Chapter
66
Ethan let his breath out, slow and steady. “I had a wife,” he said.
He allowed that sentence to hang in the air for a moment, those four small words filling the room. “We were young—too young—but that’s not how we felt. We were so sure of ourselves. We thought we knew everything.” He shook his glass so the ice swirled and clinked. “Her name was Jeanine Marie. She went by Jeanie.”
He risked a glance at AnnieLee. Her eyes had a faraway look in them, as if she was trying to imagine who he was back then. It felt like a lifetime ago, but he could still see himself perfectly, nineteen years old and crazy in love, with Jeanie by his side, glowing in her mother’s wedding gown as they were married on a North Carolina beach.
It was still easy for him to call up those good early days. He told AnnieLee how they lived in a little two-bedroom brick house on a quiet street in Fort Bragg. Life on an army base wasn’t that different from life in a regular small town, he explained. He’d loved the community, the routine, and the sense of purpose. He even loved the predawn ruck marches. But most of all, he loved going home to Jeanie at night.
He thought he might have sensed AnnieLee flinch ever so slightly when he said that. But it was the truth, and he owed it to her.
“I got deployed, though,” Ethan said, “and suddenly there were thousands of miles between us. A seven-hour time difference. And completely different lives. She was working out at the gym and playing poker with the other wives, and I was sweating in hundred-and-sixteen-degree heat and watching my back for snipers. Seeing my friends get wounded or killed or just go plain crazy.”
Ethan paused. He could go down that combat hole if he wanted to; it was a deep one. But there wasn’t enough whiskey in the state of Utah for him to talk about the war and his wife tonight. That was just too much pain to bear at once. So he circled back to Jeanie.
“She took up with another man while I was gone,” Ethan said. “A man who outranked me. I was furious. And when I came back, all we did was fight.” He felt his hands clenching in his lap. “Maybe I should’ve just let her go. But I really thought we could fix things. I believed what I’d said on our wedding day—you know, till death do you part.”
He looked up at AnnieLee. There was no way to sugarcoat it. “And death is what it took,” he said.
AnnieLee sucked in her breath. “Go on,” she whispered.
“It was winter. Not too late at night—I remember hearing taps, which they always played at nine—but I was drunk already. Walking around the neighborhood, I was looking at all those windows lit up gold against the dark and thinking how there were happy couples inside all of them. And there I was, cold and lonely, wandering the streets like a stray dog. I thought I’d made a life for us, but it had all fallen apart when I wasn’t there to keep it together.”
He took another slug of whiskey. “When I got home that night, the back door was open. Jeanie was lying on the bed, and I thought she was asleep. I tried to wake her up to tell her that I was sorry. That she could go be with that other guy if that’s what she needed. That all I wanted was for her to be happy.” His throat ached with the telling. But he knew he wouldn’t cry. He’d done that enough already. “But she was dead.”
“Oh, Ethan,” AnnieLee said.
She reached for him, but he flinched away. The story was about to become a darker one, and he knew that her expression would change from pity to suspicion.
“Jeanie had been strangled,” Ethan said flatly. “And two days later, they arrested me for her murder.”
“Ethan, I—”
But he didn’t want to hear whatever she had to say; he had to keep telling the story. “I spent six months in jail before my trial,” he said. “I can’t tell you how bad it was, thinking I’d be convicted of killing the woman I loved. It was worse than war, worse than my parents dying, worse than anything I could’ve imagined.”
“But—but you were acquitted?” AnnieLee’s voice was a whisper.
Ethan smiled grimly. “Yes, or else I wouldn’t be here. But the case was never solved. And I carried that…stain. People didn’t look at me the same after that. And it just felt like my whole life was gone.” He took another drink. “I guess because it was. Like it was blown up by a bomb.”
Ethan got up from the bed and went to the door. He was going to leave before she asked him to. “So that’s what I had to tell you,” he said. “I’m going to go now.”