Casualties (34 page)

“Ruth? You okay?”

“I never saw it.”

“Never saw what?”

“What you said, what Neal said before I left. I was part of it. I was part of what killed Robbie. Nothing will change that.”

“I didn't mean it. You don't know what he was thinking. You can't know.”

“When they sent him over there, I told him I was proud of him,” she said to Casey. She leaned forward, her words urgent: a confession. “I told everyone that. It's what you are supposed to say. I didn't say it enough before then. Nowhere near enough.”

Casey leaned across the table, grabbed her arms. “It's okay. It's okay.”

Ruth shook her head. “Then he was deployed. He sounded so happy. I went to work the next day and I heard that word,
deployed
. Everywhere. I said it myself. Told my clients how we could assemble and deploy all the personnel they needed, like we were selling them jeeps or spare parts.”

“Ruth . . .”

After Robbie's deployment, she'd felt it, hadn't she? That stab of unease running through the celebration of every new contract. Then the days had passed; the work went on; quotas were defined, filled. No bad news came from Robbie, just poorly spelled e-mails or texts, a battered pink card a few weeks after her birthday, and intermittent requests that Terri helped fulfill: a new cell phone, CDs, socks, magazines. The construction on the house accelerated, distracted her with an urgency that now seemed ludicrous.

Ruth stared at Casey until his face and the campground came back into focus. “It was so hard between us sometimes,” she said, her voice hoarse and low. “He seemed to spend all his time trying to get away from me. When he enlisted, I got mad. I wanted to try to fix it, get him out of it. But he told me not to.” She stopped, took a breath. “And then, when he did go, things got easier. They got easier and . . . I liked that.”

Once the words were out, she wanted them back.

Casey gripped her hands and just looked at her. She could see his eyes like shadows behind his Ray-Bans. He couldn't seem to think of what to say. But she didn't need him to say anything. Listening was enough. Hearing the worst she had to say and continuing to hold her hands in his, that was enough.

—

Later, Ruth sat on the edge of her bed, watching Casey roll his pant leg up over his stump. The knob of flesh and bone emerged pink, smooth, uneven, like the fist of an infant.

“It's red. Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Nah. It's a lot better. Pass me that tube of gunk.”

“Let me,” she said. She twisted off the cap and squeezed the tube until a coil of white cream appeared in her palm. She was careful not to press too hard. “We'll have to get more bandages for your arm, too. You weren't supposed to get it wet. It might be infected.”

“You're not as bad as you think you are, Ruth.”

She looked up to see Casey studying her, his eyes half hidden in the shadow cast by the small bedside lamp. As absolution it fell short, but Ruth was grateful.

“Neither are you.” She replaced the cap on the tube and tightened it.

They made love that night. Later, in the dark, Ruth lay next to Casey, her head against his shoulder, her hand resting on his chest.

“Did you think about New Hampshire?” She thought she felt his heart jump below her palm.

When he spoke, though, Casey's voice was distant, as though he hadn't heard her question. “Sometimes, I feel like there's someone inside me who got locked up when Mikey died.”

“Who is it?”

“The guy I was supposed to be. I blamed Mike. Then I blamed Moira, Emily's mom. I blamed everyone but me. The other night, when you said that stuff about my daughter, you made me look at myself.”

“Was that a good thing?”

He rolled toward her. “That stuff we were talking about before, outside at the table. I don't think you ever get away clean. If you've fucked up, you've fucked up. It's with you for the rest of your life.”

Ruth didn't want to hear this. She tried to sit up.

“No, Ruth, wait. Look at me.” He pulled her back until they faced each other on the pillow. His face was all shapes and shadows, but she could see his eyes and they bored into her. “The thing I got wrong is that that's not the end of the story. The bad stuff's with you
but it doesn't have to kill you. Look at you. You're brave. You're giving up a lot to try to make amends.”

Try.
The night no longer seemed safe or sheltering, just another place where uncertainty could find her. As for brave, that was the last thing Ruth felt. She lowered her head until it was once again on Casey's chest. His body went still against her.

“I want to see Emily, but I don't know if I can face her. It's been a long time. She was just a little kid when I left.”

“She's alive. You have the choice.” Ruth didn't intend for the words to sting, but she heard the strain of bitterness beneath them. She placed her hand over his heart. “I'm sorry.”

He sighed. “It's okay. You're right. I've pictured walking up those steps at the old house a million times. I've pictured her face. I just can't see . . .”

“What happens after that . . .” Ruth whispered. “I thought gamblers were used to that.”

“The truth? I'm a shitty gambler. I'm just a guy with too much time on his hands. For nearly a dozen years, I've been killing time and all I really know is that I can't get it back.”

She reached for his hand and pulled it close. “You can't get it back, but maybe you'll get a shot at a whole new life.”

“That stuff's a lie. It's all one life.”

Ruth's heart seemed to pause when she heard the familiar words. “My grandmother used to say that to me.”

“Wise woman.”

Ruth leaned up on her elbow and looked down at his face. “Come to New Hampshire, meet her. Let your arm heal. You can think about how you want to approach Emily so you get it right.”

“What about Neal?”

Ruth shook her head. “He won't be coming.”

“Yeah. Okay, maybe I will.” Casey rolled onto his side; Ruth curved herself around his back. He stopped talking but he wasn't sleeping. Neither was she.

Ruth lay still in Casey's arms, but he knew she was awake. Her breathing was uneven; the muscles in her upper arms tensed against his. He glanced at the clock. Just after four. Jesus, what was that smell? A skunk must have let loose. Casey released Ruth and leaned up on one elbow. Just a hint of light coming through the window. Fuck. Too early to get up; too late to go back to sleep.

And he had to take a leak.

“Maybe we should get going,” he said. “We can drive for an hour and find breakfast along the way.” They'd already decided to head to Peoria. Ruth had tracked down a couple of prosthetists on the Internet, and an urgent care place where she insisted they go to have his arm checked. If he was lucky, they could clean out the lock on the faker, maybe replace the pin and he could keep going for a little while more. Ruth pushed herself up next to him and nodded. “Let's get out of here.”

She leaned into Casey's shoulder; he leaned into hers. They looked around the darkened room, at the silhouettes of the Formica table,
the chair holding the stack of folded laundry waiting to be packed. Casey felt Ruth's fingers lace through his and squeeze. He gripped her hand, squeezed back, hung on until the knot in his gut eased.

“Okay, then. Pass me the crutches.”

—

He read to Ruth while she drove. Not Melville. The Silverstein book, the one he'd bought and read to Emily when she was a baby. He'd read it to her sober, drunk, tired, high—any time she asked him to—until the day he left. He'd taken it from the table by her bed while she'd been sleeping. For months he swore he could still smell her on the pages: her baby shampoo, the cocoa she liked to drink before bed, and the straw-colored kitten Moira had given her for her third birthday. When he could no longer summon Emily's scent, he would trace the lines she'd scribbled on the pages when she was two or three.

After four hours of driving, Ruth had shut off the radio. She didn't want to talk, but her tension was palpable. She kept flicking her eyes to the rearview, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. The shadows beneath her eyes, visible when she shoved her sunglasses up to peer more closely at the dash, had deepened along with the ocher stains of the healing shiner. He knew she was tired. They both were. Too much drama. No real sleep.

They'd spent a day and a night in Peoria, where he'd gotten lucky. A prosthetist fixed the lock and gave him a bill he could send to the VA. The urgent care place had cleaned his arm and given him a dose of antibiotics. Now they were already well into Ohio, where they would spend another night. The day after that would bring them deep into Pennsylvania. He would have to make a decision.

Lacking the attention span for reading
Moby-Dick
, he'd pulled this book from the bag in the backseat. He read to Ruth about being swallowed by a boa constrictor. She laughed, surprising them both. He kept going. “Messy Room,” the one about the bear in the Frigidaire.
An ache formed at the base of his neck but he ignored it. He pretended he was reading for his little girl. Maybe he was trying to summon her presence; maybe he was just trying to hold on to the image of her face lighting up when he read to her.

“You're good at this,” Ruth said. “Emily must have loved listening to you.”

From the corner of his eye, he caught her glancing at him through the sunglasses she'd gotten after the accident. He'd made her smile.

Casey focused back on the book, flipped a few pages to find another poem. “She did,” he said. “I did, too. It was about the only thing I knew how to do.”

“You mean you were one of those guys who ran from dirty diapers?”

“Should have said it was the only thing her mother trusted me to do. I was . . . not in great shape.”

He'd found his favorite poem, about that space only children know between the end of the sidewalk and the rest of the hard concrete world. But he couldn't get started.

“She'll hate me,” he said to Ruth.

“She has to know you to hate you.”

He turned toward Ruth, his hand flattening the page in front of him. He had not expected tough love at this point.

“That's comforting.”

Without taking her gaze off the road ahead, she reached across and rested her hand on his. “She won't hate you.”

He didn't believe her, but the exchange, the feel of her hand on his, settled him. He thought again about just keeping on: driving with Ruth, living with her in the contained world of the Jaguar, cheap motel rooms, and the intimacy they'd somehow stumbled into. Traveling like this reminded him of being back in Nevada, where, before the start of every day, before going into the casino, probabilities were at least temporarily eclipsed by possibility. And for the first time in years he was not alone.

Casey's eyes dropped to the book in his lap. “Want me to keep reading?”

Ruth didn't answer him. “Emily's mother, though,” she said. “What about her?”

The cord in Casey's neck tightened. The note he'd received from Katie had been cryptic; the article and photos were all of Emily. He'd not allowed himself to think too much about Moira, how she had been living since he left. She had to know where he was if Katie had tracked him down. If she cared to, she could have found him through the VA.

“She probably despises me, if she thinks about me at all. She's found some guy by now, I'm sure, forgotten I existed.”

Ruth shook her head. “As long as Emily is around, she's not going to be able to forget altogether, is she?”

Casey shifted in his seat, rubbed the back of his neck. He looked back at the book but the words swam before him. There was so much he had not thought through. He didn't feel like reading anymore.

“It'll be okay,” Ruth said.

“Sure.”

“Anyway, you have time to figure it out. You can stay in New Hampshire as long as you need to.”

“How's that going to work, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how's it going to work, bringing a stranger home at a time like this?”

A mile ripped by with no response from Ruth. He looked at her. She was sucking on her lower lip.

“It'll be fine,” she finally said. “My folks are kind people. Not like me.” She flashed what she probably thought was a smile at him. Her mouth wobbled like a kid fighting off tears.

Casey looked away, and gripped the book in his lap until a cramp flared in his little finger. He watched the silver jaguar on the nose of the car, dusty, scratched, but leaping relentlessly forward.

They reached Columbus without talking again about Jersey City or New Hampshire. By the time they checked into a motel and found something to eat, they were too tired to talk much about anything. Ruth rested with her cheek on Casey's chest while he read. If she could just pause time, she thought. Not forever, just for a little longer.

Later, she woke in the dark to the sound of her cell phone. In the bluish light of the display she saw an unfamiliar Los Angeles exchange and knew she would not sleep again tonight.

“What is it?” Casey asked, half asleep.

“I think it's the lawyer for the contractors,” Ruth said. “Marilyn Corning said she would give him this number.”

She thought of letting the call go, waiting until she got to New Hampshire. That was the smart thing to do, the kind of thing she would have done in the past. Get her ducks lined up, a lawyer on board, see if there was some way to protect herself from any repercussions.

But the longer she waited, the harder it might be. Ruth shook her head and took the call.

“Ms. Nolan?”

“Yes.”

“James Breen. Marilyn Corning gave me your number.”

“She said she would.”

“I'm sorry. Did I wake you? It's only nine o'clock.”

He didn't sound sorry. “Maybe in California,” Ruth said. “It's midnight for me.”

“Shall I call back?”

“No. I'm up now.” Ruth pushed aside the covers and stood. She couldn't talk to this man lying down. The bedside light clicked and she saw Casey glance toward the bathroom. Ruth passed him the crutches and waited for Breen to speak. Never talk first, was what Don had taught her, as if that were relevant now. Ruth began to pace. No matter who talked first, this conversation would make her decision real.

“I understand you have information that may be helpful to my clients,” Breen said in a neutral tone. Ruth tried and failed to remember what he looked like from the day on the steps of RyCom. She'd never seen his face from the conference room window, only a mop of gray curls and a wrinkled suit surrounded by reporters.

“I don't know how helpful it will be. I told Marilyn not to expect too much,” Ruth said.

“Marilyn has learned the hard way not to expect anything at all,” he said. “I'm curious, why are you offering to help us?”

“Is that important?”

“It might be. I'm not in the vengeance business.”

Ruth was taken aback. “If you were, you'd be a fool and so would I.”

He surprised her with a rueful chuckle. “There are all kinds of fools, Ms. Nolan. If you help us, you might be called one of them.”

“I said I would help, and I will.” But he'd unnerved her. She bit her lip and resumed her pacing. The room seemed smaller with every step she took.

“Do you have legal representation?” Breen said.

“Yes. No. Why?”

“I recommend that you have an attorney advise you before we speak—before you take any further action, really.”

As the bathroom door opened and Casey swung back into the room, he caught her eye and then jerked his thumb up in a gesture of encouragement. He nearly lost his balance, but Ruth couldn't smile. She turned away. “Can't I just send you the material? You can do what you want with it.”

“Of course. But I may see something that would make me want to depose you along with anyone else involved in the decisions—or the nondecisions—that led to the lapsing of life insurance policies or health insurance that my clients need. There is the possibility that you will become a target for individual lawsuits.”

This was it. If Ruth proceeded, there would be no way to control everything that unfolded. She was momentarily overcome by an instinct to hang up, buy time. She looked up to find Casey but instead saw the metal box, which she'd carefully placed on the desk.

Time could not be bought, only used or wasted. “I understand,” she said.

“So does that mean you would like to have your attorney advise you before you share the material with me?”

Ruth hesitated. This was her chance to try to protect whatever assets she could before moving forward. She would still be helping Marilyn Corning and the other families, but she would be making them wait.

She'd made Robbie wait.

“Ms. Nolan?”

“I'll have my attorney get in touch with you, but it won't change my decision,” Ruth said. “I'll e-mail you the materials tonight, if you want. Or tomorrow, I can send a hard drive by overnight mail.”

“I'll give you a site where you can upload the files securely,” he said without hesitation, as if afraid she might change her mind. “I promise to contact you or your attorney before we proceed.”

Ruth found a pen on the motel room desk and scribbled the information Breen gave her. When he finished, he paused, and when he spoke again, the neutrality was completely gone. He sounded kind, grateful but also a bit sorrowful.

“None of this is going to be easy, Ms. Nolan. You and I both know that my clients may not get everything they deserve, but you are giving them their first break in a long time. They may not be able to fully appreciate what you are doing, but I do. Thank you.”

When the call ended, Ruth placed her phone on the desk next to Robbie's ashes. She noticed that her hand did not tremble even though every nerve vibrated with alarm.

“Good for you, Ruth,” Casey said. “You did it.”

He couldn't have heard everything Breen had told her on the phone, only that she had agreed to help. But it didn't matter. There was nothing to do now but keep moving. She pulled her laptop from its case, turned it on, and inserted the flash drive. She followed the instructions Breen had given her and watched a long blank bar appear across her screen. In seconds it began to turn solid blue as the files uploaded. Twenty-five percent complete, forty percent. So fast. She looked at Casey. He smiled and lifted his hand in a thumbs-up sign. Sixty percent. One click and she could stop this. Seventy percent. Ruth closed her eyes and thought of all the lives captured in those files. She thought of Marilyn Corning's tears when she heard why Ruth was calling. She thought of Terri standing on her deck that last night, her eyes full of concern but also trust. She thought of how Robbie's hand felt so small in her own when he was a toddler, how tightly he'd hugged her that last day. When she opened her eyes, it was done. The bar was solid blue.