Page 74 of Lieutenant

Owen

Her.

It becomes my pulse, my background noise, the filter through which everything first must pass before making it to my conscious brain.

Even talking to Carter doesn’t erase it.

Her.

I’m no idiot. I know even from halfway around the globe that Carter is managing me.

It’s what he hasn’t said to me yet that I try not to focus on.

I know the odds.

I take a screenshot of the last series of texts we exchanged with Susa and stare at it every day.

I spend hours looking at a picture of her and me that Carter took of us last Christmas. She’s sitting in my lap and wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts and a red bow I’d just playfully stuck on her head, and we’re sitting in front of the Christmas tree in the mansion. The smile on our faces as we stare into each other’s eyes tells a story of two people very much in love.

I have the security detail stop by the townhouse every day. Ostensibly, so I can bring in the mail for Carter and Susa, but what I do when I unlock their front door and walk inside is go upstairs and press my face againstHerpillow. And His, but mostly Hers.

I’m afraid, because I think it smells less like her now than it did, and I don’t know what will happen when I can’t smell her there anymore.

I’ve started using her shampoo every day.

Every day, after I smell her pillow, I set my phone’s timer, drop into Devotion on the floor next to her side of the bed, and spend the next five minutes crying.

Once my timer goes off, I wash my face, blow my nose, use eye drops to help take some of the red out, and return downstairs so my detail can drive me to the mansion.

The troopers are professionals and never mention my red eyes or puffy nose when I emerge from Carter and Susa’s townhouse.

Dray is amazing. When he realizes that I’m not eating before I arrive at or after I leave the office, he starts bringing food in for me. Sometimes smoothies, sometimes more, if I can handle it. He makes sure I’m at least taking in some calories during the day, and hounds me every bit as hard as I know Carter would, if he were there.

I give one official statement about the crash, on the first day, a statement that Carter drafted with Dray’s help and signed off on before the charter from LAX took off.

It was short, concise, and I still managed to break down in tears before I finished reading it.

I don’t watch the news. When I asked Dray, he said that clip, of me crying, was looped on nearly every channel for four days straight, the summation of collective grief, until the survivors were found and bumped it off the top of the charts.

I don’t want this anymore.

I can’t do this.

Maybe if Carter was here, yes, but I can’t do this. Not like this.

Carter hasn’t said it yet, but I suspect he thinks she’s gone.

I know she’d want me to continue, to run for re-election, but if she’s really gone…

If Carter tells me to, I will, especially if he says we have to do it for her memory.

But…

All I want to do is curl up in Carter’s arms and cry.

Just…

Cry.