The Truth He Buried With Her Chapter 06

The Truth He Buried With Her Chapter 06

Name: Mitchell Davenport.

Home of record: Sierra Vista, Arizona.

Date of death: one week before the unit pulled back from the southwestern border.

I looked up at him.

He took out a lighter and lit a cigarette, then turned the notification over.

I frowned.

“Don’t smoke in front of kid.”

David saw my face and put the cigarette out.

On the back, a line was written in pencil.

The handwriting was messy, some strokes unfinished. The last word dragged out long, as if the hand had lost strength before it could finish.

“Colonel, the baby is in your hands. Mitchell.”

David said, “Mitchell Davenport was a scout under Sergeant Bell. Two days before Bell was killed, Mitchell crossed the blockade with an intelligence package.”

“The package got through. He didn’t make it. Before he died, he called Blair to his bedside and told her to find

Griffin.”

“He said the colonel owed him a life. He didn’t need the life repaid-but he wanted him to look after his woman and their unborn child.”

I gripped the notification. The edge of the paper bit into my palm.

“Then why didn’t you tell me when you found out before?”

“Because Griffin made everyone swear to keep quiet. Command put a three-month classification on it. There are still people running intel along the border, and if anyone talks, they’re in danger.”

He paused.

“Anyone who leaks one word goes to a court-martial.”

He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot.

“Sloane, Griffin isn’t wrong. He just couldn’t say.”

I slammed the notification on the table.

“Couldn’t say? Then how did you find out?”

David froze.

“You all knew. Eleanor knew. You knew. Mom and Dad knew. And what about me? I was the one being torn apart in that housing block for two months. Me.”

“He says he couldn’t say. But you looked into it and found out. Mom and Dad came, and he told them everything. The one person who most deserved to know was kept in the dark by all of you, and now you want me to forgive him? Dream on.”

I glared at him.

He said nothing.

He couldn’t bring himself to tell me to just let it go.

I took a deep breath and pointed at the door.

“Get out. I don’t want to see you right now.”

My brother didn’t move. So I said it plainly.

“Fine. You won’t leave? Then I will.”

I started packing, ready to move to another motel with Leo.

David stood up at once, looking miserable.

“Get out. I don’t want to see you.”

I slammed the door in his face.

That night, I sat on the hard motel bed holding Leo.

He was asleep, breathing evenly, his hand still clutching the pencil.

I pulled the pencil from his hand and set it on the table, then held his drawing under the lamp.

In the drawing, there was only me and him.

I folded the drawing, turned off the light, and lay down.

The next morning, I checked out.

I did not go back.

I took Leo to my mother’s for a week and found temporary work at a textile mill on the west side.

The factory director was a woman in her fifties named Margaret Hartley. Her gray hair was pulled back

severely.

She sat in her office and flipped through my file. Then she looked up and asked, “I’d done three years in army logistics. Why was I looking for work now?”

I said, “my husband was dead.”

Margaret glanced at me, didn’t press, and closed the file.

“One-month probation. After that, you qualify for a dormitory.”

I said fine.

The work at the textile mill was hard.

Up at seven, off at five thirty, half an hour for lunch.

A hundred sewing machines going at once on the floor made a sound like thunder.

After my first day, my ears rang for half the night.

The first week, three blisters rose on my hands. I pricked them with a needle, covered them with tape, and

kept working.

By the second week, the blisters had become calluses, hard in my palms.

The women on the factory floor were good to me.

There was an older woman named Donna Hayes at the next station. She’d worked there eight years. Her fingers always had thread caught in the creases.

On my first day, she saw how I held the shears and said, “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

I said no.

She said, “Don’t worry. Two weeks, you’ll know it.”

Two weeks later, she looked at my work and said, “Okay. You’ve got it.”

At the end of the month, Margaret called me into the office and said she was keeping me.

Then she slid a dormitory key across the desk. The tag on the key read Room 302.

In the dormitory, I set up a small bed and a small table.

That weekend, I went home and brought Leo back with me.

The trip took two bus transfers and forty minutes.

When I arrived, my parents were out front-Mom watering the planters, Dad going through a pile of mail.

Dad stood when he saw me, still holding a stack of envelopes.

He looked at me for a long time, lips moving as if to speak but not knowing what to say.