Pregnancy & Maternity
For the first time since the SUVs arrived, I did not care about billionaires, secrets, photographs, or salutes.
I cared about Ethan.
“Can you help him?”
“Yes,” Harrison said, without hesitation. “Whether or not we are related, I can help him get evaluated by the right doctors. Immediately.”
My eyes burned.
I looked away because crying in front of two colonels felt unbearable, even though both had probably seen stronger people cry for less.
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“I can’t pay for private specialists,” I said.
“I didn’t ask if you could.”
“I don’t accept charity.”
“It isn’t charity,” Harrison replied. “It is responsibility.”
The word settled between us.
I thought of all the nights I had sat at the kitchen table after Ethan fell asleep, sorting bills into piles: urgent, late, impossible. I thought of skipping meals so he would not notice how low our grocery money had become. I thought of smiling through fear because a seventeen-year-old boy deserved more than a sister who looked defeated.
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“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Permission to help,” Harrison said. “And permission to keep looking for the truth.”
I looked at the photograph again. My mother’s smile. Daniel’s hand resting protectively near my shoulder. Little me, laughing like the world had not yet learned how to take things away.
“I need to talk to Ethan first.”
“Of course.”
“And I need time.”
“You’ll have it.”
Military
But time, I had learned, was never as generous as people promised.
That afternoon, Colonel Reeves arranged emergency leave for me under family circumstances. Harrison offered a car, but I drove myself home because I needed the small control of my own steering wheel beneath my hands.
The apartment Ethan and I shared sat above a closed bakery on the east side of town. The hallway always smelled faintly of flour and old radiator heat. When I opened the door, Ethan looked up from the couch, one socked foot tucked beneath him.
“You’re early,” he said. Then he saw my face. “What happened?”
I closed the door behind me.
