Fiancée's Betrayal, Dante's Inferno novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Zero Seven Hundred

In front of his first sergeant Roan clears his name, and Boone spots the postmark on the fiancée's letter: Beaufort, not the field.

At 0645 on Monday I stood outside the First Sergeant's door at the air station, pressed and shaved.

I had slept four hours on a boat with a wet wrench for a pillow.

"Tarrant."

A hand clapped my shoulder so hard I almost went through the wall.

Boone Archer grinned at me through his red beard.

He was a gunnery sergeant now, and he looked like a bear in a uniform.

"They told me you were back," he said. "They did not tell me you'd blown up a church."

"It was a small church."

"The video says two hundred people."

"You saw the video?"

"Brother. Everybody saw the video."

He pulled out his phone and showed me.

"Marine Meltdown at Beaufort Wedding" had two million views.

Someone had filmed from the third pew.

You could hear every word I said, clean and flat and calm.

You could also see my mother get up and ask the church to forgive me.

The comments were mostly about my boots.

"They put me on the same rotation as your unit," Boone said. "Same base. You're stuck in Beaufort four years. Sorry."

"That's not bad news."

"It's the best news. Go in. Don't punch him."

"Who?"

"Whoever."

The First Sergeant was a gray, square man with a face.

He had a folder open on his desk.

"Sit," he said. "Staff Sergeant, your mother has filed a statement. She says you came to your brother's wedding drunk and threatened the bride."

"Did you watch the video, First Sergeant?"

"Twice."

"Did I raise my voice?"

"You did not."

"Did I touch anyone?"

"You did not."

"Did I threaten anyone?"

The First Sergeant looked at the folder, then at me.

"You put a ring on a pew," he said. "That's the closest thing to violence I saw."

Beside me, Boone made a noise.

The First Sergeant closed the folder.

"The complaint is unfounded. It stays closed as long as you stay away from your family."

"That's an order, Tarrant, not advice. One more incident and I convene something."

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"For what it's worth," he said, "I'd have been standing at that altar with a bayonet."

"Yes, First Sergeant."

Outside, I let out a breath that went on a while.

Boone steered me across the lot to his truck.

"Stay away from your family is a hell of an order," he said. "Your family is the whole county."

"I'll manage."

"Do you want to know what's really wrong with this?"

"Go ahead."

He opened a page on his phone.

"Your mother's friends run a Facebook group called Beaufort Neighbors. This was posted three weeks ago."

It was a photograph of a letter lying on a kitchen table.

It was the letter Brynn had held out to me in church, the same typed page.

Under it, a woman had written, "Pray for Brynn. This is how that boy treats a pregnant girl."

Four hundred people had prayed.

Next to the letter lay its envelope, flat on the same table.

Boone put two fingers on the screen and spread them.

The block capital R in my return address came up large.

I stared at it.

It looked like mine.

It looked exactly like mine.

"That's close," I said.

"That's good," Boone said. "It's too good. Nobody writes their own name that carefully, Roan. Look at it. Every letter is a drawing."

He moved his fingers down.

In the top corner of the envelope was a round gray postmark.

I read it once.

I read it again.

"BEAUFORT SC," I said.

"Yeah."

"It's dated April 20."

"Yeah."

"I was in a field hospital tent in April, being yelled at for sitting up too soon."

"A letter from me to Brynn would have an APO stamp. Military mail, from a post office overseas."

"I know what a military postmark looks like," Boone said. "I've mailed three hundred letters home."

He turned the phone toward me one more time.

"Whoever mailed this dropped it in a blue box on this island. Maybe three streets from your mother's house."

I looked at the round gray circle.

For two days I had been told I'd written a letter.

I hadn't, and now I could prove it.

I just did not know yet who had.

"What's your next move?" Boone said.

"I'm told to stay away from my family."

"You are."

"Brynn isn't my family anymore."

He smiled, slow and happy.

"Where is she Tuesday?"

"I don't know."

"I do," Boone said. "My sister-in-law works the front desk at Lowcountry Women's Health. Brynn's thirty-week appointment is Tuesday at nine."

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