Chapter 14: The Garrison Ball

"Get out," I said to Ansel.

"I'm visiting my wife."

"You're standing in a room with a woman on bed rest, holding flowers she's afraid of."

Livia had pulled the blanket up to her chin, and her thumb stayed on the call button.

Two nurses came in at a run.

Kirk came behind them, and behind him were two military police.

He did not raise his voice.

"Colonel Drummond, you are relieved of duty and barred from this wing. Walk out with these soldiers or be carried."

Ansel set the lilies on the foot of Livia's bed.

"I'm still an officer until a court says otherwise, General," he said. "I'll see everyone at the Garrison Ball."

"You will not be on that list."

"I was on it before you were a general, sir."

The MPs walked him down the corridor, and he waved to a nurse on the way.

Livia put her face in her hands.

"Tomorrow," she whispered. "I'll tell you tomorrow, Gin."

Ten days later, the post held its Garrison Ball in the big gym, and I walked in on Kirk's arm in a green dress I had bought myself.

Three hundred people turned around at once.

I had been the girl in the bathrobe on the lawn.

Tonight the wives of the brigade stared at my bare shoulders and my general, and whispered behind their glasses.

"Chin up," Kirk said into my ear. "Count the flags."

At the head table sat a two-star general, the chairman of the promotion board, with his wife in silver.

Beside them was an empty chair with a place card that read Col. A. Drummond.

I stopped walking.

"I had it taken off the list," Kirk said, very low.

"Somebody put it back."

"His lawyer called the brigade commander's wife."

She sat at the far end of the table in pearls, and she did not look at me.

Then the doors at the back of the gym opened, and Ansel walked in.

He wore his dress blues and a fresh haircut, and he had a lawyer in a gray suit at his elbow.

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