He’d taken a photo of me for a “support our troops” file. He said it was for morale.
It was all a lie.
“Let’s go to the vestry,” I managed to say, my own voice sounding foreign and small. “Now.”
My father stepped in, a protective arm around my shoulder, and helped guide me away from the altar. Paul followed, looking like a man walking to his own execution. Derek trailed behind us, his presence a heavy, suffocating weight.
We crowded into the small, wood-paneled room. The air was thick with the unspoken and the unbelievable.
I finally found my voice, turning on Paul. “You told me you were in sales. That you sold software.”
Paul couldn’t meet my eyes. He stared at the floor. “I was. Before. After my own service.”
“Liar,” Derek spat. “He’s a handler. An intelligence analyst for a private firm contracted by the government. He was our mission coordinator.”
My whole body went cold. The story of our meeting, a chance encounter at a coffee shop, replayed in my head. Had that been a lie, too? Was any of it real?
“The photo,” I demanded, pointing a trembling finger at the worn picture in Derek’s hand.
Derek handed it to me. On the back, in faint pencil, was a set of coordinates and a date. The date of the mission he “died” on.
“Paul gave my unit the go-ahead,” Derek explained, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. “He fed us intel that a high-value target was in a specific compound. He promised air support that never came. He promised the enemy numbers were low.”
He paused, and the silence in the room was deafening. “There were thirty of them, Clara. For five of us. It was a slaughterhouse.”
I sank into a chair, my wedding dress pooling around me like a shroud.
