The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

know how to answer this. I didn’t know how to explain what it meant, why it was so important.

“It’s ... not what you think, Carrie. The thing was ... Colton really was insane. I mean ... just fucking gone. But he was like my dad.”

She slammed her beer bottle onto the table and said, “No! He was not like your dad. Your father would never turn around and accuse you of a crime that he committed. He betrayed you, Ray.”

“God damn it!” I shouted. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“So you don’t owe him any fucking loyalty,” she screamed back. “It would be like ... it would be like if I were to sit in front of Doctor Moore’s investigation and tell them I’d slept with Ayers!”

I was so angry, the words that came out of my mouth were pure spite. “Well, did you?”

Rage came over Carrie’s features, and before I could even react, she picked up the head, the bronzed looking antique head that always sat on the mantelpiece, and with a scream she threw it. I saw it coming and stepped quickly to the right, and tripped and fell on my ass beside the coffee table. The head missed me, and hit the sliding glass door with a huge crash. The door broke in to a million pieces, and Carrie collapsed to her knees.

“Holy fuck,” I said, gasping.

The head was on the balcony, and so was most of the door. I was shaking with shock and adrenaline. I looked over at her and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

She looked back at me, shock in her eyes, and said, “I can’t believe I just threw the head at you.”

All I could say was, “It was kind of an ugly head.”

She started to laugh, a sort of hysterical laugh.

I started to get up, and she said, “Wait. Be careful, there’s glass everywhere.”

Um, yeah, like I hadn’t noticed that.

“I’ve got combat boots on, I’ll be fine. You stay over there.” I pulled myself into a standing position to assess the damage. Most of the glass had ended up on the balcony, except for one or two long, jagged pieces still hanging in the door frame.

“I think we’re going to need to get your door repaired, Carrie,” I said, in as calm a voice as I could muster. And then I turned, and walked over to her and pulled her to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. And I put my arms around her. Both of us were shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“We’ll get a new door.”

And then, miraculously, she started to laugh, and I did too, and then we were holding on to each other for dear life, laughing together.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“It’s all right, babe. We’re going to get through all this, and take a long vacation somewhere together. We have the rest of our lives ahead of us. Okay? This? Right now? It’s the worst it will ever get.”

She sniffed and rested her head against my shoulder.

“I love you, Ray. ”

“I know.”

She leaned back and squinted at me. “I can’t believe you did that!”

I laughed. Whenever I quoted a cheesy line from Star Wars it always got a laugh from her.

“Okay ... let me clean up the worst of the glass ... you’re gonna have to call the building and make up something, I think.”

I grabbed my heavy duty gloves out of my duffel bag, and started picking up the worst of the glass and carefully leaning it up against the side of the balcony. And that’s when my phone rang.

Damn it. I set down the last piece of glass, pulled off my glove, then stepped inside and answered the phone without looking at it.

“Hello?”

“Sherman,” the voice at the other end of the phone said. Whoever it was sounded drunk.

“Yeah, who is this?” I asked.

“Martin.”

What the hell? Why was Martin calling me? Then I thought about today, and what he’d said during his testimony. His refusal to ask for a lawyer, his testifying to actions that might see him charged as well.

 “You okay, man?”

“Fuck no,” he said. He was definitely drunk, and his voice sounded ... I don’t know ... distant. Sad. He didn’t sound like himself at all. Carrie looked over at me from across the room, concern on her face.

“Ray, why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone? Huh? Yeah, I know Colton was wrong, and I feel awful about that kid. But you know what? I’ve got kids too. And how the fuck are they supposed to grow up knowing that ... knowing…”

“Martin ... where are you?”

“Doesn’t fucking matter. It’s where I’m going that matters. It’s where we’re all going. To hell.”

I winced and said, “I don’t believe that. You did the right thing today.”

“Sherman, you naive shit. You know what I did? I killed my military career. I branded myself a war criminal. I ended my fucking life. What chance do my kids have to a decent life when they’ve got me as their father.”

Martin was starting to scare the crap out of me. I waved to Carrie and looked around for something to write on. I gestured, and she grabbed a pen and paper off the refrigerator.

The pad of paper had a handwritten message she’d written to me this morning. “I love you GEEK,” it said, and had a heart underneath.

I wrote, in large bold letters. “CALL DICK, AND 911. MARTIN. TALKING SUICIDE.”

I was shaking. Martin continued, “Seriously. You know what difference it would have made if you hadn’t said anything? Not a god damn thing. Speedy would still be dead. So would Kowalski and Weber and Roberts. Didn’t mean a god damn thing. In fact, Speedy would be dead anyway, if not today then next year, the Taliban would have fucking either killed him or recruited him.”

“Martin…” I said.

“Shut the fuck up, Sherman. You know why? Because I don’t have shit now. What am I supposed to say? Dad’s going off to war again? And then he