“Twelve days,” Renick said, handing the paper back to me. “But remember what your father told you when you commissioned. The uniform is not a weapon for revenge, Nicole, it is a promise.”
“My father is not here to protect her,” I said.
“Go,” Renick said.
I packed my laptop and my flight notes into my small canvas bag. My hands did not shake, but I adjusted my watch strap twice before I reached the exit.
The airfield was quiet at six-thirty. A small twin-engine transport plane sat on the tarmac, its propellers turning slowly in the cool air.
An army driver waited by the passenger steps, holding a clipboard against his chest. He looked at my face as I approached.
“Are you alright, Colonel?” the driver asked. “You look like you are going into a combat zone.”
“Just load the bag, Specialist,” I said.
I climbed the metal stairs and took a seat in the narrow cabin. The engines roared to life, vibrating through the metal floorboards and into the soles of my boots.
The plane began its ascent, turning south into the dark North Carolina sky. I stared down at the silver oak leaf pinned to my collar, its polished edges catching the dim light of the cabin bulb.
The nurse had left the door ajar, letting the low hum of the corridor drift into the small room. My mother, Evelyn Turner, lay beneath a thin blue hospital blanket, her gray hair pulled back in a loose braid.
I stepped closer to the high metal bed and took her right hand. Her fingers were cold, and a dark, yellowish bruise bloomed across the back of her wrist.
“They gave me some tea,” she said, her voice soft and drawling, the way it always got when she was tired. “It tasted like cardboard, Nicole, but it was warm.”
I touched the purple swelling near her left elbow, gently turning her arm to see the scrape underneath. “How far did you slide on the tile, Mom?”
