skin, and big brown eyes. She was quiet and a good mother to the couple’s six-year-old daughter, Brianna, certainly not one to go out with a group of friends, though one woman from their old neighborhood used to come by the house uninvited. Teresa didn’t care much for her or her visits.
The couple had lived on post until May 1, when they bought a four-bedroom house for $157,500 in the northern part of Fayetteville, east of Fort Bragg. Since Rigoberto was deployed, Teresa’s family helped her get settled in. The Green Beret felt bad about not being there.
Rigoberto’s parents were Puerto Rican, and he had grown up in the Bronx. He was tall, 6 feet 1 inches, and well built, with dark brown eyes under full bushy eyebrows, and a thin, pointed nose. At eighteen he had joined the Army and now, at age thirty-two, planned to make it a career. In six years he’d be eligible for retirement.
Serious and strict by nature—with a strong work ethic that stemmed from delivering newspapers and cleaning offices as a kid—he was well liked by his Special Forces A team. After an assignment to Germany, Rigoberto was stationed in Fayetteville in the summer of 1994, where he met and married Teresa. Her dad had retired from the Army, so she was no stranger to Army life.
Rigoberto got his leave. He arrived home from Afghanistan on Sunday, June 9, while Teresa’s sisters and some other relatives were visiting. On Tuesday he went out shopping and bought some T-shirts, met a few of his new neighbors, and then went back to post to pick up some clothes that friends had kept for him. He left Brianna playing with her cousins.
I learned that while he was on Bragg, he bumped into the woman Teresa had never liked, who told Rigoberto his wife had been fooling around. By the time he got home, Teresa was back from nursing school, too. He went upstairs to see her and never came back down. Around 11:00 P.M. Brianna wanted to go to bed, but her parents’ bedroom door was locked. Concerned, one of Teresa’s sisters tried calling her on her cell phone, but there was no answer. When the police arrived, they found both bodies in the master bathroom. Three hours earlier Rigoberto had shot Teresa in the head with a .40-caliber gun, then put a bullet in his own head as well.
The news had hit the papers, then quietly faded away.
Several weeks later, on a Friday morning in early July, Andrea Floyd had been on the road several hours when she turned her van around and headed back to Stedman. She was taking the kids to Ohio to her mom’s for three weeks of summer vacation. Ever since Andrea had told Brandon she wanted a divorce earlier that week, it had been unbearably tense between them. Brandon had to leave early in the week for Washington, D.C., so Andrea was driving the kids to Ohio by herself. Three hours into her trip, Brandon called her on the cell phone and insisted she come back to get him.
“Let’s use the trip as a chance to talk things out,” he told her. “Plus I’ve hardly had any time with the kids; now I’m going away again for a couple weeks. I’m not gonna get to see the kids … . Please. I don’t want to leave without us talking about this. If you care about me at all, you’ll come back.”
Partly out of guilt, Andrea turned around. She had just asked him for a divorce, and she knew how much he meant to the children. But she also realized he knew just how to play her. Isn’t that why she had stayed around for this long? Her twelve-hour trip was now extended by several more hours, and she was in a foul mood.
Andrea used the cell phone to call her older sister, Angie. “I’m gonna be later than planned,” she said. “Brandon decided he wanted to come, so I’m getting a slower start. And he insisted on bringing the dog.” Brandon had a new young Lab. Even though her mom already had a house full of pets, he didn’t want to leave the puppy behind. Andrea didn’t want to say too much in front of the kids.
“What the hell are you thinking, going back to get him?” Angie asked, irritated. Andrea was supposed to get in at 6:00 P.M. Now she wouldn’t arrive until midnight. “That’s so typical of him being an ass. There’s no way in hell I’d turn around,” Angie said.
“I know. He wanted to come so we could talk things out. But I’m still going to go through with everything.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Angie said. Andrea had told her sister she was leaving Brandon many times before, but every time she went back to him. Sometimes she’d joke, “I wish he would just cheat on me, then I could leave.”
Two weeks earlier Andrea had talked to her sister, who’d been through a divorce herself, about what she should ask for in a settlement. “What do you think is fair?”
“Anything that pertains to you and the children.”
“Should I ask for the computer?”
“Does Harlee use it to do her homework?”
“Yes.”
Angie wondered if Andrea would really go through with it. Each time Andrea had threatened to walk out, Brandon would ask for forgiveness. It had been up and down like that for years. In 1996, when Andrea had actually filed for divorce, she told her sister, “I can’t take it anymore; I’m done.” Then once again Brandon promised he would change, and Andrea called it off.
“Ya know, he promised he would treat me better,” she’d said to Angie that time. A friend of Brandon’s had taken him aside and told him, “You’ve got a great wife here; you need to get your act together.” And he did. Brandon seemed to realize he had crossed some line, that Andrea was truly fed up. Frustrated, scared, and worried that he might lose her, he came to a defining time in their marriage, and did whatever he could to win her back. Shortly after they decided to stay together, Andrea became pregnant with BJ, their middle child.
Now, she was sitting next to Brandon in silence, back on the road to Ohio. Andrea kept the radio on to fill the void. “A Fort Bragg soldier has been charged with murder, after firefighters found the burned body of his wife dead in the bedroom of her Rim Road home Tuesday … .”
Andrea listened closely. Like a schoolteacher, coach, or police officer, a soldier caught in a scandal was always big news. The disgrace caught people’s attention. Plus the part about a burned body made it sound especially horrific. It was a heinous crime, even worse because it was the second murder Andrea had heard about in a few weeks.
Still on the road, Andrea pulled out her cell phone and called her mother. “Mom, I’m going to be later than usual,” she said in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. “Brandon decided he wanted to see the family.”
Brandon’s knee was still fragile, but he wasn’t about to tell that to anyone. As long as he could perform his duties and was competitive, that’s all that mattered. After being at home for a couple of months, he had gotten so stir crazy that he would put on his leg brace and drive his four-wheeler around the property. Finally he had gone back to work in May and was away for much of the month.