The Truth He Buried With Her Chapter 05

The Truth He Buried With Her Chapter 05

By evening, they were gone.

Griffin stood in the yard.

I didn’t open the door.

I held Leo and cried for a long time, tears dropping onto the back of his neck.

He turned around to look at me.

He was only four. He reached up with his sleeve and wiped my face-left side, then right.

“Mommy.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s leave.”

I looked down at him.

“You’re not happy here,” he said. “You’re not happy here.”

I pressed his little face to my chest.

That night, I packed a bag.

The gate guard was dozing. I turned sideways and squeezed through the gap in the fence.

Night wind cut through my collar, and I shivered.

Leo poked his face out of the blanket.

“Mommy, where are we going?”

“First we leave the base. Then Mommy will find a job.”

The next morning, Blair got up as usual and made breakfast.

Griffin shuffled to my door and knocked twice.

“Babe, breakfast.”

No answer.

He knocked twice more.

“Sloane?”

Still nothing.

The unease on Griffin’s face deepened.

He pushed the door open.

The bed was cold, like no one had slept in it.

The closet door hung open, half empty. Only his clothes were left on the hangers, swaying.

Griffin stood in the middle of the room, face pale.

He turned the whole battalion area upside down.

First, he went to the Greyhound station, showing my photo around.

By the third person he asked, somebody said they’d seen me and Leo boarding a bus to the east side.

He chased across town, questioning breakfast spots and motels along the street, and still found nothing by

nightfall.

Major Sinclair took a team and split up to search. Griffin sat all night in the east-side bus station waiting

room.

The bench dug into his back. He got up, stood outside the station, and smoked two cigarettes. The ends

flared and dimmed in the dark.

At dawn the next day, the Eastside Police Station called the Battalion HQ duty desk.

The soldier on duty ran to Major Sinclair’s quarters and pounded on the door: the night before, a woman and

child had been reported under the underpass.

When the police arrived and asked a few questions, she said she was a military dependent, so they let her go

without filing a report.

The housing block was in chaos too.

Rita stood in the washhouse, twisting the faucet and muttering. “Did you hear? Somebody’s wife took off in

the middle of the night-with her kid and everything.”

Someone muttered back, “Keep your voice down. She took her son.”

Rita rolled her eyes and said if she dared take him, she’d better not think about coming back.

Eleanor passed by the washhouse.

It went quiet instantly. Eleanor glanced at Rita, said nothing, and walked on with her basin.

That afternoon, she went to Battalion HQ to see Griffin. The office door was shut. She stayed inside less than

ten minutes and came out looking grim.

Major Sinclair met her in the hallway and greeted her.

Eleanor waved him off. “Don’t call me ma’am. I handled this wrong.”

David searched for me for two days.

When he finally found me and Leo in a small motel on the west side, I was sharpening a pencil for Leo.

The motel room was tiny and got no afternoon sun.

Leo lay over the little table drawing-a small person beside a tiny person.

When my brother pushed the door open, Leo didn’t look up. He just said, “Uncle David.”

My brother sat across from me, took a folded paper from inside his coat, laid it on the table, and pushed it

over.

I unfolded it.

It was a KIA notification.

The paper was new, the format standard, the bottom stamped with an official seal.