Now all those people were gathered here again, for such a different purpose. The memory ended and she stared ahead at the gray sky, surrounded by darkness, listening to the sound of her own breathing. He was gone. There was nothing she could do to undo what had been done. There was no rewind button, no do-overs. Overwhelmed and letting the tears fall quietly, she tried to picture his face as she’d dreamed it: lit by candles, full of joy. Instead of how she’d seen it in the morgue. It was a battle she knew she’d have to fight for the rest of her life.
Around her, hundreds of white tombstones snaked through the grass, rows and rows of lost sons and daughters. It struck her then that as soon as she walked away, Tim’s tombstone would become anonymous to the visitors who walked these grounds every day. Her husband. Her philosopher. Her lover. Her friend. A striking visual. Another tomb of another unknown soldier.
A line of seven soldiers shattered the noiselessness, cocking their rifles. All seven pointed their guns at an angle, then fired, sending a violent burst of gunpowder and smoke into the sky.
A second round of shots was fired.
Then a third.
All three volleys from all seven guns emitted a sour, metallic odor. Then the smoke wafted away.
A lone officer under a canopy of red leaves raised his trumpet. He played taps. The song of a long, hard day of work, and a well-earned night of rest. Two sluggish and lonely stanzas, ending in one echoing note of finality. Then everything was quiet again.
She wanted to stop time and hold on to all of the memories, because the greatest injustice was that those memories would fade into sepia tones. Her brain wouldn’t remember what her heart had seen. Not perfectly. Not in full color. He was gone, and soon time would rob her of what little she had left.
The men raised the American flag that had been draped over the casket, then began a choreographed and unhurried dance, passing hand over gloved hand, end over end, folding the flag thirteen times until it became a triangle of stars. Then the eight honor guards moved the triangle slowly through the air down the middle of the casket—it floated—until it was pressed firmly into the hands of an officer at the head of the grave.
Turning, he took four deliberate steps and bowed before Hannah with one knee on the grass. He raised the folded flag up, offering it to her as a gift.
How many days earlier had she been kneeling in the dirt, offering a soccer ball to a young boy, hoping he would believe the words that were coming out of her mouth? A year? A decade? The boy had spit on her shoulder. He didn’t have the strength to accept a gift, knowing that gift had been tainted. Hannah looked at the flag and had the same dismal thought. She didn’t want the flag. She wanted Tim.
“On behalf of the president of the United States, the United States Army, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service,” he said.
Placing one trembling hand on top of the flag and another on the bottom, Hannah received it from this man who wanted nothing more than to soothe her pain. Did he know he was making it worse?
Hannah didn’t yell, holding her hands up to the sky, screaming at this injustice. She held the flag in her lap and did her duty to hold her emotions in check. Just a little bit longer. A single tear fell from her cheek as they lowered his casket into the ground.
He would never come back to her. And though she was surrounded by more than five hundred people who loved her, Hannah knew the truth.
She was alone.
34
December 5, 2006 // Arlington, Virginia
An hour after the reception started, the line to speak with Hannah hadn’t shrunk at all. Dani went to the table of refreshments, picked up three water bottles, and walked them over to Hannah and Tim’s parents, who accepted them with gratitude.
“The first time I met Tim . . .”
“God has a plan for all of this . . .”
“You’re so strong . . .”
Hannah nodded, smiled when she could, and continually said the same words over and over again. “Thank you. Thank you for coming.”
Eventually, Dani made her way to a round table toward the middle of the reception hall. All of the tables were covered with white tablecloths and had a small flower arrangement at the center. Lilies and eucalyptus. One of the many choices Dani had made out of Captain Huerta’s binders, when Hannah had lost the ability to make any more decisions. In the foyer, Dani could see Avery collecting coats from guests filing through the entrance. Dressed in a black coat and gray dress, Amanda Coleman had just arrived. It surprised Dani to see her; Locke had told her in an e-mail that he wasn’t going to be able to make it to the funeral, because his unit was leaving for a two-week training in the field that he couldn’t miss.
Spotting Dani across the room, Amanda waved. After handing her coat to Avery, she found her way to Dani’s side. Her dark brunette hair fell in a single braid down her shoulder, and she hugged Dani tight.
“I only met him that one time, at your house,” she said. “But still. I . . . I just can’t believe it. You’re such a good friend. To come here, all the way from England.”
“What else was I going to do?” Dani said.
Amanda pursed her lips together and nodded in understanding.
For a moment, the two women stood in awkward silence. Then they sat down at the table beside them.
“Locke said they had a great time over there, last spring,” she said. “That you have a great flat. Notting Hill, right?”
Dani nodded, feeling no desire for small talk.
Amanda looked around the room, then sighed, her eyes falling on Hannah. “How is she doing?”
Dani shook her head, angry that Amanda would ask such an obvious question. How did Amanda think she was doing? “She’s devastated.”
Amanda seemed to let Dani’s harsh response sink in before gathering the courage to try again.
“I don’t keep up with any of my friends from college anymore,” she said. “When I see the way y’all are with each other, it makes me wonder if I had friendships or just . . . proximity.”
Dani looked at her, surprised by the insight in her comment.
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. She chuckled. “Push-ups aren’t exactly my forte. But seeing you guys together makes me wonder if I could have done something like West Point. It kind of makes me wish I’d tried.” She took a sip of water. “Locke tells so many stories about you. ‘Did I tell you about that time Dani and I did this? Or the time that Dani did that?’ If I’m honest, sometimes I’m jealous of all those memories you guys have together. I feel like I’ll never catch up.”
Dani felt a sudden surge of compassion. She’d never considered how it must feel to Amanda to constantly be on the outside. “You will. It’ll take time, but you will.”
“I guess I should get in line,” Amanda said, looking over her shoulder at the long queue of people, waiting to speak to Hannah. She looked back at Dani and squeezed her hand again. “Hannah is really lucky to have a friend like you. So is Locke. And so am I.”
AFTER AMANDA LEFT, Dani pulled the BlackBerry out of her pocket and clicked on the small envelope icon. It felt rude, but with the spare moment she had alone, she scanned through the subject lines of 112 unread e-mails. Most of them were junk, but several dozen were work-related. All had gone unread. Unanswered. Near the top of her most recent e-mails, a message from Laura Klein had been marked urgent by its sender. It had a little exclamation point at the end of the subject line. She opened it.
From: Laura Klein
Date: December 5, 2006 06:39 AM GMT
To: Dani McNalley
CC: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: *URGENT:* Bereavement Leave (!)
Ms. McNalley,
I’ve been in touch with Jim Webb, Sandra in HR, as well as our team of E & G lawyers, all c
c’d here.
At this time you have overspent your allotted leave by six days. You no longer have any sick days, personal days, or bereavement leave available. However, as stated in my previous e-mail dated November 21, and confirmed by an e-mail sent to you from Sandra dated November 26, bereavement leave is a benefit to be reserved for immediate family only, with the presentation of a death certificate, for which, per your e-mail November 20, this current trip does not qualify. Your salary has been reduced for the missed workdays. Someone from Accounting will be in touch with the details.
Please respond immediately with your explanation of this extended absence, and your intended date of return. Please keep all parties above included on the correspondence.
Respectfully,
Laura Klein
Dani felt sick to her stomach. Of all people, Jim Webb would understand why she’d missed so much work. It would take one e-mail to explain to him why she’d left London in such a hurry and why she hadn’t been in a rush to get back. Laura’s e-mail was a thinly veiled threat and cc’ing Jim was only going to backfire on Laura—not Dani. Plus, in the days since she’d arrived at Fort Bragg, Dani had realized that all that pressure she’d put on herself with work was an illusion. Nothing was that urgent. Most things in life could get postponed, delayed, pushed back.
They were selling razors, for God’s sake.
She put the phone on the table in front of her and rubbed her eyes. The thought of getting on a plane to go back to London, only to ride the train to the office every day while Hannah stayed at Fort Bragg, made Dani want to hit her phone with a sledgehammer.
“Can we join you?”
Dani looked up to see Wendy Bennett standing next to her, followed by her husband, dressed in a gray suit. That was all it took for the tears to start flowing. The welcome scent of Wendy’s perfume. The embrace of her arms around Dani’s neck. Wendy wore a classic black crepe dress with white pearl earrings. After they’d all hugged and sat down, Wendy looked at the receiving line and shook her head.
“I’ve never seen so many people,” she said. “This is going to go for a while.”
Dani nodded, and watched as Wendy’s eyes landed on Locke’s new wife, who’d joined the end of the line.
“I just met Amanda,” Wendy said, looking back on the little sandwiches on her plate. “She seems nice.”
“Yep,” Dani said. “She is.”
“Hannah is going through something unimaginable,” Wendy explained, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t grieve the ways your dreams have shattered, too.”
It was difficult to swallow those words. Your dreams. What dreams did she even have anymore?
“I know your life hasn’t exactly gone the way you’d expected,” Wendy continued. “But Hannah is going to be experiencing a lot of loneliness now. A lot of loss. And you understand that pain, more than most people in this room. You know what it feels like for the future to implode. You know what it means to start over.”
“That’s true,” Dani said, wiping her eyes. “I just . . . I don’t know how to help her. She’s so strong, Wendy. And I . . . I don’t know. Everything just feels wrong.”
“Of course it feels wrong. That’s called life.”
“I’m earning all this money. And what for? I’m making all these connections, in a field I never wanted to be in in the first place.”
“Your job in London afforded you the chance to be here now, for Hannah. Who else could drop everything for two weeks and set up camp for a friend? And you have to remember. God hasn’t forgotten you. He hasn’t forgotten Hannah, either. None of this makes sense. But the story isn’t over.”
A deep sigh came from the depths of Dani’s lungs. Tim had touched so many people in his short twenty-four years. It was painfully clear to Dani now that if she died, far fewer people than this would attend her funeral. You only get one chance at life. And Dani was certain now that she couldn’t live it behind a computer screen. Not anymore.
“You know what surprises me?” Wendy asked. She looked around the room, then back at Dani. “I don’t see her here.”
“Who?”
“Her,” Wendy said, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh,” Dani said, then sighed. “It doesn’t surprise me at all. She never really knew us.”
“I should have done more. I think about it so often. I should have tried to have her fired. But I thought if she found out that I was trying to get her fired she wouldn’t let you girls come to our house anymore. I just . . . I didn’t want to make things worse than they already were.”
“You did plenty,” Dani assured her.
After a pause, Wendy leaned across the table. “What happened? I mean, really?”
Dani took a sip of her water and smirked. She knew what Wendy was talking about, even if she hadn’t said it outright. In the summer of 2004, just a few months after their graduation ceremony, West Point’s athletic director had asked for Coach Jankovich’s resignation. It made national news. But true to form, Coach Jankovich played it off like she’d received another coaching job and had chosen to leave. West Point didn’t correct the error, but Wendy knew better.
“The cult happened,” said Dani.
In April 2004, two months before their graduation, Avery, Hannah, and Dani were eating sub sandwiches in Grant Hall when their coach walked through the room, holding her head high like a crane. She’d passed them without saying a single word. Not a hello, not a goodbye. And after she’d gone, the girls had groaned and recounted all the ways she’d failed them over the years.
“Like I said,” Avery had said, “if we’d all quit, they would have fired her. A player strike would have made a statement.”
“Too bad it’s too late for that,” Hannah had added.
Dani had set her sandwich down. “What if it’s not?”
That night, they’d gone back to Dani’s room and written three separate letters, outlining every NCAA infraction, racial slur, personal attack, and poor coaching decision that woman had made. Dani had e-mailed upperclassmen who’d already graduated, requesting that they do the same, and by midnight, she’d received six more letters. It was disloyal, for sure. It even amounted to mutiny—but even Hannah had agreed to participate. They couldn’t leave that woman behind to ruin the experience of any more athletes. Female cadets at West Point had it hard enough.
That night, Dani had slipped all nine letters into the mailbox of the commandant’s house. Then she’d walked away.
“We didn’t know what he’d do with the letters,” said Dani, after recounting the tale to Wendy. “But when we heard they fired her over the summer, we knew that he’d listened. She’d always accused me of leading a cult to get her fired. And it turned out, I did.”
Wendy sat, mouth agape, taking in the story.
“I think that’s the best thing I’ve heard . . . maybe ever,” she said, with a reverent shake of the head. “You girls. You know, it’s not the same at West Point without you there. Mark’s going to have to retire from the Army eventually. Maybe you can help him with his resume. Is E & G hiring?”
Dani laughed. Imagining Wendy’s husband with his military-grade haircut discussing commercials seemed odd in Dani’s mind. “I don’t think he’d like the culture there all that much.”
“Fair enough.” Wendy took a sip of water. “You know, while we were talking to Amanda, she mentioned her father works at the Citadel.”
“Yeah. I met her dad at their wedding. Nice guy.”
“She also mentioned the Citadel is hiring.”
“Oh, yeah? Think you guys would like Charleston?”
“Not for us, Dani,” Wendy said slyly. She leaned forward and touched Dani’s hand. “I hear they’re looking for an assistant basketball coach.”
35
December 5, 2006 // Arlington, Virginia
Avery stood at the front of the reception hall, smiling somberly at guests as they arrived to pay their respects. She and Emily had been standing in the foyer for an hour, taking peopl
e’s coats, directing them toward the back of the reception line, which still stretched around three walls of the room. The closet had filled with peacoats, rain slickers, long down jackets, and even a few furs. Every time the door opened, a gust of cold air reminded Avery of the freezing temperature outside. But inside, she could barely breathe, the air was so thick with warmth.
She’d shed silent tears through the entire funeral. Arlington cemetery was a national monument, and watching the honor guard fulfill their duty with such painstaking precision felt like watching a movie of someone else’s life. Throughout the procession, the burial, the twenty-one-gun salute, Hannah’s face had remained serene. Avery didn’t understand it. How could you stay so still in the middle of a hurricane?
While Emily took a few more coats into the closet, Avery turned to see a projector inside showing images of Tim’s life. First came a photo of Tim, his cheeks flapping in the wind, mid-free-fall during a skydiving jump. He was giving the camera a big thumbs-up with both rows of teeth fully exposed. That photo faded out while the next faded in: Tim in a hospital bed, his right arm propped up by a sling, the same thumb still pointed in the air. There was a murmur of laughter from the people in the room. That was Tim—happy and fearless, whether flying through the sky or bound to a hospital bed. Over the loudspeaker, a song played that Avery didn’t recognize, but she opened herself to absorb the music, though she couldn’t make out the words.
Soon, the photo of Tim in the hospital dissolved and was replaced on the screen by a picture from Thanksgiving last year. The photo was crowded with people: Dani’s family, Locke and Amanda, Hannah and Tim. Noah and Avery smiled from their position at the center of the photo. He had his arms around her waist. Like a fool, she stood there smiling, unaware of the future. Noah’s steel gray eyes cut through the photo and stared straight at Avery across the room.
Beyond the Point Page 35