Chapter 9 - The Unfinished Circuit
The knock on my quarters door came at 2:15 PM.
I assumed it was Donovan with another file, or Keller with a follow-up question about the Cayman wire transfers. When I pulled the heavy metal door open, the person standing in the hallway wasn't wearing a uniform, a suit, or a bridesmaid dress.
It was Mom.
She looked ten years older than she had twenty-four hours ago. Her hair, usually sprayed into an immovable helmet of suburban perfection, was loose around her face, showing silver roots at the part. She was wearing a plain trench coat over a dark sweater, her hands clutching a leather handbag as if it were a life preserver in a freezing ocean.
She didn't look at my face immediately. She looked past me into the sterile, utilitarian box of my base quarters—the unmade cot, the metal desk, the flight helmet resting on the shelf.
“May I come in?” she asked. Her voice didn't have its usual sharp, defensive edge. It sounded hollow, like something dried out and fragile.
“Yeah, Mom,” I said, stepping back. “Come in.”
She walked in slowly, gingerly sitting down on the edge of the narrow cot as if she were afraid of dirtying it. I closed the door and leaned against it, keeping my arms crossed over my chest—not out of anger, but out of a desperate need to keep my own defenses intact.
“The florist won’t return our calls,” Mom said quietly, staring down at her leather handbag.
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say about flowers.
“The police called me this morning,” she continued, her voice trembling slightly. “They explained... they told me what Greg was doing. About the accounts. About the data.”
“It’s all true, Mom,” I said gently. “OSI has the paper trail. He used Britney to keep me off balance so I wouldn't catch the data bleed on my flight deck.”
Mom’s hands twisted the strap of her bag until her knuckles turned white. A single tear escaped, tracking down the powdered skin of her cheek before she brushed it away with a quick, ashamed swipe of her thumb.
“She won't come out of her room,” Mom whispered. “She’s been sitting on the edge of her bed since midnight. She hasn't cried. She hasn't yelled. She just stares at the wall where the wedding dress is hanging in its garment bag.”
My chest tightened. That familiar, heavy ache of sisterly loyalty—the one Britney had spent twenty years stepping on—flared up despite everything.
“Is she safe?” I asked.
“She’s alone,” Mom said, finally raising her eyes to look at me. Her gaze was devastatingly clear. For the first time in my life, there was no blame in her eyes. No excuses for Britney. No accusation that I wasn't trying hard enough to fit into their immaculate, fragile world.
“She asked for you,” Mom said.
The room went completely silent. The hum of the base ventilation system sounded miles away.
“She asked for me?” I repeated, the words tasting foreign on my tongue.
“Not with words,” Mom said, her voice breaking on the edge of a sob. “She just... she threw her phone across the bedroom because it kept ringing with reporters and wedding vendors. And then she sat there in the dark, and she whispered, ‘Why didn't she tell me?’”
Mom reached out, her hand trembling slightly as she touched the edge of my desk.
May you like
“She thinks you knew, Morgan. She thinks you hated her enough to let this happen just to prove you were right.”
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