Page 43 of In You
"Yes, sir."
"Get this boy's ass out of my rank. Now."
Captain Thompson nods. "Yes, sir." He goes to stand adjacent to William, who turns to give me an evil look before stepping out of line.
"And Stefan, Luthers, and Petrol, as well," General Jackson calls out the other men who were taunting me along with William.
I keep my stare straight ahead as they break rank and leave with Thompson. I have no clue how he heard them, but he got all the ones who've been tormenting me for the last month. The month I'd been forced to start seeing the on-base psychiatrist because of "unusual behavior."
Meaning I wasn't fucking random women like my fellow soldiers, I wasn't making time to make friends, and I wasn't speaking with my family back home.
I was reclusive, depressed, and had a mad chip on my shoulder my commanders wanted fixed.
"Rule number five!" General Jackson shouts, walking along the line and not sparring me a glance when he passes me. "Always stay humble.Or life will humble you."He stops at the front of our procession, folding his arms and acting like we're not in a raging storm. He looks over us all, his posture hard, his eyes full of judgement even harder. "Life is not fair, it's the furthest thing from it. Which is why we do what we do. To helpbalance the scales of justice. Always go into it with good intent." He pauses before tilting his chin up. "It is my absolute privilege to be the one to humble you first. Life's going to fuck you hard, men. But I'll fuck you harder every time, I promise."
His eyes go to mine, and he nods ever so slightly.
The next solid month of camp is pure hell for my entire squad as General Jackson proves to us that he is the Judge and the Jury indeed, and we're all paying for William and the other men's lack of "manhood." Even me.
The men never come back, and when I go searching for them when I'm out, I find out they hadn't been heard of shortly after they got released from General Jackson's rank. It wasn't until many years later, did Frank admit he "took care of them."
Present Day
I watch quietly as Tamryn stares out the window, clutching a purple glass vase of flowers in her hands. I itch to reach over and take her hand in mine, to tell her I'm here with her, share in the intimacy Camilla and I had this morning.
But she won't let me touch her.
It took an hour and a half to get here, but now that we are, she can't seem to make herself get out of the car. Settling in for the long haul, I've taken my seatbelt off and pushed my seat back a little, spreading my legs. Even put a soft rock station on in the background to try to help her with her inner thoughts.
We've been sitting here for thirty-five very long minutes. But we'll sit here for three more hours if she needs it.
I'm tempted to crack open a beer but I didn't bring one. Took the cooler out of the jeep before the kill.
"My mom was the best father I knew," she says quietly, bringing her hand up to wipe a tear away. She'd been silent for so long that the sound of her voice shocks me a little.
"Yeah? Tell me about her?" I ask. "What was she like?"
Tamryn turns to face me with a sad smile on her face. "Ohhh she was one very brave woman. Fearless. Single mom. Had no siblings, or parents of her own because they died kinda young. Raised me single her whole life. Said she never remarried because she was scared I'd end up being a statistic." She makes a face and then takes a deep breath, looking down at the flowers. "Well, we see how that played out, don't we?"
I stay silent. Because that's actually fucked up how it worked out that way. It makes one of Frank's rules pop into my head, but I beat it back.
"She took her parent's life insurance money and used it to buy us a house, and then got a factory job that paid well, but it was a long way away from home." She goes silent, and I see this is a sore spot for her. My fingers twitch, itching to touch her.
"How far?" I ask conversationally.
"Almost an hour and a half away," she answers almost absentmindedly, turning her head to look back out the window towards the grave markers. "She sacrificed because she didn't have a college education, and it was one of the best jobs with the best health insurance. So, I learned how to be a latchkey kid at the age of eleven."
"Wow," I say gruffly, remembering that though at that age I was with my older half-sister at that point, and she'd let me be a child, I didn't feel like a child anymore. "Was that hard?"
She looks back at me. "It was lonely. Very lonely."
"Where was your dad?" I look out my window. "Is he buried here too?"
She shakes her head. "No. I never knew him. Mom wouldn't talk about him. Must have been bad, whatever happened, because he's not even on my birth certificate."
"Hm," I hum, sitting back further in my seat. "A little girl without her daddy."
"A little girl without her daddy," she breathes. "Fuck. Sounds really depressing when you say it out loud, huh?"
