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“Thank you, son,” Harold said, lips and chin quivering. “You have no idea what it means to us, that you’d take the time to come see us on his behalf...”
Winston nodded. “I have to tell you as well that it is my fault that Danny’s body didn’t make it back to you. But I hope that in knowing the truth, you’ll appreciate that your son’s last, posthumous act is still saving lives today.”
Where those words came from, he didn’t know. They just showed up and shot out of his mouth.
He told them about his rogue plan. About changing identities with Danny in the desert that god-awful day. How he’d left Danny sitting up by a tree because sitting up against a tree was something he’d seen his comrade do at the end of a good day. And how, when he’d been forced to show his loyalty to the militants with whom he’d lived, he’d shot at Danny’s body from a distance, making it look as though he’d killed a living US soldier.
“I delivered his body to them,” he said. “He ended up in a burn pit with other US soldiers who died during that skirmish.” What the fiends had done to him first was between them and God—with Winston as a witness to horrors he would never forget. “I visited that grave every chance I got,” he said, and then, breaking eye contact with them, he bowed his head.
In shame. In regret.
For war. For things that had to be.
For not coming up with a better plan. Emily softly touched his thigh under the table. He’d forgotten for a second that she was there.
And that he wasn’t done.
“It was recently brought to my attention, by my therapist,” he admitted with difficulty, “that perhaps the reason I chose to use Danny’s body was because it made me capable of completing the mission,” he continued. “Danny was unattached—other than the two of you.” He lowered his head toward them and then forced himself to finish. “He’d made a promise to protect his country, even if that meant giving up his life. I’d done the same, but I’d also made a promise to my wife—that I would come back to her. The theory is that in my mind, I died in the desert that day. And with Danny’s persona, the strength I’d known him to have, with his identity, I was able to complete my mission.”
“Do you believe in fate, Officer Hannigan?” Clara’s voice brought his head up.
Her gaze was so hopeful, he almost nodded. He couldn’t lie to her. “Unfortunately, no.”
“No matter,” she said to him, looking at Harold, who nodded. “Because God doesn’t rely on us to put fate to work for us. She’s busy on our behalves all the time, whether we know, or believe, or not.”
Emily pulled away. Not so that anyone but him noticed, probably. But he felt her withdrawal.
Understood it. They were on the same page again for a moment. They both had learned the dangers in believing in those ethereal dreams. Finding out that “Santa Claus” wasn’t real had devastated her. And knocked him for a bit of a loop, too.
Clara wiped her eyes, a tissue balled in the palm of her hand, while Harold put his arm around her, patting her shoulder.
“There’s no mistake in the fact that you sat Danny up against that tree. No mistake that you’d seen him sit that way at the end of the day, prompting you to leave him that way at the end of his last day,” she continued, while Harold patted a little more quickly.
“That was fate,” Harold said. “She designed it all. Just as, I’m certain, it was her design that put you and Danny in the same unit.”
Talk about kidding yourself with a load of fantasy.
But he couldn’t blame them. Or point out their error. What did it hurt to leave them believing? Who’d be hurt by it? Certainly not this older couple who’d just lost their only child.
“You don’t believe us,” Clara said, looking from him to Emily and back again.
Emily sniffed, grabbed another tissue, but remained as silent beside him as she’d been since he’d begun.
Reaching behind her, Clara grabbed a pile of letters from a little metal plant stand in the corner.
He recognized the markings. They were military letters, from Afghanistan.
“Our son wrote to us about you,” Harold said, glancing down at those letters. “About both of you.” He nodded toward Emily and watched as Clara opened the top envelope.
Staring at those envelopes, knowing he’d been with Danny when he’d mailed most of them, had watched the young man writing some of them, Winston wanted to get up and head home. He hadn’t expected...
The day had been destined for difficult, but this was...
“‘I know you were worried when I left, Mom, but my whole life, you’ve talked to me about listening to the still, small voice inside. You’ve told me that as long as I follow that voice, trust it, my life will be what it is meant to be. That I will reach my true potential and do what I am meant to do...’”
Clara’s voice broke... Winston swallowed. For Danny, because he knew the soldier would want Winston to tend to his parents, Winston remained seated even though all he wanted was to get away. A barrier settled around him, similar to the one that had coated him in the desert the day he’d struck out on his own. And for the two years he’d been in captivity.
Emily sniffed. Grabbed yet another tissue.
