“He’s really gone?”
“He’s gone.”
She reaches her arms around my shoulders and hugs me tightly.
“Thank you, Evan.”
I hold her against me and close my eyes.
Maybe for once, I did do something right.
Alina wipes her eyes again and stands. She takes me by the hand and pulls me into the bathroom and starts the shower. She lathers me everywhere, her fingers pressing into the muscles in my back, chest, and arms. We take turns toweling each other off, and I help her apply a generous amount of lavender lotion to her skin before we climb into bed.
She wraps her arms around me, and I wrap mine around her. In silence, we hold each other. I wonder if she is thinking of her father or if she has memories of Zach running through her head like I do.
I feel her grip on me lessen, and she tilts her head into the space between my neck and shoulder. She sighs deeply, and I kiss the top of her head as I relax against the pillow.
“They did promote me,” I whisper into the darkness. “In the field, when our lieutenant was killed. I took command of the unit, and then they all got killed.”
Alina tightens her arms around me.
“It was my fault,” I tell
her. “They never should have promoted me.”
Alina strokes the back of my head for a few moments before she responds.
“Tell me something, Evan.”
“Okay.”
“With only the knowledge you had at the time, tell me what order you could have given that would have saved them.”
I lick my lips and think about it. I’d never really approached it in such a way. All my “what ifs” included knowledge that they were about to attack.
“We were ambushed. They’d captured someone from the unit, and he’d given up our position.”
“Did you have any way of knowing that?”
“I didn’t figure that out for a long time. I knew he had been captured—I’d seen him. He was in the video when they executed the journalist.”
Alina nods. It’s obvious she knows exactly what I am talking about. The whole world saw that footage.
“So, I’ll ask again—what order could you have given that would have saved them?”
I don’t have an answer.
“I got to know you through the eyes of someone in your unit,” Alina says as she strokes the side of my face. “I felt like I was right there beside you when I read his letters. You were a model soldier, Evan. You were smart, you were dedicated to your unit, and you did everything you could to keep them safe. Even now, after years of thinking about it, you know there is nothing you could have done to change the outcome.”
I want to argue with her. I had been in command, and they all died while I was off taking a piss. Their lives were my responsibility, and I had failed them. There are so many things I could have done differently if I had known.
If I had known. That’s the key though, isn’t it? I didn’t know. I didn’t know that our location had been given up. I had no idea they were going to show up right at that moment. We were surprised and outnumbered. We had no warning, and there was no defense.
There’s nothing I could have done.
For the first time since it happened, I believe it.
Chapter 18—Uncovered Betrayal