LITMIR.BIZ

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off the curb and rounds the back of my car to where I’m standing on the street, keys clutched in a fist. “I really have taught him better. I promise.” Her expression, clear and pleasant, friendly even, sucks some of the steam from my anger.

      “Sorry, but shouldn’t he be apologizing for himself?”

      “Of course, dear, and he will eventually. It’s just that this rage he carries from his brother’s death...he lets it eat him up from inside. I know that’s not an excuse, but I hope you can at least understand what’s driving his grief. It’s one thing to lose the brother you idolize, another thing entirely when the country he died for isn’t honest about the circumstances surrounding his death.”

      I’m kind of taken aback by her matter-of-fact tone, as if she’s talking about a new car purchase or the vacation she just booked to Florida rather than discussing one son’s grief at another’s death. From the start, Jean Armstrong has made no secret of her disgust at the way the army has been neither transparent nor honest about what happened to Zach, but I can’t sense an ounce of her anger now, only concern for Gabe.

      Still. I can’t help but point out, “You seem to be managing very well.”

      “Yes, well...” She smiles, and I catch a whiff of Gabe in it, the way one cheek is a little slower to rise, how the other folds into a dimple. “All these wrinkles don’t come for free, you see. I’m wiser, but that’s only because I’m ancient.”

      Jean Armstrong is older and wiser, definitely, but she’s also got a force about her I can’t quite pin down. The media calls her fierce, and she certainly is when it comes to defending her sons, but it’s more than that. Much more. It’s a force that makes her seem stronger than she should be in her situation, sharper and more intense, as big and tall as any one of her boys. It’s a force that draws me into her field as surely as it must stave plenty of other people off.

      “Take a walk with me, dear, would you?” She crooks an elbow in invitation, which is as endearing as it is ridiculous. In my heels, I have a good half foot and twenty pounds on her, and if anyone should be crooking an elbow here, it’s me. But because she’s Jean, because so far I haven’t discovered a single thing I don’t like about her, I toss my bag onto the seat, lock my car and loop my arm through hers.

      She leads me around the side of her house, down a lavender-scented path and through a simple wooden gate, into her backyard. If I thought it was impressive before, from the few glimpses I got from her kitchen window, it’s a billion times better up close. Raised beds of blooms nestled between clumps of bushes and swaying grasses. Secret pathways leading to hidden clearings, and trellises dripping in vines. Benches and chairs everywhere, secluded under arbors or tucked behind fragrant plants, providing front-row seats for stargazing or butterfly watching.

      “Beautiful,” I say, and the word seems absurdly lacking. “Did you do all this yourself?”

      She laughs. “I would say it’s cheaper than therapy, but it would be a lie. That patch of tiger lilies alone could have fed all three of my boys for a month.” I follow her outstretched arm to a tall clump of yellow flowers, their trumpetlike blooms swinging in the breeze under the limbs of a massive oak. “Nick broke his arm in two places on that spot when he was eight. I swear, that boy would’ve lived up in that tree if he could have. I’d come outside and he’d be all the way at the top, waving down at me from the highest branch. It was only a matter of time before he fell out and broke something. I guess I should be thankful it wasn’t his neck.”

      Now that I’m out of the spotlight of Gabe’s hateful glare, the knots in my shoulders unwind, and I find myself returning her smile. “He sounds like a handful.”

      “He was nothing compared to those brothers of his. Gabe and Zach were the real troublemakers...” She shakes her head, but the gesture is more wistful than sad. “Do you know those two once removed every single item from their chemistry classroom and re-created the lab smack in the middle of the gym floor? I’m talking desks and microscopes and pencils and lab coats, all the way down to the very last petri dish. Don’t ask me how they got into the school on a weekend, because I never knew, and I still don’t want to. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer.”

      I laugh. “I bet their old teachers are still talking about that one.”

      “Those two were two peas in a pod. I always said God meant for them to be twins.”

      I think about the sudden and overwhelming sense of déjà vu I got when I saw Gabe coming at me at Handyman Market, how for the second time in my life, I found myself getting flustered by those famous Armstrong genes. “They certainly do look the part.”

      “That they do.” We round the corner, and Jean gestures to two chairs burrowed in a patch of wispy ferns. “Let’s sit, shall we?”

      We settle in, and the early-October sun makes kaleidoscope patterns on my bare shins through the trees. I lean back onto the chair’s warm wood and think for possibly the hundredth time how much I like this woman sitting beside me. That if things had been different, if we’d met under different circumstances, through mutual friends at a party or volunteering for some local nonprofit, Jean and I might have been friends.

      “I met him once,” I find myself saying. “Your son Zach, I mean. I interviewed him right before he left for basic training.”

      “I know, dear.” I must look shocked, because she laughs at my expression. “I don’t just let anyone in my home. Unlike Gabe, I did my homework before you came over. Don’t take it personally, but I need to know who’s walking through my door these days.”

      I think back to her questioning my motivations for coming, how she didn’t look the least bit surprised when I admitted my connections to the army. But if she already knew, then why not just call me out on it? Why not confront me? It occurs to me then that maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe her questions were a test.

      “In your article,” she says, “you accused Zach of enlisting as a publicity stunt.”

      Yes, I think. Definitely a test.

      I twist on my chair and give her my answer. “I didn’t accuse him. I questioned his motivations. Zach enlisted the same year President Obama began pulling out of Iraq, and to fight in a war that a solid majority of Americans didn’t want us fighting. I was only trying to figure out why then, why, if his motivations to serve were as pure as he claimed they were, it took him so long to enlist.”

      “You compared him to a Kardashian.”

      “True, but then I concluded that his motivations were completely unselfish, and that everything about him was very un-Kardashian-like. I believe I called him the real deal, but only because my editor restricted my use of the word heroic to three.”

      “I’m not criticizing you, dear, I’m complimenting you. As the daughter of a three-star general, it would have been far easier for you to praise the pants off my son, but you didn’t let him off that easy. Yourself, either. I imagine your connections with the army made it difficult for you to come here today, no?”

      A flutter of guilt where my father is concerned worms its way under my skin. Handing the Armstrongs proof about Ricky might have been the right thing to do, but my father will certainly not see it that way. His loyalty is to his country and the army first, and I’m pretty certain he will see my coming here, to the home of the family who has accused him, loudly and publicly, of misconduct, as a betrayal.

      But as for me, my biggest loyalty is to my conscience. My conscience compelled me here. Objectively I know I should be loyal to my father, and that he will never understand, but the conscience isn’t objective. I had to come. I had to do the right thing. Zach Armstrong gave up everything for his country, including his life. I had to tell his surviving family what I found.

      “I see,” she says, taking in my expression. “I’m sure once Gabe calms down, he’ll see what this visit is costing you, too.”

      I look beyond her and across the yard, over swaying leaves and bobbing blooms,

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