Chapter 8 - Unit 14-B

We drove west under a hard Kansas sky. I stayed on the phone with the facility manager and asked her not to confront anyone. The military investigators had been notified; I could search my father's rented unit only if the rental agreement or lawful access permitted it. I was done making choices that somebody could later twist.

Charlene's name appeared as an authorized renter, along with Dad's. Mine did not. Brody's did.

"I'll open it," he said when we arrived. "And I'll make sure the manager witnesses what we find."

Unit 14-B sat behind a long row of tan metal doors. Charlene was outside it, fighting a padlock with a tire iron. When she saw us, she dropped the tool.

"You followed me?"

"You went after Dad's things," Brody said. "That's not the same."

"He would be ashamed of you."

Brody flinched, but stayed standing. "He was ashamed of what we let happen."

The manager checked Brody's authorization and photographed the damaged lock before opening the unit. Inside were Christmas decorations, fishing poles, a narrow desk, and an olive-green Army duffel bag with my name in fading black ink.

My knees nearly gave out. Dad had bought that bag before my first deployment. I remembered him carrying it down the driveway and saying, "Bring yourself back. Everything else can be replaced."

Charlene grabbed for the strap. "That's family property."

"It's my bag," I said. "And we can let the investigators decide what happens to anything inside."

A folded envelope sat on top, addressed to Erin in Dad's square handwriting. Inside was a letter, dated two months before he died.

I was wrong to ask you to be quiet. I called it keeping peace because I was afraid of losing a son who already felt lost. Silence didn't save him. It only taught him to hide.

I sat on a storage crate to keep from falling.

Beneath the letter lay an old voice recorder wrapped in a child's blue sock. Brody backed away as if the device were hot.

"Dad found it after the flood," he whispered. "Mercer told him to destroy it."

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Charlene lunged for the recorder. "Give me that!"

But it was Brody who caught her wrist—and it was Brody who said, "Mom, you know what's on there."