22 They Threw My Brother's Flag In The Trash — Until I Saw The Label Hidden Inside

Erin and Miriam drove to Dover that afternoon. Erin called in sick a second time. Miriam arranged her schedule. Neither of them pretended they were doing anything else.

They arrived at the base at dusk. Miriam had called ahead to a former colleague, a mortuary technician named Paul Viera, who met them at the exchange parking lot because he did not want them in the building where he worked.

"I've got fifteen minutes," Paul said. He was in his fifties, tired-eyed, and he kept looking over his shoulder. "And I want it on the record I'm only doing this because I saw the man's name in a file that shouldn't exist."

"Michael Walsh," Erin said.

"Michael Walsh." Paul nodded. "First Lieutenant. Air Force. Pararescue." He looked at her. "You're his sister."

"Yes."

"I figured. You've got the same eyes."

Erin's throat tightened. She did not speak.

"There was an arrival fourteen months ago," Paul said. "Sealed. No notification. Standard procedure for a certain category of arrival — no press, no family, no flag ceremony for the public. But the category we were told it belonged to is a category for training. It wasn't training."

"What was it?"

"A man came through my bay who wasn't dead." Paul's voice was quiet. "He was alive, he was conscious, and he had been in a hospital bed for a very long time. He had a feeding tube in his stomach and a tracheostomy scar and he was missing his left hand."

Erin made a sound she did not mean to make.

"He looked at me. He looked at me and he said one thing before the security guy pulled me away." Paul met her eyes. "He said, 'Tell Erin I'm sorry I missed her promotion.'"

The parking lot lights came on. Erin was crying and did not notice.

"Where is he now?" she asked.

"I don't know. He was transferred out of my bay within an hour. Somebody at the front office was very unhappy that I'd seen him."

"What did the security man look like?" Erin asked.

Paul hesitated. "Military. Civilian clothes but military haircut, military watch, military shoes. He had a lanyard with a badge that said CONTRACTOR in letters big enough that you couldn't read anything else. He didn't talk to me. He didn't talk to anybody. He just stood in the doorway and watched, and when Michael said what he said, the man crossed the room and put his hand on Michael's shoulder and said, 'That's enough,' and Michael stopped talking."

"And then?"

"And then they wheeled him out of my bay and I never saw him again. But I heard one thing before they got him through the doors." Paul looked at Erin. "He said, 'Regan, tell her.'"

Erin's breath caught. "Regan?"

"That's what I heard. Regan. I wrote it down on the back of a business card when I got back to my car, because I thought I might need it, and I did." He took out a business card and handed it to her. On the back, in small neat handwriting, was a single name: REGAN.

Paul looked at his watch. "I've got to go. Do not come inside. Do not ask more questions from me at this address. If you need me again, use the number Miriam has."

He walked away.

They stopped at a diner off Route 13 on the way back, because Miriam said she couldn't drive anymore and Erin said she couldn't sit in a car anymore, and they sat in a booth near the back and Miriam ordered coffee and Erin ordered a bowl of soup she did not eat.

"I need to tell you something," Miriam said. "And I need you to not interrupt me until I'm done."

"Okay."

"When I was at Dover, four years ago, I signed a form that said I had participated in a sealed arrival. It was a training arrival, according to the form, and I signed it because my flight chief told me to sign it and because I didn't have any reason to question it. I have thought about that form every day since you walked into my office." Miriam turned her cup. "I have a copy of it. I made a copy before I left Dover, because something about the whole thing felt wrong, and I have kept it in a safe deposit box in Mount Holly for four years."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"Because I didn't have a body." Miriam met her eyes. "I had a form. I had a bad feeling. I didn't have a body. And then a woman I didn't know walked into a family assistance center and pulled her brother's flag out of a trash can and I realized I was done waiting for a body."

Erin looked at her.

"So we have a form."

"We have a form, and a technician who saw a living man, and a label with a date, and a dead woman's letter." Miriam set her cup down. "We have more than most people get. What we don't have is time."

Then she paid the check and drove them out of Delaware and onto Route 13 and did not stop until they were thirty miles away. She pulled into a rest stop and got out and stood beside the car with her hands on the hood, breathing.

Erin stayed in the passenger seat.

Her brother was alive. Her brother had been alive for fourteen months at least. Her brother had said her name. Her brother had said her name to a man he had never met, and the man had remembered it, and the man had told her.

"Miriam," she said.

"Yeah."

"Someone is going to have to answer for this."