Beyond the Point

by Claire Gibson

  Bill Speer.

  Hannah’s father. She imagined him on the other end of the line somewhere in Texas, waiting for Dani to answer. And without thinking—without explanation—she took the phone in her hand and walked out of the meeting.

  “Mr. Speer?” Dani had said, her voice already shaking. “Is everything okay?”

  She heard him clear his throat.

  “Dani, I’m sorry,” he’d said. “I have some very bad news.”

  Dani sat down in the office kitchen, a windowless room with bright fluorescent light. Her breath went shallow and she clenched her eyes shut. Bill’s voice was steady as it traversed an ocean to speak the truth.

  “Tim was killed in Iraq, Dani. I’m so sorry.”

  Since then, the BlackBerry in her hand hadn’t stopped buzzing. Messages arrived often. E-mails, texts, and phone calls, all of which went unanswered.

  From Sarah Goodrich: I just heard that Tim Nesmith was KIA. Tell me that’s not true?

  She knew she wouldn’t sleep tonight. Most people didn’t even know that she was living in London—a full six hours ahead of Eastern Time. The phone would ring, buzz, and beep through all hours of the night, with messages from people who had questions—the same ones she’d asked Hannah’s father.

  Have you talked to her? How is she? I can’t believe this. How did it happen? When is the funeral? What can we do?

  She had no answers. Neither had Bill Speer. A sandstorm had rolled into the southeastern region of Afghanistan, stalling all transportation and communication. Hannah was stuck waiting for the air to clear so she could go home. But Dani had no such obstacles. She’d grabbed her purse and computer from her cubicle and left the office, without telling Laura a single thing. She was getting on the first plane to North Carolina. And until her feet were on American soil—until she saw Hannah face-to-face—everything else could wait.

  A stream of tourists emerged from the train station and walked east along the sidewalk, smiling and chatting under their hats and umbrellas, anticipating the pleasures that awaited them down the road. Dani moved between them, parting them as if they were the Red Sea. As she stuffed the phone back into her pocket, she descended into the bowels of the tube. And somewhere along the way, without even noticing it, she forgot about the pain in her hip.

  THAT NIGHT, AS Dani packed a bag and searched for flights online, she tried to call Avery, without success. She would keep trying. But in the meantime, she needed to pack a bag—if nothing else, just to have something to do.

  Her suitcase opened up like a black mouth on her bed, while the heavy square phone vibrated against her nightstand. The name Wendy Bennett flashed at the center of the screen. Dani could picture her in the living room of their home at West Point, waiting for Dani to answer. At the thought of hearing Wendy’s voice, Dani’s eyes flooded. She pressed the green button and answered.

  “Hi, Wendy.” Dani moved slowly to the side of her bedroom, leaned her back against a wall, and sank into the floor, listening to Wendy’s sobs on the other end of the line. After some time had passed, Wendy finally spoke.

  “Has anyone heard from her?” Wendy asked, her words interrupted with a hiccupping cry. “At all?”

  “I don’t know,” Dani said, wiping her eyes. “I haven’t. She won’t answer her phone.”

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “Packing,” Dani said, though the word felt weak as it came out of her mouth. “I don’t know what else to do. I found a flight that leaves tomorrow, first thing. I haven’t bought it yet.” She sighed. “I just have to get there.”

  “I understand,” Wendy said. “Did you tell your boss you’re leaving?”

  “No,” Dani replied. “It doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t. Laura Klein would be angry that Dani had walked out of the meeting without an explanation. But there was no way she was going to stay at the office waiting for her boss’s permission to leave. Laura could get over it, or she could fire her. It didn’t matter anymore.

  “Have you talked to Avery?” Wendy asked.

  “No,” Dani said finally, her voice cracking with emotion. “I . . . I’m sorry, Wendy . . . I need to go.”

  “Okay. I love you. I’m praying. I’m praying so hard.”

  If only I’d kept my nose out of Hannah’s business, maybe Hannah and Tim would never have dated in the first place, Dani thought. Maybe then things would be different. If only I’d been commissioned into the Army. Then I would understand. If I’d lived through the war, maybe I would be less shocked.

  In the place of combat boots, Dani’s bedroom floor was covered in designer shoes and limited-edition sneakers. A cream-colored cashmere scarf hung from the hook on the door, and her latest extravagance, a Cartier watch, mocked her with every click of the second hand. She ripped it off and threw it against the wall, then screamed, her face buried in the carpet on the floor.

  Eventually, Dani moved to her bed and tried to close her eyes. Perhaps a few short minutes of sleep would help her to breathe easier. To calm down. As much as her soul ached, it soothed her to lie in one place and cry.

  With her eyes closed, a memory appeared bright and clear in her mind. A crowd of children playing soccer in a schoolyard. They were laughing, all chasing around the ball. Rather than fight the memory, she let it come back to her. She focused on the little black girl sprinting down a green field, her braids flopping in the air as she ran. She was always so happy when she ran.

  Back then, she had no limp. No pain. For this invitational soccer tournament, the coach had decided to move Dani, just twelve years old, up to the team of fourteen-year-olds. Her team wore bright yellow jerseys, and Dani stood a head shorter than the rest. She’d been so excited to play that day, Dani remembered. Eager to prove that she deserved the spot she’d been given.

  The little brown-skinned girl tore up and down the field, sweating under the heat of the sun. Smiling. Her freckles jumping like little flecks of dark chocolate as she cut left and right, dribbling the ball deftly between defenders. She kicked a ball as hard as she could and it soared past the goalie into the top right corner of the net. Her teammates ran toward her, wrapping their arms around her in excitement. It was her first moment of athletic success. Her first taste of glory.

  But as she’d walked off the field, a sound carried over the wind. The adults behind the opponent’s bench were laughing. A tan man with a swoop of brown hair had wrapped his hands around his mouth, shouting in Dani’s direction. She remembered looking at him, wondering if he was yelling at her or the referee.

  “Bahh!” he’d shouted, his voice shaking like a sheep’s. “Bahhh!” he’d yelled, letting his arms drop to his sides. The other parents, dressed in red, all joined in laughing and bleating, some loudly, and some out of the corners of their mouths. They were bleating at her, the black sheep.

  That night, still dressed in her yellow uniform, Dani had cried, sitting on the closed toilet in the bathroom. Her mother wiped her tears.

  “Those people are ignorant,” Harper McNalley had said.

  “They said I was a black sheep,” Dani cried. “Like I didn’t belong out there.”

  “So what?” her mother had snapped defiantly. “So they say you’re different? Guess what. They’re right. You are different. You’re better.”

  Dani couldn’t remember how many soccer games she’d played after that. Five? Ten? The following year, she’d told her parents she didn’t want to play soccer anymore. She’d explained she wanted to try basketball instead.

  The ceiling of Dani’s apartment in Notting Hill blurred, distorted by the hot tears in her eyes. At first, she didn’t know why that memory had come to her mind. But now, she knew.

  Had those parents not singled her out—had they not shouted their hate—she would never have played basketball. And if she hadn’t played basketball, she would never have attended West Point.

  The dominoes that put her on her back, grieving for Tim and for Hannah, had been put into play far before she’d ever sign
ed some document for Coach Jankovich. For some people, that lack of control might have made them angry with God. But for Dani, she finally felt like she saw her life with clarity for the very first time.

  What if the only reason she’d attended West Point was to be available for Hannah, when she needed a friend like Dani most? What if it took all the injuries and the pain and the sacrifices they’d made simply to forge a friendship that could withstand even this?

  Dani had earned more frequent-flier miles in the last two years than she would ever know what to do with. But now, without thinking, Dani pulled up an airline website on her computer and cashed several thousand in.

  She was going home.

  26

  November 16, 2006 // Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  A week after she spoke to Noah’s fiancée, Avery still hadn’t gotten out of bed. A stomach bug was going around the unit, which had made it easier to call in sick, stay in bed, and throw up occasionally. It wasn’t a total lie; Noah was a virus and she had to get him out of her system.

  Her room was a disaster area, covered in tissues and water glasses filled to varying levels—most of the contents dusty and undrinkable from sitting on the nightstand for three days’ time. Her cell phone sat in the corner, turned off, so she wouldn’t be tempted to call him. Laundry grew in piles around the room, stinking with dried sweat from the punishing ruck march she’d made her platoon complete for no other reason than she could. She had no energy left for running. No desire to take Bosco on a backwoods trail. All she could bring herself to do was sleep, wake up, remember that she’d wasted more than a year of her life on a liar, and then turn over and go back to sleep.

  The puzzle pieces fell into place in Avery’s mind, each one a crude reminder that she was an idiot, unfit for love. Red flag number one: the first question out of his mouth had been whether or not she was married. Red flag number two: he rarely explained where he was going, or for how long, or why. Red flag number three: she’d never been to his apartment, never met his parents. Red flag number four: at Thanksgiving, she’d known he was lying about talking to his mother, and had looked up their flight online and seen it was not, in fact, delayed. Red flag number five: Did she need five red flags? Really?

  If she was honest with herself, really honest—if she listened to her actual heart and not the heart that she wished existed—if she got in touch at that level, then she’d known all along he was lying, or at least that something was wrong. But even now, she preferred to live in a world where he wasn’t lying and did love her. That was her first question. Did he ever really love her?

  Maybe he did. It was possible to love two people at the same time, Avery knew. But from the beginning, he had kept a part of himself hidden from her. For that reason, they’d never had a real chance. And the worst part about it, the part that made Avery pull the sheets up over her head and cry so hard she thought her eyes might fall out, was that he hadn’t really wanted them to have a chance. He’d just wanted . . . what?

  That was her second question. How did he think it was going to end?

  Noah’s fiancée hadn’t sounded angry or bitter on the phone. She hadn’t cussed or threatened. She’d just stated the facts.

  “I know about you and Noah,” she’d said. “And it needs to stop.”

  “I didn’t know,” Avery had said, her voice trembling. “I truly—truly—didn’t know.”

  Avery wondered how Noah’s fiancée had found out. Was it the receipt for their hotel room in Napa last summer? Or the smell of her perfume on his clothes? The calmness of her voice, the reservation, had set Avery on edge. Had Noah done this before? Was this the cyclical pattern of their relationship—their engagement—with him constantly running, and her constantly bringing him home?

  She got up from her bed and went to the toilet to throw up once more. Why did this keep happening to her? That was her third and final question.

  Avery became her own judge and jury, and the conviction came swift. All the things John Collins’s lawyer had said during the court-martial came back to her mind. She’d worn her dress gray uniform for her testimony, as she’d been told to do, and tried to keep her eyes away from John Collins’s expressionless face as he sat next to his team of lawyers—four in total. His hair was cut short and tidy. And his eyes, bright green, followed the lead defense lawyer as he paced in front of the witness stand.

  “Ms. Adams, you had a consensual sexual relationship with my client, isn’t that correct?” the lawyer began.

  “Yes.”

  “And you enjoyed these sexual liaisons?”

  Avery felt her throat constrict, but she refused to be unsettled. “To be honest, the sex was mediocre, at best.”

  The judge cleared his throat. “Get to your point, counsel.”

  “Isn’t it true that you initiated these sexual encounters, arriving of your own volition to Mr. Collins’s dorm room repeatedly throughout the 2000–2001 school year?”

  “I . . .” Avery looked to the prosecutor’s table, and the lawyer there nodded. “Yes. But we both—”

  “And he asked you to keep the relationship a secret, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. We both chose to—”

  “He was ashamed of you. Wanted to hide you away from his friends. That must have been hard to hear.”

  “No . . . like I said—”

  “It must have hurt to think he didn’t want his friends to know about you.”

  Avery steeled her jaw. She knew where Collins’s lawyer was going with this, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

  “What hurt was knowing that he violated an entire group of women by filming us in the privacy of our locker room and then distributing those images across campus.”

  “You’ve already testified that the images that were distributed were of you. And only you. Isn’t it possible that you were angry that he’d cut off the relationship? And, feeling rejected, sent pictures of yourself to him to try and seduce him? Just like you’d done the first time?”

  “No,” Avery said. Hot tears had gathered in her eyes. “I . . . that’s not—”

  “No further questions, Your Honor,” he’d said. Then he sat back down next to his client, whose green eyes twinkled in smug satisfaction.

  Avery wondered now how she’d been so blind. Steadying herself against the bathroom sink—another disaster area, covered with jewelry, toothpaste splatter, and a mildewing hand towel—she stared at herself in the mirror and read the verdict aloud. It’s your fault, she said to herself in the mirror. This is what you keep getting, because it’s what you deserve.

  Turning on the shower, she twisted the knob until the hot water covered the mirror with steam. The pressure pounded her naked body, turning the front of her stomach, arms, and legs red. As soap crossed over her body, she realized that she’d never get clean enough. Something was wrong with a person who only chose men who abused her, or abused the men that she chose.

  AN HOUR LATER, Avery made her way downstairs, dressed in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. The window over the kitchen sink framed the Jenkins house, across the street. She filled a glass of water, and at that moment, Eric and Michelle Jenkins walked out of their front door. They were supposed to be gone by now, Avery thought—hadn’t Michelle said they were visiting Eric’s family for Thanksgiving?

  But the couple both looked pale, like they’d caught that stomach bug everyone kept complaining about. Eric slid his hand back and forth across the top of his head and wiped his nose. Michelle’s eyes were bright red, like she’d been crying. It seemed odd that they would come outside looking so disheveled, odder still that they were crossing the street toward Avery’s house. Did something happen to Bosco? she wondered. Or the baby?

  Avery left the kitchen to meet them at the front door. She opened it before they could even knock. They were standing on her stoop, shivering, both of them with their arms crossed over their chests.

  “We came over as soon as we heard,” Michelle said.

&n
bsp; Avery felt her heart drop several inches in her chest as she stared at them with confusion all over her face. “Heard what?”

  Eric and his wife exchanged a worried glance.

  “We thought you knew,” Eric said. “Y’all were so close.”

  Avery couldn’t breathe. She wanted to reach out and strangle them until whatever they were talking about came exploding out of their mouths. “Who? What’s going on?”

  “Avery,” Eric said, looking her straight in the eye. “Tim Nesmith was killed in Iraq three days ago. I’m so sorry. We thought you knew.”

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Avery had no tears left. She’d turned on her phone and it had blown up with messages—from their classmates, and from Dani, who’d left several voicemails. She was now midair, on a flight to Fayetteville.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Avery. But I’m going to need you to pull yourself out of whatever hole you’re in and come get me at the airport,” Dani had said in her last voicemail message. “I land tomorrow at three.”

  Michelle had sent Eric home and stayed with Avery for a long time, sitting next to her while she sobbed on her bed. For two years, they’d stared at one another from across the street. Avery had always assumed that Michelle hated her, but now, everything she’d ever believed was being called into question. While Avery returned phone calls and e-mails, Michelle had pulled her red hair into a bun on top of her head and busied herself picking up dirty clothes in Avery’s room. She started a load of laundry, filled the sink with dirty dishes, wiped the counters, swept the floors. Emptied of all emotion, Avery didn’t even have the energy to tell Michelle to stop. By the time her neighbor finally left, it was well past ten P.M., and the house was cleaner than it had been since Avery moved in two years earlier.

  Michelle’s kindness reminded Avery of something Wendy Bennett had said a long time ago, while they sat in that hospital waiting room. People remember who showed up for the shitty moments far more than they remember who showed up for the party. And for some inexplicable reason, Michelle Jenkins had shown up.