Page 2 of Cold, Cold Bones

“What? You didn’t approve of me serving my country?”

“I approved of your service. I hated that much of it was done in a war zone.”

“That’s generally what serving your country is all about.”

Following a post-college period of, I’ll be kind and call it “uncertainty,” my naive and reckless daughter went full circle and answered Uncle Sam’s call. Awesome, I told myself. She’ll find direction. Self-discipline. Being female, she’ll be in no peril. Sure, my attitude was sexist. But this was my twentysomething golden-haired child who was boarding a bus for boot camp.

Then the regs changed to allow women in the trenches. En masse, the ladies shouldered their M16s and marched off to fight alongside their brothers-in-arms.

Following basic combat training, the golden-haired child chose her occupational specialty, 11B. Infantryman. Katy’s time in uniform re-introduced me to military acronyms and jargon I hadn’t heard since my ex, Pete, was a Marine.

In a nanosecond, or so it seemed to me, Katy was deployed to Afghanistan to join a brigade combat team. Not so awesome. Lots of anxious days and sleepless nights. But her tour went well, and twelve months later she returned home with only a small scar on one cheek.

Life in the field artillery agreed with my daughter. When her enlistment ended, to my dismay, she re-upped. To my greater dismay, she signed on for another Middle East deployment. Hello darkness, my old friend.

All that was past, now. The tossing and turning was over. Well, mostly.

Last fall, Katy had decided to hang up her boots and camos and return to civilian life. She was honorably discharged and, to my surprise and delight, decided to settle in Charlotte. At least for a while. Why? She won’t say.

Katy also refuses to talk about her time in the army. Her friends. Her overseas duty. The scar. So, we’re playing it like her former employer: don’t ask, don’t tell.

We ate in companionable silence for a while. Katy broke it.

“Is the nerd scientist currently working on any rad bones?”

“A few.”

Katy curled her fingers in a give-me-more gesture. They were coated with shimmery creole mustard.

“Last week a barn in Kannapolis burned to the ground. When the rubble cooled, firefighters found the remains of two horses and one adult male, all charred beyond recognition.”

“Shitty deal for the horses.”

“Shitty deal for everyone.”

“Let me guess. Farmer Fred was a smoker.”

“The body wasn’t that of the property owner.”

“Did you ID the guy?”

“I’m working on it.”

“The horses?”

“Chuckie and Cupcake.”

“Were they valuable?”

“No.”

“Weird.”

“What’s weirder is that the man had a bullet hole right between his eyes.”

“Whoa. Someone went kinetic.”

Katy fell quiet again, thinking about bullet holes, maybe horses. Or creole mustard.