Page 82 of Lieutenant

Be there to hold him.

IknowI need to book my return flight to Florida, but I can’t yet make myself acknowledge the finality of that decision.

Of returning empty-handed.

Of returning…alone.

Of facing my boy and having to admit to him—and everyone else—that she’sreallygone.

Hypothermia. Drowning.

Did she die of exposure? Did she drown adrift in open water? Did sharks attack her before or after she died?

Did she drown trapped in the aircraft and her body washed free?

Was she aware of what was happening?

Was she scared and screaming for us as the plane went down?

Part of me hopes she died instantly and unaware in the initial engine failure and cabin decompression. That she was dead before the plane even ditched.

Except the fact that she wasn’t found strapped into a seat would tend to discount that theory. The seatbelts on the two other seats in Mike’s row were intact, unbuckled. They weren’t ripped or torn from their anchors, meaning either the seats were vacant—unlikely—or their occupants unfastened their seatbelts at some point and were not belted in when things went to hell.

The seat cushions were displaced and no life vests founds. Again, that means nothing. Not really.

Another option I don’t want to contemplate and will never mention to Owen or anyone else—that maybe theyhadn’tbeen wearing their seatbelts when it happened, and they were both sucked out of the plane during the initial event.

It is a grim possibility one of the NTSB investigators confirmed when I confronted him about it in private,needingto know if it was possible despite not wanting to know.

If that happened, their bodies could have ended up anywhere, and likely will never be recovered.

Likely hit the water like sacks of concrete and disintegrated. The plane was at thirty-two thousand feet when the event happened.

Like I said, that’s not a possibility I really want to think about, for a lot of reasons.

Part of me who doesn’t even believe in god prays my pet didn’t suffer, didn’t know, wasn’t in agony.

Wasn’t afraid.

Part of me hopes that, if she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, she took a nap, like she’s wont to do on longer flights. That she didn’t have time to don her oxygen mask, and was killed so quickly that she never even knew what happened.

Averylarge part of me hopes that.

#realistssuck

I willnevershare these thoughts with Owen, or with anyone else. My boy wants to hope they’ll find her and Connie both, alive, some sort of movie miracle. That maybe they washed up on an island and they’ll pluck them off it with a pet volleyball and some FedEx packages, or some shit like that.

I know how hard this is on Owen, being alone and in Florida, and it makes my heart ache even more. I feel like I’ve failed both my pets. I couldn’t protect one, and I’m not there to console the other.

Me? I compartmentalize. Ihaveto. It’s theonlyway I can function at this point. It’s a skill I learned after losing Tom and Pete, and my friends. A skill I honed to fine precision during my time in-country, especially after I was wounded and my two best friends were killed, another gravely injured.

Otherwise, it’d be too damn tempting to find a gorgeous beach somewhere, watch a sunset, and suck-start a pistol.

Except…I can’t.

Owen.

I can’t do that to him. I can’t leave him alone. That’d be cruel beyond measure, and I’ve failed enough already as a husband and Master.