Casualties (30 page)

What else? The prosthesis lay across the passenger seat. She grabbed the metal shaft, hoisted the briefcase over her shoulder, and rose with her arms full of trash, looking about for a can. A black plastic drum stood a few feet from the path Casey had taken to the river.

She spotted him sitting in the grass about a hundred feet away, his back to her, shoulders hunched forward, shaggy hair limp in the heat. There was something doglike in his resigned slump, and in the way his head snapped up at the sound of a child's laughter. Ruth saw a little girl vault out of her father's arms into the river. A mother called to a toddler nearby and a little boy chasing a soccer ball nearly careened into him, but Casey never took his eyes off the water. Ruth watched him as he watched the little girl paddling toward her father. Maybe he was thinking about the girl he'd told her about, Mike's daughter, the one he was going to see. Then Casey's head bowed, he wiped his hand across his eyes, and she understood. Not Mike's daughter. His. He had a daughter and he was going to see her.

Good
, Ruth thought, trying not to think about Robbie.
Good for you.
She wanted to go to him and say it out loud, but he'd not told her himself and now he'd made it clear he needed to be alone. The stretch of grass that separated them was only a matter of feet, but she had no idea how to cross the distance that yawed between them now.

—

Inside the cabin, she dropped Casey's prosthesis on his bed and the computer bag on the kitchen table. She'd open it, get out a pad and paper and make a list, figure out her next steps. No. First she'd go to the campground store, get some food and something to drink. No. She'd call Neal. No.

Her hands covered her face as she sank to the chair at the table. Then her foot slid over something, producing a crinkling sound. The newspaper. She reached down and picked up the pages, now crumpled with a ragged hole in the margins, like a bite.

Ruth stared at the photograph of Don Ryland. He wore the same dismissive half smile he did whenever he felt his time was being wasted. One of the women in the background held up an enlarged photograph: a male face, young, open, with numbers in bold beneath: 1978–2006.

Don's statement affirmed the company's commitment to its employees, to the service of the country, and its faith in Excel Insurance Group, “the largest and most experienced insurer in the defense industry.” These were the same words hammered out in the conference room two weeks ago while Robbie was . . . where? On his way to that motel? Or had he given Ruth a chance, and waited at the house for a little while? She gripped the pages of the newspaper. Don hadn't cared about that. He'd had his assistant send flowers to the house when he heard about Robbie. No note. No phone call. All those years, and all he gave her was a vase of lilies.

Ruth looked up at the metal box on the dresser. Robbie had deserved more than lilies. He'd deserved more from her. The green metal edges blurred; she blinked back the tears that stung her eyes
and thickened in her throat. The box contained what was left of the best things she'd ever done and the reminder of all she'd failed to do. She'd blamed Don, Gordon, even the contractors for pulling her away from Robbie when he needed her. Ruth closed her eyes against the truth, but it found her anyway. Here in the stuffy stillness of the cabin, she faced her decision to ignore Gordon when he alerted her to the problems with the insurance claims. She tried to remember the days afterward when she postponed her meetings with the company lawyers. The days had been so full of urgency, but now she couldn't recall a single thing that seemed more important than returning the lawyer's call. If she'd just done one thing differently, maybe all of it would—

She was gripping the newspaper so hard the pages were giving way. Ruth smoothed it out and flipped to the back page for the rest of the article. She read what Casey had missed during his tirade in the car. The lawyer for the families, the man Terri had told her about, Breen, was challenging RyCom to prove that its executives met the requirements of the law. He wanted records, files, full disclosure. “It's not enough to say you are committed. Prove it,” he was quoted as saying.

Ruth put down the paper and stared at her computer on the table in front of her. The cabin's stillness felt now like the silence that follows a question. The manager in the campground office had said something about a Wi-Fi signal. Ruth lifted the top of the computer and hit the power button. She pulled the briefcase closer to her while the computer booted up. God, it was slow. She clicked on the link to the company's VPN as soon as it became visible on the screen and typed in her password. But she was already locked out.

No surprise, they'd cut her off. But the e-mails she'd downloaded before she left were still on her hard drive. She pulled them up now and scrolled again through the messages until she found the one from Marilyn Corning.
Please.

Ruth read the message twice. She looked at the box of ashes and Robbie's duffel.
Please Help.
Where was Casey? Ruth got up and
opened the screen door. There he was, still hunched on the grass by the river, his back to her, no sign that he was getting ready to come back. The evening light lingered as though too lazy to move toward night.

She returned to the table and clicked on the Internet icon before unzipping the front pocket of the briefcase to find the flash drive. Which file was the one Terri had told her to open? Ruth scanned the lists of reports and files that appeared on the screen. There.
Personnel—For Ruth.

A half hour later, Ruth leaned back in the hard wooden chair. The folder was still open on the screen in front of her with e-mails and documents that Olson's flunky, Sylvia, from HR, had not brought to her attention.

She'd learned from them that RyCom was delaying the reporting of injuries sustained by contractors to the Department of Labor by as much as six months, a year in some cases, instead of the fourteen-day window required by law. This made it even harder for the contractors to prove they were injured on the job. The next set of documents, in a subfolder Terri had called
Life Insurance Notice
, contained the original letters sent to contractors who needed to make corrections on their life insurance paperwork in order for the policies to go into effect. Excel had notified the contractors and copied Sylvia in HR. In all cases, the letters were sent after deployment, and half of them were dated after the contractors had died.

The most damning documents were e-mails, part of a two-month-old trail of correspondence between Sylvia and Gordon Olson regarding several hundred contract construction workers and truck drivers who were thought to be at the end of their assignments. Their insurance policies, written under the company they'd used before switching to Excel, were set to expire. And Gordon Olson had told Sylvia not to renew the insurance.

Ruth knew that the assignment had been extended for another six months; most of the workers were still in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Her own e-mail had notified Don and Olson of the extension. Olson had forwarded it to Sylvia with a cover note:
No rush. Talk to Excel about how to handle.
There was nothing else. Ruth was familiar with the projects. They had all been extended. None of the contractors had yet come home and all were working without the required insurance.

Ruth stood. She strode to the screen door, looked through the gray mesh without registering what lay beyond it. She paced back to the table. The screen shimmered quietly, waiting for her to do something. There were more files in the group that Terri had saved for her, but she didn't want to read them. She'd already seen enough. She thought again of Alvie, of his strong hands and calm voice. She thought of his wife, the nurse, who had gently cleaned Ruth's lip and probed her ribs for damage.

Ruth knew what these people had been told by the recruiters because she'd helped to develop the message.
We are all in it together. Your country needs your skills and strength. Yes, the conditions are hazardous, but you have the best military in the world at your side. And you can make more in eighteen months than you made in the last five years.
“We have your back,” was what the interviewers would tell the contractors when they asked about health or disability or life insurance. The insurance was required by law.
Do it for your country. Do it for your family. Do it.

These messages were like knots in a rope the contractors were using to climb out of their lives. The men and women she'd built her business on were just like her. She'd known what would motivate them because the same hunger for more had driven her out of Gershom, New Hampshire. More money, more security, more choices. Just more. Robbie, too, had been seduced. By images of young men clambering up the cliffs and standing at the top, stronger, shinier, made new.

Ruth wheeled away from the table and grabbed her purse. She needed air. A drink. She needed more than anything to get out of the suddenly crowded cabin.

Shadows from the few willows draped over the river gradually lengthened and then merged as the sun dipped behind them. Gnats crowded into Casey's ears and nose, and mosquitoes bit, but Casey did not rise until the sun slid fully and completely down. When he clomped through the door, he found Ruth sitting at the cabin's table, a pen in her hand, staring straight ahead at a dark laptop screen. Her BlackBerry and a blank pad of paper rested before her with a half-filled glass of what looked like orange juice. A pint of vodka was open on the counter. She'd apparently paid a visit to the campground store.

She glanced at him, pointed to the dwarf refrigerator. “There's some Coke in there. A sandwich, too.”

Casey recognized the peace offering for what it was. “Not that hungry right now, but thanks.” He opened the small white door and grabbed the can of soda. He drank half and then poured some vodka into the can. She looked away.

He lowered himself into the chair across from her and set the
crutches on the floor where he could reach them. He held the bottle over her juice glass. “Want some more?”

Ruth started to shake her head but stopped. She pushed her glass toward him.

“What are you working on?”

Ruth looked down at the blank page before her. “A plan, I guess.” She put down the pen. “Not much of one, so far.”

She picked up her glass, drank.

He avoided her eyes. “So, we'll stick with mine. Tomorrow, you drop me off in a city of some size and I'll take it from there.”

Ruth put her glass down. “What about your leg? Will you be able to get it fixed over the weekend?”

“I've used crutches before. I'll do it again.”

“What about New Jersey?”

Casey shrugged. He took a long pull from the can. None of her business where he went. “I changed my mind.”

Ruth stood and turned toward the door. She stopped at the screen and crossed her arms against her chest. Moths batted against the screen, trying to get into the lighted room.

“So, you chickened out.”

“Ruth . . . don't, okay? Please.”

Casey leaned down for his crutches. He didn't have to go but he wanted to be behind the bathroom door, away from Ruth's eyes. His hand was on the doorknob when she spoke again.

“She's not Mike's daughter. She's yours.”

He turned too quickly on the crutches and almost fell. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

“It's the only thing that makes sense.” Ruth's arms were still crossed. She took a few steps toward him but stopped. “If she were Mike's—if Mike is even real—you'd have mailed her whatever it is you're carrying across the country. You wanted to see her and now you're bailing out.”

Casey didn't answer her. He stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. The nurse had told him not to get his arm wet. Fuck it. He began to strip down. He'd fill his ears with the sound of water, wash Ruth's words out of them. In the morning, he'd get out of here, find his way back to Vegas.

But it didn't work. When he stepped under the stream of water, trying to balance, trying to keep his arm dry, the memory he'd been trying to avoid since he'd left Nevada found him and crushed him. He sank until he was sitting on the fiberglass floor of the shower stall, lukewarm water raining down on him.

July 1989

He's yelling at Mike on the sidewalk in front of the O'Briens' row house. The Army gets them on Monday morning and Mike is drinking his way through their last weekend of freedom. Casey hates the sight of him. Mike is the reason they have to go away. Mike is the reason Carla has cut Casey loose. He's a fool, she says. His loyalty to Mike is weakness, not love. “Come back when you're all grown up.”

“C'mon, Case, get in the car. We can be at Long Beach by midnight. We'll drink all night and watch the sun rise. Who knows when we'll be back?” Mike slaps the hood of the Camaro and digs into one pocket of his leather jacket, then the other for his keys. But Casey has them. He used the car to try to talk with Carla but she wouldn't listen. He watches Mike stagger drunkenly. The streetlamp forms a pool of light around him, like a stage; each black curl on his head is backlit.

Moira is there. She's shouting at Mike to hand over the keys and come inside. “Go tomorrow. You're drunk, Mike.”

Mike ignores his sister. “You fucker, Mac, you've got the goddamn keys. Give 'em to me.” He snaps his fingers clumsily and holds out his hand.

The snap of Mike's fingers ignites the anger that has been building in Casey. Still, he controls himself.

“Uh-uh, Mikey. Moira's right.” He turns away and starts down the street. He'll get drunk but not with Mike. Footsteps sound behind him.

“I'll go with you,” Moira says as she catches up to him. Greens and blues shimmer on her eyelids. Her lashes are heavy with mascara. Her hair, curly like Mike's, rises a couple of inches on the top of her head before arcing down to her shoulders like raven wings.

Casey shakes his head; he wants to be alone.

“Just one beer,” she says. “I'll buy. To see you off.”

Then Mike is on him, wrestling for the keys. “He's coming with me, right, Case?” Mike pulls Casey to the ground.

Casey rolls away and stands up. “Fuck you, I'm not going.” He starts to walk away again but Mike is on his feet and running at him, screaming.

“You owe me, MacInerney,” he said. “You owe my whole family. Without us what would you be? Shit. That's what.”

Casey hits him once, hard, and blood gushes from Mike's nose. Then he pulls out the keys, hurls them.

“Take 'em. Go already. I'm sick of saving your ass.”

Mike wipes his hands across his face and looks from the blood smeared on his wrist to Casey and then back again. His eyes water; Casey can see them glittering. Mike screams out another “fuck you,” runs to the Camaro, and jumps in. The rear lights flash on and the engine roars as he hits the gas and pulls away from the curb.

Part of Casey wants to run after the car, hurl himself through the window, and get the keys. The other part of him wants to scream,
Die then, you motherfucker. Get the fuck out of my life.

“C'mon,” Moira says. “Let's get out of here for a little while. You need to calm down.” She tugs on his sleeve again and then reaches for his hand. “He'll be okay.”

One beer leads to another and then another. Moira keeps touching him, holding his hand, rubbing his back, moving closer.

“What are you doing?” he finally asks, as she fits herself under his arm and leans into him.

“Mike's not the only one who can be blind,” she tells him. They leave the
bar, his arm around her shoulders, her face turned up to his. They walk up the familiar stairs of her parents' house, going quiet as they pass Brendan and Katie's room, all the way up to the third-floor room he shares with Mike. There, she undresses him and then herself. For the first time in his life, he sees the girl he's grown up with naked. He's ashamed of the way his body responds. He sits on the bed, his hands on her hips, and buries his head between her breasts, smaller than Carla's and paler. She lifts his head and he sees her eyes dark and shining.

“I've wanted to be your girlfriend since I was twelve years old,” she says. “I love how smart you are and I hate the way you get into trouble to protect Mike. I love him, too, but he's wrong when he says you owe us.”

Casey pulls Moira's hips into him. She kisses the top of his head and then pushes him back onto the sheets and crawls over him. “I love you,” she says to him as she kisses her way up his chest to his mouth. “I've loved you for a long time.” She pauses and Casey senses she is waiting for him to say something. He starts to pull away. She pulls him back, covers his mouth with hers.

“It's okay.” She breathes the words into him. “Just let me say it.”

The next morning, before Katie and Brendan are up, they steal out of the house and take the train into the city. They spend the next twelve hours walking, talking, feeling the early-summer sun on their backs. Casey is trying to forget Carla, Mike, and the Army, and Moira is trying to make him love her. He feels better when they board the train back to Jersey City. He begins to look at the Army as a way to go to school, a pause, not a roadblock. He tells Moira this and she smiles like a person whose gift has been accepted.

When they get home, Katie's face is wet with tears and Brendan can barely speak. Mike is dead. He's rolled the Camaro across the median and two lanes of the Garden State Parkway. While Casey and Moira had been wandering through the city, a rescue team had been prying what was left of Mike's body from the twisted metal.