Page 44 of Chasing the Other Woman

“You know he did, Sam,” Hershel says gently, like he’s explaining something obvious to a stubborn child. “He started sketching the schematics right after the accident.”

My mind refuses to assemble the pieces. He named this after me. Not the baby.

Yet he blamed me for the crash. For the loss. Why build a monument out of my name if I’m the one he holds responsible for tearing our lives apart?

“Make it make sense,” I whisper, more to the empty air than to Hershel.

He doesn’t offer false comfort. Instead, he steps in and starts running through the technical specs, and I let him, desperate for anything concrete to anchor me.

“It routes ground positions straight over radar sweeps, emergency pings, GIS maps, road closures, the whole picture,” he explains. “Short-range radio mesh if towers collapse, with an auto-switching satellite uplink. Brooks started it because he never wanted the team stranded without rescue again if we got pinned down. But over time, he re-engineered it for town relief after the front passes. He knew how much that side of the job mattered to you.”

I stare at the glowing letters.

SAM.

My name, codified into a lifeline.

For two years, I believed Brooks looked at me and saw only negligence. A liability. The reckless wife who insisted on chasing that afternoon and returned from the hospital with empty arms.

This console makes a mockery of everything I told myself to survive the silence. He poured hundreds of hours and engineering into a system designed to protect field ops and rebuild ruined communities simply because he knew it was my heart.

Why?

I step closer to the console, forcing my brain toward execution rather than emotion. “We can route the missing persons registry through this terminal. If we sync the satellite link to the tablets, we can hand them out to the search teams on the north side. It’ll map live power line hazards in real time so nobody drives straight into a washed-out crossing.”

Hershel’s mouth quirks at the corner. “Figured that’s where your head would go.”

“Best thing I can do right now is focus on what’s fixable,” I say.

Because looking at my left hand, I have no idea if my marriage is one of them.

By late afternoon, The Funnel Cloud looks less like a dive bar and more like a town hall with beer taps. Which, to be fair, probably isn't all that different from Muncie's regular town council meetings.

Petra has search-and-rescue check-in lists taped across the mirror behind the bar. Tom sits in the corner with a tablet, updating colored pins on the municipal grid with the lethal focus of someone defusing a bomb. Hershel runs dispatches between the SAM rig and the county deputies. I have a new terminal, courtesy of the SAM system, but I'm still clutching my battered spiral notebook.

For almost ten solid minutes, I manage not to think about the missing ring.

Then Luci slides into the booth across from me.

Somehow she still looks fresh. I have no doubt that, compared to her, I look like I’ve spent the afternoon rolling through mud and windblown debris.

“Sam,” she says softly. “Can we talk?”

“No.”

Her lips part in brief surprise.

I keep writing. “Sorry. Was that supposed to be one of those questions where social etiquette forces me to say yes?”

“I know things are hard right now.”

The pen stills against the paper. The urge to snap it clean in two surges through my fingers. What I’d like to do with the jagged plastic half doesn’t require further self-examination.

“I never wanted things to get this complicated,” she says.

I exhale slowly and look up. “Then what did you want?”

Her lashes flutter. They look flawless. “I care about Brooks.”