CHAPTER ONE
Beckett
Before…
The plain manila envelope was tucked under my torn and bloody camos at the bottom of the cardboard box holding my gear. Sent back after the accident, the box sat unopened in the old brownstone I owned for almost eleven months. The envelope had been folded up several times and secured with a thick rubber band. The edges of the envelope were frayed, and the paper torn where the rubber band dug into it. The name Dan was scrawled on the outside.
I assumed it was short for Daniel – Daniel Beckett Tate-McNeil.
Curious, I opened it only to find a stack of letters written on thin airmail paper, folded up and fastened with some blue foil ribbon. The letters and photos had been stained with blood. I untied the ribbon and tucked in the folds of several letters, I found photographs of a beautiful young woman with long auburn hair and freckles on the bridge of her nose. Wide hazel-green eyes were framed with thick eyelashes. The photos must have been of the woman who wrote the letters.
There were no envelopes – just several dozen letters, the script small and regular. A woman’s handwriting.
I opened up one of the letters, holding the photo in my hand.
My dearest Dan…
I was at a loss. The letters clearly weren’t written to me since I had no girlfriend while I was in Afghanistan. No girlfriend really, not since Sue.
No one called me Dan so how the hell…
I hadn’t gone by Daniel since I was a child and my parents went through a very messy divorce. When my mother separated from my father, she took me with her to Louisiana and then California. We left behind our ties to my father and his family, name included. I was named after my grandfather, who had been part of the old Westies gang in Hell’s Kitchen in the 50’s and 60’s – Daniel “Danny Blue Eyes” McNeil. A small-time thug in the infamous Coonan family. So Daniel McNeil was a name associated with the side of my family my mother wished to escape.
After my mother cut all ties with my father, we moved just outside New Orleans where I began using my middle name and my mother’s maiden name Tate. Beckett was my other grandfather’s name, on my mother’s side. So, at the ripe old age of ten, I became Beckett Tate and never looked back – not until I had to join up and use my legal name again. No one except my closest family knew my first name was Daniel, and only my father’s side of the family called me Dan so I had no idea why the envelope would be addressed that way.
I sorted through the letters, organizing them by date to see what the woman had written, laying out the photos that went along with the letters. There might be clues to the identity of the real owner inside.
The first letter was dated over a year earlier and included a photo of the woman in an antique wedding dress overlain with lace, like something you’d see in the roaring twenties. She sat on a park bench in Central Park, a bouquet of wildflowers in her hand and twined in her long hair. On the back of the photo was a date of the wedding – May 5th of last year.
The first letter was dated only a week later.
May 12
My dearest Dan,
I miss you already and it’s only been an hour since you left. I knew when I agreed to marry you that you’d be taken away from me almost as soon as the ink on our marriage certificate was dry, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. Our week together on our ‘honeymoon’ was far too short and now I won’t see you again for months...
I know you said not to write too often, since you’re never sure where you might be sent on a mission, but I remember finding my grandmother’s letters to my granddad that she wrote back during World War II and how much she treasured those letters, so I want to write you as much as possible. I’ll only send one letter a week like we agreed, but it will be seven letters rolled up into one longer letter. It’s really no trouble and makes me feel like you and I are having a conversation, even if it is one sided. Please, don’t feel pressure to respond – I know you and your team are very busy.
I wanted to give you time to get situated back in Afghanistan before I wrote but this letter and the others should be waiting for you once you do arrive. I did what you suggested and am going to stay for the summer with your family in Topsail Beach, to take my mind off your leaving me again and get some work done. I have to finish up some revisions to my final paper in criminal psychological assessment. Being out here will be a nice vacation from the bustle of Manhattan. Your mom and I plan on spending time in the garden, now that the planting season is underway and the flowers are beginning to bloom. I may even pull a few shifts as a bartender at Oceanside. Your dad’s back is bad and he isn’t able to pitch in when a shift needs to be covered. He needs the help.
We’re all really proud of you making the Special Operations Forces and hope that your tour of duty is easy and that nothing too dangerous happens while you’re there. One day, I hope this war will be over so you won’t have to leave me again, but I know it’s probably not going to end any time soon. Maybe this will be the last time we have to be separated, if you do decide to get out once this deployment is finished.