Authors: Rebecca Yarros
Full Measures
Full Measures
Rebecca Yarros
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Rebecca Yarros. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.
Edited by Karen Grove and Nicole Steinhaus
Cover design by LJ Anderson
Ebook ISBN 978-1-62266-434-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition February 2014
For Jason, you always have been and will eternally be worth my full measure.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Who the hell would be pounding on the door at 7:05 a.m.?
Three tiny knocks on my bedroom door echoed the harsher ones downstairs. Mom was going to chew their butts for interrupting her morning routine.
“Come in!” I called out, scanning through my iPod’s playlist before pressing sync. Music made running more tolerable. Barely. Running was hellish, but I’d already calculated how far I had to go to compensate for the Christmas fudge I’d be scarfing down during the rest of my visit home. The thermometer outside said thirteen degrees, and human ice sculptures were overrated, so Colorado at Christmas meant it would be treadmill city.
Yay, me
.
Gus’s strawberry-blond curls popped through the small opening of the door, my lab goggles from Chem 101 perched on his forehead. They gave his seven-year-old, puckered-up-in-frustration face a more mad scientist vibe. “What’s up, buddy?” I asked.
“Ember? Can you answer the door?” he begged.
I turned down the music coming from my laptop. “The door?”
He nodded, nearly losing the goggles. My lips twitched, fighting the smile that spread across my face while I tried not to laugh. “I’m supposed to go to hockey, and Mom won’t answer the door for carpool,” he said.
I put on my best serious face as I glanced back at the clock. “Okay, Gus, but it’s only seven, and I don’t think you have hockey until the afternoon. Mom never forgets a practice.” I’d inherited my type-A nature from somewhere.
He let out an exasperated sigh. “But what if it’s
early
?”
“Six hours early?”
“Well, yeah!” He gave me a wide-eyed stare declaring me the stupidest sister
ever
.
“Okay, buddy.” I caved like always. The way he’d cried when I left for college last year pretty much gave the kid free reign over my soul. Gus was the only person I didn’t mind going off schedule for.
I checked Skype one more time before closing my laptop, hoping I’d see Dad pop online. He’d been gone three months, two weeks, and six days. Not that I was counting. “He’ll call today,” Gus promised, hugging my side. “He has to. It’s a rule or something. They always get to call for their kid’s birthday.”
I forced out a smile and hugged his scrawny body. It didn’t matter that I turned twenty today, I just wanted to hear from Dad. The knocks sounded again. “Mom!” I called out. “Door!” I grabbed a hair tie off my desk and held it in my teeth while I gathered my long hair back in a pre-run ponytail.
“I told you,” he mumbled into my side. “She won’t answer. It’s like she wants me to miss hockey, and you know that means I’ll suck forever! I don’t want Coach Walker to think I suck!”
“Don’t say suck.” I kissed the top of his head. He smelled like his orange, Spiderman-labeled shampoo and sunshine. “Let’s go see.”
He thrust his arms out in victory and raced down the hallway ahead of me, taking the back stairs closest to my room. He slid through the kitchen in his socks, and I snagged a bottle of water from the fridge on my way. The knocks sounded again, and Mom still didn’t answer. She must have run off for errands with April or something, though seven in the morning was way too early for my younger sister.
I passed through the dining room, twisted open the top on the bottle, and walked into the living room, opposite the foyer. Two shadows stood outside the door, poised to knock again.
“Just a minute!” I called out, hopping over the Lego star destroyer Gus had abandoned in the middle of the floor. Stepping on a Lego was a special degree of hell that only someone with a little brother could really understand.
“Don’t answer it.” Mom’s strangled whisper came from the front staircase, which stopped only a few feet from the front door.
“Mom?” I came around the steps and found her huddled in on herself, rocking back and forth. Her hands covered her hair, strands of dark auburn the exact same shade as mine weaving through her fingers where she tugged. Something was wrong. “Mom, who’s here?”
“No, no, no, no, no,” she mumbled, refusing to lift her head from her knees.
I drew back and took a look at Gus with raised eyebrows. He shrugged in response with a see-I-told-you-so look. “Where’s April?” I asked him.
“Sleeping.” Of course. At seventeen, all April did was sleep, sneak out, and sleep again.
“Right.” Another three knocks sounded. They were brisk, efficient, and accompanied by a soft male voice.
“Mrs. Howard?” His voice was distorted through the door, but through the center glass panel, I saw that he’d leaned in. “Please, ma’am.”
Mom raised her head and met my eyes. They were dead, as though someone had sucked the life from them, and her mouth hung slack. This was not my Stepford-perfect mother.
“What’s going on?” April asked with a massive yawn, dropping to sit on the top step in her pajamas, her bright red hair a messy tangle from sleep.
I shook my head and turned to the door. The knob was warm in my hand. They taught us in elementary school never to open a warm door during a fire.
Why did I think of that?
I glanced back at Mom and made my choice. Ignoring her plea, I opened the door in slow motion.
Two army officers in Dress Blue uniform consumed our stoop, their hats in their hands. My stomach lurched.
No. No. No.
She knew. That’s why Mom hadn’t opened the door. She knew.
Tears stung my eyes, burning my nose before the men could even get a word out. My water bottle slipped from my hand, bursting open on the doorframe and pouring water over their shined shoes. The younger of the two soldiers started to speak, and I put my finger up, silencing him before I softly shut the door.
My breath expelled in a quiet sob, and I rested my head against the warm door. I had opened the door to a fire, and it was poised to decimate my family. I sucked in a shaky breath and put a bright smile on my face as I turned to Gus. “Hey, buddy.” I stroked my hands over his beautiful, innocent little head. I couldn’t stop what was coming, but I could spare him this. “My iPhone is on my nightstand.”
In the room furthest from the front door
. “Why don’t you head up to my room and play Angry Birds for a bit? It’s not hockey, just grown-up stuff, okay? Play until I come get you.”
His eyes lit up, and I forced my smile harder. How long would it be until I saw that in his eyes again? “Cool!” he shouted and raced up the front steps, passing April on his way. “See, Ember lets me play with
her
phone!” he teased as his footsteps raced toward my room.
“What is going on?” April demanded. I ignored her and turned to Mom.
I dropped to my knees on the step beneath hers and brushed back her hair. “It’s time to let them in, Mom. We’re all here.” I gave a distorted smile through the blur my vision had become.
She didn’t respond. It took a minute before I realized she wasn’t going to. She just wasn’t . . . here. April scooted down the steps, sitting next to Mom. I opened the door again and nearly lost it at the pity in the younger soldier’s eyes. The older one began to speak. “June Howard?”
I shook my head. “Ember—December Howard. My mother,” I choked out and gestured behind me, “is June.” I stood next to her and reached through the banister railing to rest my hand on her back.
He could be wounded. Just wounded. They came to the door for serious wounds. Yeah, just wounded. We could handle that.
The soldiers nodded. “I am Captain Vincent and this is Lieutenant Morgan. May we come in?”
I nodded. He wore the same patch on his shoulder as my father. They stepped in, their wet shoes squeaking on the tiles of the entry hall, and shut the door behind them. “June Howard, wife of Lieutenant Colonel Justin Howard?” he asked. She nodded weakly, but kept her eyes trained on the rug while Captain Vincent ended my world.
“The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your husband, Justin, was killed in action in Kandahar, Afghanistan, earlier this morning, the nineteenth of December. He was killed by small arms fire in a Green on Blue incident in the hospital, which is still under investigation. The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.”
My hands slid to the railing to keep me upright, and my eyes closed as tears raced down my face. I knew the regs. Twenty years as an army brat had taught me they had to notify us within a certain number of hours of identifying him. Hours. He’d been alive
hours
ago. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t drag the air into my lungs in a world that didn’t have my father in it anymore. It wasn’t possible. Everything dropped from under me, and unmatched pain tore through every cell in my body, erupting in a sob I couldn’t keep contained. April’s scream split the air, ripping through me. God, it hurt. It hurt.
“Ma’am?” the young lieutenant asked. “Is there someone we can call for you? Casualty Assistance should be here soon, but until then?”
Casualty.
My father had been killed. Dead. Green on Blue. He’d been shot by someone in an Afghani uniform. My father was a doctor. A doctor!
Who the hell shoots a doctor?
They had to be wrong. Did Dad even carry a weapon?
“Ma’am?”
Why wasn’t Mom answering?
She remained silent, her eyes trained on the pattern of the carpet runner on the stairs, refusing to answer.
Unable to answer.
Something shifted in me; the weight of responsibility settled on my shoulders, dislodging some of the pain so I could breathe. I had to be the adult right now because no one else here could. “I’ll take care of her until Casualty Assistance arrives,” I managed to say with a shaky voice, speaking over April’s shrieks.
“You’re sure?” Captain Vincent asked, concern etching his unfamiliar features.