The Ones We Trust

by Kimberly Belle

  I didn’t just find Ricky.

  I found his connection to Zach.

  Only now it’s quarter to six, and I’m about to be late for rowing, an offense my teammates do not tolerate. I yank on my clothes and race to my car. By the time I make it to the river, the boat is in the water and the girls are milling around on the dock, casting annoyed glances at their watches.

  I spend the next two hours and fifteen minutes beating out my excitement on the waters of the Potomac, mulling over every possible scenario to explain Ricky’s presence on the battlefield the day Zach died, and his absence from the official army reports afterward. He fell asleep in one of the vehicles he was working on, only to accidentally awaken in the middle of a battle. He grabbed a gun and started shooting for his life, taking down Zach in the process. He threatened to expose whoever shot Zach, and someone silenced him permanently. The possibilities are endless.

  One thing, however, is clear: Ricky Hernandez was there when Zach died.

  And my gut is telling me he saw something he shouldn’t have.

  * * *

  Handyman Market is packed with last-minute Halloween shoppers, their arms loaded with orange and black decorations, their bodies lined up in long, snaking lines at both registers. I shoot up the middle aisle in my damp rowing clothes, dodging customers and swinging my head left and right, searching for Gabe.

  In the flooring section, I run into an apron-clad handyman, a handsome surfer type named Jeff, and ask if he’s seen Gabe. “Sure I have,” Jeff says, shoving his hands in his apron. “Gabe’s in the back.” He grins, and his perfect white teeth are as blinding as his blue eyes.

  But as lovely as Jeff is to look at, he’s not going to be winning Who Wants to Be a Millionaire anytime soon.

  “Um, could you maybe go get him for me?”

  He starts, and his smile drops a half inch. “Oh. Right. Be right back.” Jeff lopes off as if he has all the time in the world, disappearing after an eternity through an Employees Only door.

  After he’s gone, I stand there for a minute or two, alone amid the waxes and cleaners and mops, shifting from one foot to the other in a bout of caffeinated excitement. I check the time on my cell, then peek through the window on the swinging door Jeff disappeared through. Empty.

  I turn back as a heavyset man in a stained Members Only jacket comes around the corner. He passes a disinterested gaze over me, then heads to the display of pumpkins at the back end of the store. Distractedly, I watch him rifle through the pile, picking each one up and inspecting it before exchanging it for the next. He takes all the livelong day with each one, checking for perfect shape and size and color, and I’m about to tell him Trader Joe’s has pumpkins twice the size for half the price, when Gabe emerges through the door with a box of hammers.

  “I found Ricky,” I say the instant I see him.

  Surprise flashes across his face before he drops the box onto the floor and shoves it under the bottom shelf with the toe of his boot. “Where?”

  “You’re not going to like it.” I pass him the printout and give him a few moments to read, and digest, Ricky’s obituary.

  He points to the date the article was written. “This was just two months after Zach.”

  “I know.”

  Gabe unties his apron, yanks it over his head and wedges it in a messy ball between spray bottles of carpet cleaner on the shelf. “Let’s go. I want to hear the whole story.”

  “Okay, but did you make the connection? Ricky was a—”

  Gabe silences me by wrapping a giant palm around my bicep and pulling me up the middle aisle. “Not here.”

  We hustle through the store and out the double doors. The street is strangely quiet for a Friday morning, no pedestrians rushing up the block with shopping bags, no cars whizzing past. With no one around to hear us, I feed him the most important line from what he just read. “Ricky was a mechanic.”

  “Which means he knew how to install a truck valve.”

  “That’s an awfully big coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Gabe plants his boots at the edge of the curb, pausing to check for nonexistent traffic, then ushers us both across the street. “I don’t believe in coincidences, not anymore. But it would explain why Nick didn’t remember him. If we’re thinking this through right, Ricky would have lagged behind my brothers in the second convoy with the busted truck.”

  My mind sticks on his words, the ones about Nick not remembering Ricky, and I pull Gabe to a stop outside the glass door to Starbucks. “Gabe, wait a minute. Nick doesn’t remember Ricky? What if his name on that transcript was a mistake? Maybe that’s why we’ve never heard his name before.”

  Gabe grimaces, and he leans his head close, even though there’s no one around to hear him anyway. “Nick is a little...confused. Not a lot of what he says these days makes any sense.”

  Poor Nick, though I guess it’s understandable. I imagine any man crouched fifteen feet away when three bullets tore through his brother’s skull would be not only confused but scarred for life. In Nick’s case, it also sent him squirreling underground. No one has seen or heard from him since his honorable discharge back in the spring.

  Gabe tugs on the door handle, and the scent of coffee and autumn spice wraps around us like an invisible fog. “Let’s sort through all the facts before we jump to any conclusions.”

  Starbucks is a little busier than outside, but not by much. There’s a cluster of mothers in workout gear in the leather chairs by the front window, a long-haired college student with his nose in a calculus book and a handful of folks behind laptops. Gabe and I settle on a table in the front corner, semi-secluded behind a display of travel coffee mugs, and I hold it for us while Gabe gives the barista our orders.

  He returns a few minutes later with a plain black coffee for himself, and a large pumpkin spice latte and two blueberry muffins for me.

  “I haven’t had breakfast, and I just rowed for two hours straight,” I say, feeling an overwhelming urge to explain my order, even though Gabe doesn’t seem the least bit interested in my questionable diet.

  He points to the article, neatly folded on the table between us. “Start at the beginning.”

  I do, attacking the first muffin and telling him between sugary bites about my midnight epiphany and my subsequent computer search. I’ve barely begun when he holds up a hand to pause my story.

  “Wait a minute. You’ve been up since two?”

  I nod, swallowing. “I’ve had a lot of coffee. Anyway, I had been so focused on searching through the military databases, I didn’t even consider the fact that he may have been a foreigner, much less a civilian.”

  “You searched every coalition list?”

  “Only the European and Latin American countries. I figured those would be the most likely to have a name like Hernandez.”

  His eyes widen. “What’s that, six or seven countries?”

  “Eight. The UK was the largest to comb through, and I would have gone back to check the other countries if I hadn’t found him on the American contractors website.”

  Gabe gives me an impressed look. “You really are excellent at research, aren’t you?”

  I let out a little laugh, then continue my story of this morning’s events. Gabe leans forward in his chair, planting both elbows on the table and listening with squinted eyes. When I get to the part about Ricky being a contractor for Intergon, I explain a few of the theories I came up with on the boat, which widen his eyes and straighten his spine like a series of electric jolts.

  “And I checked the map,” I say. “The explosion that killed Ricky happened about fifteen miles from where Zach was killed, just two months earlier.”

  We fall silent, and I reach for my latte, take a long pull. Warm liquid lands in my belly, but it does nothing to chase the chill from my bones. It’s one thing
to suspect the army is hiding something, another thing entirely to have proof.

  Gabe is the first to break the silence. “Call the sister. Set up a meeting. And I want to be there, in the room, when you talk to her.”

  Something I can’t quite put my finger on surges at his request—fear? nerves?—and I swallow it down. “No way. You look exactly like your brother, and your face has been all over the news for the past year. If she owns a television set or subscribes to a newspaper, she’ll recognize you. Besides, what am I supposed to say? That we suspect her dead brother is tied to Zach’s death somehow? She won’t let us anywhere near her.”

  “So feed her a story that he fixed up your car, or you’re old friends from school. You’ll think of something.”

  “You’re asking me to lie?”

  His answer is immediate. “I’m asking you to go undercover.”

  I lean back in my chair and consider his request, my heart ramming hard enough to crack my ribs. Whether knowingly or unwittingly, Gabe has just pinpointed a heated debate in the news community. On the one hand, he’s not wrong. Undercover reporting is a common technique, and not just for a few rogue reporters. Big-name journalists have long been rewarded for crafty approaches to getting a scoop, even if that reward is only a byline.

  But for every reporter who’s ever lied or misrepresented themselves to a source, there are just as many who are dead set against it, who contend that as reporters, our role is to tell the truth, not obscure it.

  “Come on, Abigail. Journalists do it all the time. As long as the fib is for the greater good, say, to expose corruption in jails or child labor in factories or bullying in high schools or racism in the Ku Klux Klan, what’s the big deal? You’re manipulating your story to extract a bigger truth.”

  Gabe is right on this point, too. Journalists often look to the philosophy of utilitarianism when making these kinds of decisions. If the actions taken are on behalf of the public, if they are done for the good of the majority, then what’s wrong with a harmless little lie? The boundaries are vague at best.

  But still. Something about it kicks the air right out of me.

  “I’m not a journalist, remember?” My voice sounds weird. Hollow and high and...wrong.

  “You’re seriously going to sit here and tell me you have zero plans to write about Ricky?”

  “You make it sound like you want me to.”

  “Somebody has to. Why not you? You’re the one who found him.”

  I give him a halfhearted shrug, but my lungs won’t loosen. My heart won’t settle. I rub a knuckle over my breastbone, but an ache pulses and pounds behind my sternum, blooming into a spiky knot that’s not from worry or resentment or dread.

  It’s from longing. Longing clings to me like static electricity I can’t bat away.

  I want to be the one to write about Ricky. I want that byline. Even after everything that happened with Chelsea, even after everything I’m learning about Maria, Ricky’s story feels like mine, and I don’t like the greedy rush that warms my skin at the realization.

  Gabe misreads my silence as doubt, and he reaches across the table, across cups and wrappers and crumb-laden napkins, and wraps his big hand around mine. “Please, Abigail. For me. Please, call Graciela.”

  I tell myself it’s the double please that does it, or the way his voice lowers to a rough rumble that rocks me down to the core. I tell myself it’s his expression, so vulnerable and open it makes me feel self-conscious, or the way his touch buzzes through my skin and mainlines into my bloodstream.

  It’s shocking what the mind can self-rationalize when it really wants something.

  I nod. “I didn’t have time to search for her number before practice,” I say, and he releases my hand. “I was already late as it was.”

  “We can use one of the computers at the market.” Gabe scoops the trash from our table and jerks his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  Outside, the wan mid-morning sun has inched the thermometer up a degree or two, but it’s still too frigid for a rowing outfit that is basically head-to-toe Lycra. Now that my excitement has died down and the exhaustion from what was essentially a sleepless night is setting in, my fleece body warmer does little to keep me warm.

  Gabe opens the door and I rush into the heat, following him to an ancient computer at the back of the store. He pulls up a very slow internet, types Graciela’s full name in the search screen, hits Enter, and we wait an eternity for the screen to load. By some sort of miracle, there’s only one Graciela Hernandez listed in Portsmouth. Gabe scribbles her contact information on Ricky’s obituary and shoves the paper in my direction.

  “What’s the strategy?” Frankly, I’m too exhausted to come up with it on my own.

  “An old friend?”

  “What if she asks me for details? I don’t know anything about Ricky.”

  “Okay, what if you tell her you work for Intergon?”

  I shake my head, not liking that one, either. Though I did a little reading on their company website, I don’t remember enough to spit out much more than an elevator pitch should she ask. I think, until I come up with something that’s a little closer to the truth.

  “What if I say I was engaged to a soldier he knew from Afghanistan? One who died. Ricky could be one of the last people to have seen him alive. I could tell her I’m trying to get in touch with people who knew him while he was on tour.”

  “Perfect.”

  I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and dial Graciela’s number. After four rings, an electronic recording greets me down the line. “Voice mail,” I whisper to Gabe. I wait for the beep, and then I begin.

  “Hello, Graciela, my name is Abigail Wolff. My fiancé, David, was killed about a year ago in Kabul, right around the time your brother was. I’ve come across an old letter that makes me think the two of them knew each other, and...well, I know you’ll understand when I tell you I’m looking for any sort of connection that will help me keep the memory of David alive. I was hoping we could maybe trade stories, and who knows? Maybe we can help each other find some more people who knew David and Ricky from Afghanistan. My number is 202-555-3761. Thanks, and talk soon, I hope. Okay, bye.”

  I hang up, and Gabe doesn’t say anything, just pulls me in for a long, fierce hug. I wasn’t ready for it, wasn’t expecting it, and the contact is both shocking and welcome at the same time. I wrap my arms around his middle and hug him back, thinking how nice his big frame feels pressed up against mine, hard and soft at the same time, how perfectly my head fits into the crook of his shoulder, how our bodies slip together like matching puzzle pieces.

  “Thank you,” he whispers into my hair. His breath warms my scalp, and when he unwinds himself from me, he doesn’t let me go. He holds my arms and my gaze, and his face explodes into that extraordinarily ordinary smile. His eyes light up like the sun. I’m the one who put that look on his face, and I don’t want to let the moment go.

  And then a harried woman comes around the corner and does it for us. “Excuse me, where would I find the floor wax?”

  “Thank you,” he whispers one last time, and the moment is gone.

  * * *

  Gabe calls that night, as I’m upstairs in my room, getting ready for bed. “Any word from Graciela?”

  I toss my hairbrush onto the dresser and dig a tank top out of the drawer. “None.”

  “Maybe we called the wrong number.”

  “She said her name on the voice mail.”

  “Maybe it’s the wrong Graciela.”

  “It wasn’t.” I wedge the phone between my shoulder and ear and wriggle out of my jeans. I can’t be one hundred percent certain of this, of course, but it seems like something Gabe needs to hear. “We called the right one.”

  “Maybe somebo—”

  “Gabe.” I wait until he falls qui
et, and then I say, in my best calm-a-spooked-source voice, “She’ll call.” I can’t be certain of this, either, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s true. Call it an ex-reporter’s hunch. I step out of my pants and kick them toward the laundry pile, a mini-mountain of discarded clothes in the corner. “And the very second I hang up with her, I will call you. I promise.”

  He’s silent for a long beat. “I’m overreacting again, aren’t I?”

  I sink onto the bed. “Maybe just a little.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t used to be so clueless, just so you know. I used to be pretty decisive.” He’s taking care to keep his tone flippant, but I can hear something darker pushing up from under the words, something much more honest and true, as if maybe he’s testing the waters, checking how I will respond.

  “You lost a brother. I think you get a pass.”

  He makes a sound that’s half scoff, half sigh. “Do you know what my specialty was at Goldman Sachs? Fucking crisis management. I was that guy who could manage any meltdown, find order in any chaos. I was the fearless one, the one everybody looked to when the world was tipping.”

  “And then your own world tipped.”

  He lets out a sharp puff of air, like a wry laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “You can’t beat yourself up about it, Gabe. It will take you some time to get used to your new reality.”

  “It’s more than just a new reality. Losing Zach made me question everything I ever knew. It altered the most fundamental part of me, like...I don’t know, it added an extra kink in my DNA or something. There’s me before, and there’s me after. I’m not the same person I used to be.”

  I could tell him I understand more than he knows. I get the thin, fragile line that separates the before from the after all too well, but I don’t want to make this conversation about me. Gabe sounds as if he needs comfort and reassurance, so that’s what I try to give him.