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“Yep.”
“But they live in Alaska,” she carefully told me something I was very aware of.
Another tidbit of information her dossier would reveal. A month after I joined the Navy, my parents up and moved to Anchorage. They hadn’t told their son before he left for basic that his father had taken a new job and the move was imminent. They hadn’t written me a letter to tell me about the move. No, not my parents; they moved, didn’t give me a new address, and I only found out when I completed Battle Stations and was allowed a phone call home. During which time, I also found out with my father’s new job being so far away they wouldn’t be coming to my Pass-In-Review.
“My family is in the conference room waiting for us.”
“Easton,” she whispered.
I felt the burn of her pity. The sympathy-laced whisper that was so unwelcomed I forgot who she was and what she’d gone through.
“Don’t.”
My warning was met with her jerking her shoulders back.
I knew she was gearing up to snap back, something I wasn’t in the right frame of mind or mood to deal with. So I swung us back to why we were in my office in the first place.
“Why don’t you want to ask Kira about Charlie?”
That goddamned right eye twitched right before she stepped closer.
Not a good idea.
I stepped back.
“Ah,” she drew out the word, interjecting a fuckton of snark into it. “I see how it is. You give some bullshit speech about how nothing’s private between us, you push me to tell you all sorts of stuff I don’t want to tell you, but when the tables are turned you get to change the topic. And I’ll point out, you changed it back to something I don’t want to talk about. But you won’t give me the option not to talk about it. How about this, Easton? How would you like it if I told you I wasn’t going to let you retreat?”
She’d emphasized a bunch of yous, mes, and I’s. Adding to that, she’d squared up with her hand up, finger out, and was jabbing it into me as she spoke.
“Not a fan of the finger, Nebraska.”
“Well I’m not a fan of being pushed. Nor am I a fan of being bossed around. Nor am I a fan as you so crassly put it, of the man who I’m banging closing down and acting like an asshole because I expressed emotion at his pain.”
The man she was banging.
That sounded all sorts of wrong coming out of her pretty mouth.
“They’re not worth the emotion,” I rumbled.
“They might not be, but you are.”
But you are.
You are.
Her hand dropped, went to her hip, and she proceeded to rip me to shreds.
“You know,” she stated, softening her voice. “I never go into a situation without all the intel I can get my hands on. So, you know that I know you joined the Navy right after you graduated high school. I know your parents moved from the house you were raised in to Alaska shortly after. I couldn’t find any records of you ever visiting them in Anchorage, though that only means you didn’t fly there. I could have no way of knowing why or what that meant but I know enough to know whatever the reasons are, they’re not good. That’s all I know. I didn’t dig deeper.”
It wouldn’t have mattered if she did, there was nothing there for her to find. No abuse. No neglect. Nothing. Just a whole lot of nothing.
“Though you took a yearly trip to South Dakota. The only family you had there was your grandfather. Once he passed you handled his estate and stopped going.”
Once my pop died, there was no reason to go back to South Dakota.
“You don’t have to tell me why. You don’t have to explain your parents. But what you have to do is remember it was you who asked me to trust you. If you can’t—”
“You’re right.”
