Chapter 7 - June's Question
June didn't come downstairs for dinner. I set a plate outside her door and sat on the floor in the hall, a thing I hadn't done since she was small enough to be frightened by thunderstorms.
“I saw a message from somebody named Hollis,” she said through the door.
“He wanted me to sign something.”
“For money?”
“Yes.”
The door opened. “How much?”
“Enough to pay for school.”
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
June leaned against the frame. “You should have told me before deciding.”
She wasn't wrong. I hated that she was right twice in a week.
“I'm scared,” I admitted. “Of what people will say about your dad, about me. Of making you carry my fight when you're supposed to be choosing classes and friends.”
“I'm already carrying it.”
She sat beside me. After a while she asked whether I had ever seen Mason die. I said no. When rescuers found him under the collapsed roof, I was already on a helicopter. A chaplain delivered the news in Germany.
“Then you didn't get to say goodbye.”
“No.”
“You don't have to say goodbye again every time someone tells the story wrong.”
I let that settle. “There's something else,” I said. “I allowed you to believe I was sure of everything I remembered. I'm not. I know what Mason did before the collapse. I know what the records show. The final minutes are still uncertain.”
June considered me carefully. “That makes you more believable, Mom. Not less.”
The next morning she helped me scan my folder. When we reached the bottom of a cardboard box, we found a faded photograph of Mason standing beside Peter Dunn. On the back was a date and a handwritten line: The four we almost lost.
There were five people in the photograph, including Mason.
“Who's missing?” June asked.
The fourth name on Peter's original patient list was an Afghan interpreter named Farid. I had assumed he left the country after the attack.
June turned the photograph toward the window. Around Farid's neck hung a laminated volunteer identification card with a small blue organization logo.
May you like
It was the same logo printed on every Hollis Foundation brochure.
