Chapter 1 - The Crutch
Dominic Bellini took my crutch out of my hand in front of two hundred people, and for one terrible second I thought the floor was going to meet my face.
The charity ballroom in Atlanta glittered with chandeliers and expensive watches. I was wearing the dark formal jacket I'd bought after my last uniform stopped fitting over my prosthetic leg. A narrow Medal of Honor ribbon rested above my left breast pocket. My weight was on my artificial left leg when Dominic seized the forearm cuff of the crutch from my right hand.
"This isn't a war zone," he said.
Laughter moved through the nearest tables. Someone actually raised a phone to record it.
I grabbed the back of an empty chair, caught myself, and made my voice steady.
"No, it isn't."
Dominic, forty-four, wore a tuxedo and a practiced smile. Minutes earlier he'd told a donor that his development company knew what veterans needed. I'd asked why the Homeward Steps elevator was still locked after the foundation paid for it.
He had answered by taking away my balance.
My crutch scraped across the ballroom floor as he shifted it from one hand to the other. I waited for him to hand it back. I would not crawl after it, and I would not perform anger for the audience he had already made of me.
Then his son came through the ballroom doors.
Tyler Bellini was twenty-two, dark-haired, dressed in a navy suit that hung loosely on him. He stopped so suddenly a server nearly collided with his shoulder.
"Uncle Sam?"
Dominic's smile faltered. Tyler looked at the crutch, then at my artificial leg, and finally at his father.
"Give it back," Tyler said.
I could have let him fight for me. It would have been easier than watching him realize something ugly about the man he loved. Instead I held out my hand.
Dominic hesitated before passing the crutch over. His fingers had closed around the aluminum hard enough to leave a faint red mark on its rubber grip.
I settled the cuff against my forearm. Only then did I look at him.
"Your son said your name," I whispered.
Dominic stared as though the sentence itself were a threat. It wasn't. Tyler had said his father's name weeks earlier, sitting with me in the lobby of an apartment building that was supposed to offer wounded veterans a safe home. He'd said it with shame, affection, and a frightened question he couldn't bring himself to ask aloud.
Across the room, a woman in a blue jacket approached. Helen Cross chaired the Homeward Steps foundation board; we'd met during inspections. She looked from my crutch to Dominic and then to the recording phone.
"What happened?" she asked.
"An argument," Dominic said quickly. "Samuel and I misunderstood each other."
I didn't correct his use of my full name. I hadn't told it to him. He had read it somewhere, perhaps on the seating list or on a report he'd dismissed.
"Dad," Tyler said, "he was invited here. I asked Helen to put him on the guest list."
"Then you should have told me."
"I tried."
Dominic turned away from his son. The donors resumed speaking in lowered voices, careful not to let their curiosity look like curiosity. A few had watched the ribbon on my jacket long enough to recognize it. It felt worse when they suddenly became respectful. My right to stand without being shoved off balance had existed before they knew what the ribbon meant.
A waiter quietly brought a chair. I thanked him but stayed standing. I wanted the crutch in my own hand for a moment. I wanted one decision that belonged entirely to me.
Helen said the foundation would address what had happened. Dominic offered to make a private apology, his eyes moving toward the reporters near the stage.
"Not here," I said. "And not as a substitute for answering my question."
"What question?"
"The elevator at Mason House. The accessible entrances. The invoices that say both are finished."
His expression changed. It wasn't the annoyed look of a man embarrassed at a gala. It was recognition, swift and precise.
Tyler saw it too.
From inside his jacket Tyler pulled a folded sheet of paper. He held it so tightly I could see the corners trembling.
"I brought the report, Dad," he said. "The one I sent your office."
Dominic did not reach for it.
May you like
And that was when I understood the problem wasn't that he had never heard about the building.
He had been warned.
