Page 28 of Protecting Olivia

“I feel better. Do you want me to drive today?” she asked.

In a few short days, Olivia looked a hundred times better than she had the day we found her. Her appetite was back, and I no longer had to force her to drink. She was doing great. Even the sores on her wrists had started to scab over and were no longer red and warm to the touch. However, it didn’t mean she was going to drive.

“No. I got it.”

Once we were on the road, she put her head back and stared out her window. It looked like we were in for another day of silence.

We crossed into California hugging the Mexican border when Olivia spoke up. “How did you get the scars on your chest?”

I might’ve swerved a little at her question.

“Come again?”

“Never mind. That was rude. I shouldn’t’ve asked.”

I had forgotten she had seen the scars on my chest. Thank God, she hadn’t seen my back. It was a mangled mess.

Olivia turned her head back toward the window.

“Afghanistan,” I answered.

“How?” she asked.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the flood of flashbacks.

“Routine patrol with Afghan special forces. We were up in the hills. We were ambushed, and I didn’t have my plate carrier on and was hit with shrapnel.”

“Why weren’t you wearing your vest?” she asked

“I had just woken up. I took it off the night before to cool down. Hard lesson to learn.”

“What lesson was that?”

“Complacency has no place on the battlefield. We had taken that same patrol route several times with no incident. When we stopped for the night, I felt safe and removed my vest. I was complacent,” I admitted.

The scars on my chest were a constant reminder never to let my guard down.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

I took in the desert all around us, miles of brown barren land in all directions; it reminded me a lot of the terrain we had been patrolling. I closed the lid on that particular box and locked it back up. No good ever came from revisiting my time in the Sandbox. We were all lucky to have escaped that shithole alive. However, a lot weren’t, and those were the memories I wanted to stay away from.

“Did you know that Peter was my dad before he told me in the basement?”

Shit, fuck, and damn. After two days of driving in silence, the girl sure wanted to talk now.

“Yes. I found out when we were in a mission brief before we came and got you.” I was under no obligation to keep Peter and Pamela’s family secrets.

“Did he know? I mean has he always known he was my dad?”

“No. From what little I heard, she had withheld the truth from him as well.”

Olivia laughed. Not a shy small giggle that most girls do. No, this was a full belly laugh complete with an unashamed snort at the end. The sound was beautiful.

“Is that a nice way of saying she lied?” she asked when she regained her composure.

“Indeed.”