Veil of Silence (17 page)

The black-haired woman nodded.  She knew she was getting worked up and it wasn’t good for her.  It also wasn’t good for the baby, who protested by kicking her.  She used her own free hand to rub.

“Is the baby kicking?” Heather asked, looking where Marsha was rubbing.

“Yeah, I think we have a soccer player here,” she admitted ruefully.

Heather smiled at the word ‘we.’  “May I feel?”

Marsha was surprised.  Heather had fully participated in her pregnancy with Hayley.  She would never have asked before.  She pulled their entwined hands up to where she was rubbing and placed Heather’s under her own.

The smile on Heather’s face was beautiful.  Marsha caught her breath in wonderment.  Heather could feel the foot under her hand, pressing hard!  This baby was ready to come out and she agreed, probably a soccer player.  The smile dissipated as the baby, sensing her mother’s enjoyment at the touch, calmed and went back to sleep.  “Well, I better finish telling you all this,” she grinned at the onerous task she still had.

“Officially you were listed as a missing person.  They said you hadn’t gone into combat.  I doubted that for a while, but they said there were four other people missing.”

“There were six of us in total,” Marsha corrected her automatically, but her mind was starting to form a little niggle of something.  Somehow, something that Heather had said was bothering her.

“Oh, they told me four others and you.”

“Did they give you the names?”

Heather shook her head.  “I don’t recall asking.”

Marsha was disappointed.  Still, she would ask Captain McKellan to look into the army’s official version of her disappearance and who was listed as missing.  She didn’t know everyone’s names.  She didn’t remember if she had ever known, but she was sure after her reappearance that they would be listed as dead.

“They listed you as missing, not dead, so I couldn’t claim any death benefits, but I didn’t want any.  I just wanted you home!”

“Well, if you had gotten the death benefits you’d have over four hundred thousand in a lump sum to raise Hayley,” she informed her wife.

“That’s not what they told me!” she said, outraged.  “He told me maybe forty thousand.”

“Well, I would have had to be declared dead,” she pointed out and watched as her wife realized the truth of that.  She laughed. 

“I’m so glad you aren’t dead,” the blonde told her wife, her hand going from Marsha’s stomach to caress the side of her face.  She looked shocked when Marsha flinched.

“Sorry,” she said, immediately contrite at her wife’s reaction.  “My God, what did they do to you?”

“You saw the video.”

“That still doesn’t tell me anything.”  She knew it would have been edited and chopped up, and probably not very professionally.  After the screen went blank the first time, the rest showed Marsha in various small blocks of testimony and it didn’t make sense.

“No, I’ll tell you some of it, but I can’t, not now,” she promised.  She looked down, ashamed at her reaction.

Heather pulled Marsha’s chin up. “You tell me in your time.  I’ll wait.”

“Haven’t you waited enough?”

“You just got back.  We have things to deal with.”  Her hand touched Marsha’s bulging stomach again, knowing she wouldn’t pull away at that. 

Marsha smiled at her feisty wife’s response.  “What else?” she hinted broadly for her to continue.

“At one point, he wanted to know if I wanted to try and have you declared dead.”

“Did you?”

She shook her head immediately.  “No, not ever.  I thought I could wait out the seven years.  Then it would be their decision and not mine.”

“It would have bought you both a lot of things you could use,” she pointed out.

“It would have been so…final,” she admitted.  She looked very sad.  “I held out hope.  You don’t know how my heart leapt into my throat when they came to the door to tell me you were alive.  I thought….”

“That they were coming to tell you I was dead?”  She watched as the tears formed in Heather’s blue eyes, those cornflower blue eyes that had so entranced her, the eyes she had thought about so many times while in the cave or the tent.  Even when Zabi–she pushed thoughts of that man away.

Slowly Heather nodded, not liking this conversation and the bad feelings it brought up.  “I held out so much hope, but this last year….”

“You dated?  Did you give up?” she finished for her.

She shook her head.  “I was just so
lonely
,” she confessed.

“Hayley was no substitute for someone in your arms,” she acknowledged.  Then she asked the question she was dreading the answer to.  “Did you…” she couldn’t finish.

Heather immediately shook her head.  “No, never.  I felt I was betraying you even dating.”

Marsha was relieved.  “It’s not like I didn’t…” she rubbed her stomach and her head jerked towards the children’s bedroom where her two children with Zabi were sleeping.

“It’s not like you had much of a choice from what I heard on that disk.”

“True,” she admitted.  She blinked back self-pitying tears.  She swallowed, cleared her throat and said, “Well, I’m sure I was covered under the Missing Service Personnel Act.”

Heather nodded.  “Yes, that’s what Sergeant Wiggins said.  I was to continue to receive your checks.  I didn’t question the amount as I didn’t know they’d promoted you, but we needed the money.”

That told Marsha a lot more than Heather intended.  She could see that money was tight around here with her wife driving the same car all these years and the amount of macaroni and cheese in the cupboard.

“They didn’t say I was a deserter or anything, did they?” she asked, wondering at some of the angles Captain McKellan would look at.

“No, why would they?  You were headed home.”  Heather wondered if she had missed something, an important piece of information.

Shrugging, Marsha tried to brush it off.  “Just wondering what they did while I was gone.”

“As far as I know you were listed as missing.  You couldn’t have deserted.  Is that what they are saying?”  She was curious as to what the hours of interrogation were about.

“Not that I know of,” she answered truthfully, but now she wondered.

“Maybe they think you were a prisoner of war?”  She was shooting blanks in her attempts to get information out of her wife.  Marsha was too good at not saying anything.  She’d also had five years of being beaten for talking out of turn.

“I don’t think Afghanistan or its various tribes would recognize the Geneva Convention or its articles.”  Her many beatings would attest to that.

“True.”

“Do you think they would have let you go once the war ended?”

Marsha shook her head immediately.  “No, I was there to breed sons.  The proof of that is Amir.  If this child had been another son, there is no way he would have released me unless he killed me.”

Heather was horrified at the thought.  She stared, shocked, at her wife’s admission.  “So, are you considered repatriated?”

Marsha wondered that too.  It wasn’t like they had followed any procedure she had heard of.  Another question for Captain McKellan.  “I don’t know,” she admitted as she wondered.

They went over a few more things and Marsha learned how her parents had tried to take Hayley from her wife.  First, with bribes like the swing set and second, with an actual lawsuit over custody.

“Sergeant Wiggins actually helped with that.  Good thing you are a stickler for paperwork or they would have had me.  I couldn’t afford the attorneys they hired.  I worried each time Hayley went to their house that she wouldn’t come back.  Apparently, their attorney insisted that they return her so it wouldn’t look like a kidnapping.”  She shook her head.  “They kept trying to brainwash her,” she admitted, feeling like a failure for not preventing some of it. 

“Brainwash her how?”  Marsha was very angry about her parents.  They had known how much this child had meant to the two of them.

“Just that
you
were her mom, her
real
mom.  That I was just your girlfriend.  They wouldn’t say wife.  It was very confusing for Hayley.  I made up excuses so they couldn’t see her as often…Hayley has been very busy for a little girl.”

“Actually busy, or did you have to lie?”

“I did a bit of both so they couldn’t accuse me of keeping her from them.  She has had more after school activities than most children her age,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry, babe.  They shouldn’t have made your life a living hell like that.”

“I’m just so glad you are home,” she started to cry as they met in the middle and just held each other.  Marsha started to kiss away Heather’s tears as she would have in days of old.  The meeting of their lips was a comfort to both of them.

As they both wound down from the emotional upheaval, Marsha finally asked, “What are we going to do about this?” she indicated her big belly.  She also meant the other two children.

“What else can we do but accept and enjoy it?” Heather answered sensibly.  “We wanted more children, eventually.  I didn’t expect this,’ she admitted, “but I have you back and this will be
our
child,” she rubbed the belly for good luck.  “I know we have a way to go, but we’ll figure it out.”

“Oh, baby, we will,” she promised.

That night they ended up spooning in their bed, a big relief to both of them.  Being able to touch each other was of great comfort and did a lot more to heal the rift that had inevitably come between them.  Talking that afternoon and evening had cleared the air on a lot of things each had been wondering and worrying about.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Marsha explained what she knew to Captain McKellan on the ride to the base.  It was a relatively short ride and they ended up sitting in his convertible so they wouldn’t be overheard.  She asked some very astute questions.  McKellan was glad that she did as it gave him some ammunition for the panel that had been convened to question Captain Gagliano.  He looked at this Italian-American.  She was made of stern stuff and those idiots that were doubting her story had a lot to explain.

“How are you doing?” he asked.  His wife had made sure he would ask, but he looked her over, her obvious pregnancy did not look comfortable on her.

“I’m hanging in here.  I’d like the questions to be over, but I want some answers myself,” she indicated the conversation they had just had.  “I’m actually looking forward to this afternoon’s doctor appointment.”

“Do you want to know the sex?” he grinned.  The guys always wanted to know, from his experience.

“Actually, I don’t.  I like the surprise,” she admitted.  “My daughter says it should be a boy to even things out.”

He shared a laugh.  It couldn’t be easy to suddenly have three, almost four children in a household, and he wondered how the captain’s wife was coping.  From the little Marsha had just told him of what they had discussed the previous night, she was a keeper.  “Well, we better get in there,” he indicated the building where the interview was being conducted.

Today, they didn’t have everyone from the previous day and there were two new faces.  They weren’t introduced, but one of them was a colonel by his insignia.  The other was wearing civilian clothing and this bothered Captain McKellan.

As they started in again, repeating the same questions, he brushed them aside to ask, “Why wasn’t Captain Gagliano repatriated according to the regulations set out by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency?”

Several people looked uncomfortable at this question and Lance McKellan further made them twitch in their seats by outlining what the regulations were for those who seemed not to know. 

“Her debriefing after escaping from captivity should have entailed psychologists who specialize in the effects of captivity.  Operation Yellow Ribbon should have been enacted, which would have provided her with psychological support and assistance during those debriefings and the decompression process.”

One of the colonels present defended their procedure by pointing out that Lance had had a psychiatrist present in the form of Captain Lamar.

“That was just for her initial interviews.  You people keep wanting to dismiss those.  Why wasn’t the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency procedure followed?”

“Could you explain what you mean by that question?” the civilian asked.

Lance looked at the man suspiciously.  He hadn’t been introduced and this set his teeth on edge.  He didn’t know who he was addressing or giving this information to.  “Captain Gagliano, in her initial recovery phase, should have had psychologists to help her with the transition.  It’s an unpredictable and emotional time, especially for a woman that is this pregnant.”  He gestured to the captain.  No one could deny she was very pregnant.  “She should have been transported from the embassy to a safe place.”

“We felt the embassy was the safest place at that time,” the colonel defended himself.

“The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency oversight committee would have protected her from any undue pressures while she was integrated back.  The Department of Defense has outlined very clearly what those procedures are.”  He decided to switch tactics on them.  “Have you informed the media of Captain Gagliano’s return?  Have you announced that she is alive?”