Bye, Mr. Ex! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Re-Up

Colby tells the neighbors she'll be back by Friday; Sadie leaves, Loretta takes her in, and she re-enlists into Bravo Company.

I told the captain I was talking to myself, and I walked away before he could ask anything else.

I heard him say "Ma'am," once, and then the ballroom doors swung open and Colby's voice filled the hall.

I was in my car by then with the engine running.

I did not go home to the roast.

I slept in the driver's seat of my Honda in a church parking lot.

The lease and the truck were in Colby's name, and the Honda was the only thing I owned outright.

At eight in the morning I drove back to the rental to get my bag.

Colby was on the front lawn in a clean T-shirt with a coffee in his hand.

He had showered and shaved, which meant he had decided how this was going to go.

"There she is," he said, loud enough for the Hendersons' porch.

Two neighbors were out watering plants that did not need water.

"Sade, come on. I said I was sorry."

"You didn't."

"I'm saying it now." He spread his hands. "You embarrassed me in front of my commander's family, and I'm still saying it."

I walked past him up the steps.

He followed me inside and lowered his voice.

"Where are you going to go? Your name's not on the lease."

"The joint account is mine to freeze with one phone call."

I got the green duffel out of the hall closet.

It had been through two deployments.

My name was still stenciled on the side in black, PICKENS S.

"Two thousand, three hundred dollars," I said. "That's what's in mine."

"That's not going to last you a week."

"Then I'll be back by Friday," I said. "Isn't that what you told the Hendersons?"

His jaw tightened.

I packed in six minutes.

I took three pairs of jeans, my boots, my old Army folder, and the framed photo of his mother and me at the lake.

His mother was sitting at the kitchen table in her blue robe, stirring a cup of tea that had gone cold.

She looked up and smiled.

"Sadie, you're up early."

"I'm going out for a while, Mom."

"Bring me a doughnut," she said.

I kissed the top of her head and promised her one.

Colby watched that from the doorway and said nothing, because he knew exactly what it would cost him if I stopped coming.

On the lawn he said, "She'll ask for you all day."

"I know," I said. "That's why you're going to be nice to her."

I put the duffel in the Honda and drove away without looking at the house.

The retention office on post was a low brick building with a flag out front and a line of kids in civilian clothes.

I had not stood in that line in five years.

The sergeant at the desk read my folder with his chin on his fist.

"Pickens, Sadie M. Sixty-eight Whiskey. Seven years active, honorable, separated as a sergeant." He looked up. "You want back in?"

"Yes."

"Why'd you leave?"

"I was engaged to a man who needed the room."

He didn't smile, and I liked him for it.

"Anything on your record I should know about?"

"No. Nothing's on it."

"No awards at all?" He flipped the page again. "Seven years of flight time, a Syria rotation, and no Army Commendation, no Achievement Medal, nothing?"

"Nothing was filed."

He glanced past my shoulder.

"Top, can you look at this?"

A woman had been standing at the next counter signing for one of her soldiers.

She was in her late forties with short gray-streaked hair, reading glasses on a cord, and the kind of stillness that makes a room behave.

The name tape on her chest read KERR.

First Sergeant Darden took my folder, scanned it quickly, and read the last page twice.

"Syria," she said. "Which night?"

I felt my pulse in my throat.

"I'd rather not say, First Sergeant."

She studied me over the glasses.

"I run a company that flies wounded people off battlefields, Sergeant Pickens."

"I'm two medics short because the Army can't keep them."

"I'm good."

"Your file says so. It also says nobody ever told anyone." She closed the folder. "That's usually somebody's fault."

"It is."

"Whose?"

"Mine," I said, "and someone else's."

She nodded once.

I raised my right hand in a small office with a bad flag and a worse air conditioner, and I said the oath out loud.

When I finished, my hand was shaking, and it was the best I had felt in five years.

Darden handed me the folder.

"There's a spare room in my house in Spring Lake," she said. "Don't thank me, the bed is lumpy."

"You report Monday at zero six hundred to Bravo Company."

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"Your commander is a captain named Swafford."

The folder went still in my hand.

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